Dutch photographer Ronin de Goede recently released a new photographic diary entitled
ASAKUSA that chronicles the work of Japanese master tattoo artist, Horikazu. Across 216 pages, de Goede captures black and white imagery of Horikazu and his clients who hire him for his full-body tattoo specialties. Candid pictures of intimate tattoo sessions are interspersed between street photography of Japanese festivals, raw depictions of various Yakuza gangs and abstract composites that evoke the gritty and banned world of tattoo in Japan.
“Yakuza thrive on their image as honourable outlaws, perpetuated in Japanese novels, magazines, plays, films and manga. But nothing could be further from the truth – while they may make very public displays of their rare acts of public generosity, ultimately their power is based on fear,” as per a foreword by Mark Poysden in the book. “Like criminal syndicates around the world, in Japan the yakuza run protection rackets and drugs, they trade in hum
Asakura: Following Japanese Tattoo Master Horikazu
December 21, 2020 | in Photography Asakusa is Ronin de Goede s visual diary of the time he spent following Horikazu, the traditional Japanese tattoo master in Tokyo. In 2011, Ronin knocked on the door of the renowned tattooist Horikazu shodai. Hoping to meet the great man himself, he was dismayed to hear from Horikazu’s wife that he was terminally ill and couldn’t receive visitors. A shout stalled his dejected trudge away from the house: Horikazu’s wife had called her son, who had already despatched a black Mercedes Jeep that arrived soon afterward. Ronin was whisked off to a restaurant to join Horikazuwaka, himself a hugely accomplished tattooist who apprenticed with his father, at a party at ‘the big table at the back’. This is where Ronin saw the finest collection of some of the world’s most famous bodysuits and met high-ranking yakuza for the first time.