It is very common for someone in the family to question the idea of having a tattoo because they are traces that will last a lifetime on your skin. But if, in addition, when the time comes, your dead tissue falls into the hands of someone who gives it an embalming treatment, as a doctor did at the beginning of the XNUMXth century Japanese who collected skin from corpses, you tatto it could last not only a lifetime, but also a lifetime.
Fukushi Masaichi, an admirer of tattooed skins for being an increasingly widespread and developed aesthetic, coined a somewhat macabre, although due to his profile as a doctor he escaped the morbid. That medical examiner, born in 1878, would go on to become a highly respected physician, but better known for something else: he collected tattooed tissues from deceased people.
doctor by profession, Masaichi became obsessed with tattooed skin through his work and the people he met. He was especially fascinated by the traits of the Japanese mafia: the Yakuza.
I used to ask people if, when they died, they could preserve their art by peeling off their skin. Two different methods were used to preserve the doctor's skins: one wet and one dry. The skin was gently peeled off body and the nerves and tissues were scraped. Then it was stretched to dry, or with the wet method, it was preserved by immersion in glycerin or formalin.
It's not as morbid as one might think. In fact, Masaichi curated a highly respected art collection with this effort for many years, and it was always regulated.
Masaichi would sometimes pay his future human canvases or offer to pay to tattoo their skin in exchange for their tissue, once they passed away, and also established a club where people would go and admire each other's art.
The result was, at its peak, a collection of 2000 tattoos preserved in all their splendor before losing most to air raids in World War II.
Now, only 105 remain and they can be seen on display at the University of Tokyo Museum of Medical Pathology, although it is not open to the public.