Page:Modern Japanese Stories.pdf/89

fingering the tattoo-marks on each other’s bodies, would praise the original design of one and criticize the shortcomings of another.

There was a young tattooer of outstanding talent. He was much in fashion and his reputation rivalled even those of the great old masters of old, Charibun of Asakusa, Yakkohei of Matsushimachō and Konkonjirō. His works were greatly prized at the exhibitions of tattoo and most admirers of the art aspired to become his clients. While the artist Darumakin was known for his fine drawings and Karakusa Gonta was the master of the vermilion tattoo, this man Seikichi was famous for the originality of his compositions and for their voluptuous quality.

Previously he had achieved a certain reputation as a painter, belonging to the school of Toyokuni and Kunisada and specializing in genre paintings. In descending to the rank of tattooer, he still preserved the true spirit of an artist and a great sensitivity. He declined to execute his work on people whose skin or general physique did not appeal to him, and such customers as he did accept had to agree implicitly to the design of his choosing and also to his price. Moreover, they had to endure for as long as one or two months the excruciating pain of his needles.

Within this young tattooer’s heart lurked unsuspected passions and pleasures. When the pricking of his needles caused the flesh to swell and the crimson blood to flow, his patients, unable to endure the agony, would emit groans of pain. The more they groaned, the greater was the artist’s strange pleasure. He took particular delight in vermilion designs, which are known to be the most painful of tattoos. When his clients had received five or six hundred pricks of the needle and then taken a scalding hot bath the more vividly to bring out the colours, they would often collapse half dead at Seikichi’s feet. As they lay there unable to move, he would ask with a satisfied smile, “So it really hurts?”

When he had to deal with a faint-hearted customer whose