Compositions of swirling color completely take over the skin of the Yazuka, a feared underground society of Japanese gangsters. Sometimes violent and sometimes astonishingly graceful, these elaborate designs require years of slow toil and a good deal of pain to be completed. Fellman reveals the intricacies of the Yazuka subculture in words and large-format Polaroid photographs of bodies turned paintings. Novelist D. M. Thomas contributes the introduction.