Fukushi Masaichi was a Japanese doctor who, at one point in his life, became
interested in tattoos after noticing that the ink used for them on the skin
killed the skin lesions caused by syphilis, which led him to amass the largest
collection of other people's tattoos in history.
Obsession.
Born on January 30, 1878, Fukushi Masiachi was a Japanese physician,
pathologist, and professor emeritus at the Nippon School of Medicine in Tokyo.
As a pathologist, Fukushi developed an interest in tattoos while studying
moles and the movement of pigments in human skin. He encountered numerous
tattoos and became obsessed with them, especially traditional Japanese
designs, and began collecting them for his own personal collection.
Furthermore, he discovered that piercing the skin with needles prevented the
recurrence of syphilis in newly tattooed skin, which further fueled his
interest in this art form.
While in college, he developed a method for treating and preserving the dermal
layer containing the tattoo, allowing him to stretch it and mount it on frames
with magnifying glasses, which also made it possible to conduct further
medical research.
The collection.
In 1920, Fukushi accepted a position at a hospital in Tokyo, where he came
into contact with several people who were tattooed in the traditional Japanese
style. The hospital was a charitable organization that cared for the lower
classes, and as the tattooed individuals died of illness or old age, Fukushi
performed autopsies on them and preserved their skin. After spending some time
in Germany, the doctor returned to Japan to work at Nippon Medical University,
where he continued his unusual research.
Masaichi had a very good relationship with his future patients, who were fully
on board with preserving what they had hidden under their clothes. It is even
said that the doctor went so far as to pay some people to finish a tattoo that
he would preserve years later.
Over time, Fukushi became highly respected and admired among Japan's great
tattoo masters, even serving as a judge at some conventions. Interestingly,
the doctor never got a tattoo himself.
The catalog includes 2,000 tattoos and 3,000 photos. Unfortunately, the photos
were lost during World War II. Despite the passage of time, many of those
tattoos have survived to this day, as Masaichi stored them in an air-raid
shelter in the early 1940s. That is how they managed to survive the war. Years
earlier, during an academic trip to the United States, a truck full of them
disappeared in Chicago and was never heard from again.
After his death on June 3, 1956, the collection passed to his son, Katsunari,
who was also a doctor and who, like his father, had no tattoos on his body. He
preserved his father’s collection and also conducted research on this
pictorial art form.
Present day.
Today, this unique collection of artworks can be viewed at the University of
Tokyo, where it is housed in 105 frames. It is not open to the public, but the
medical department allows doctors and researchers to visit by
appointment.
However, Masaichi and his family’s collection is not the only tattoo
collection in the world. The Edinburgh Museum of Surgery also houses another
one, featuring specimens from 19th-century sailors. The Institute of Legal
Medicine and Forensic Sciences in Portugal, based in Lisbon, has 70 specimens.
And there are many more in places as diverse as London, Berlin, and Kraków.
It is believed that the University of Tokyo has 105 images depicting
Masiachi's tattooed skin, many of which are full-body portraits.
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