Watabe Yukichi: A Criminal Investigation

‘Criminal Investigation’ is Watabe Yukichi's documentation of the investigation of the murder and dismemberment of Sato Tadashi. A few of Sato's remains were found in an oil vat in Irabaki Prefecture, Japan and the young photojournalist Watanabe was allowed access to the investigation. Like a Hollywood movie, his images wind through factories, streets and the offices of the investigators to come to the final noir ending, a not so happy resolution with the apprehension of capturing the murderer and the revelation of other heinous crimes.

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On 13 January 1958, the grotesquely disfigured body of a man was discovered near Lake Sembako in Japan. Two investigators from Tokyo came to help the local police in resolving what at first appeared to be a banal case, but which soon proved to be something more complicated. For the first time, a photographer was authorized to accompany the police to document the investigation. Press photographer Watabe Yukichi (1924–1993) followed the inspectors as they questioned witnesses (workers in a tannery factory, local police officers) and pounded the streets of the most insalubrious neighborhoods in Tokyo--its bars, bridges, alleyways and hospitals--in search of the killer. Like the haunted film stills of a newly discovered noir classic, Watabe’s images record much more than simply a police investigation, and reveal a Tokyo of the 1950s in a way that has rarely been depicted.