A Criminal Investigation
On 14 January 1958, the disfigured and amputated body of a man was discovered near Lake Sembako in Japan. Two investigators from Tokyo came to help out the local police in order to resolve what at first appeared to be a banal case, but which proved to be more complex. For the first time, a photographer was authorised to accompany the police to document the investigation. Watabe Yukichi followed the inspectors as they questioned witnesses and pounded the streets of the most insalubrious neighbourhoods in Tokyo in search of the killer. Watabe’s images record much more than simply a police investigation, they reveal Tokyo in the 1950s in a way that has rarely been shown.
