Abstract
In September 2017, Taiki Masuda was fined ¥150,000 by the Ōsaka District Court for the crime of conducting “medical practices” without a medical licence. Masuda is not some shady backstreet physician – the kind of
person one might expect to fall afoul of a criminal offence such as this –
but a professional tattoo artist, and the “medical practice” of which the
indictment complained was the inking of consenting and paying adults in
his apparently spotless studio. His conviction rests on a perverse construction of a law clearly intended not to regulate the tattoo industry but to prohibit quack doctoring, and the case exposes many unsavoury characteristics
of Japanese law and its institutions.
person one might expect to fall afoul of a criminal offence such as this –
but a professional tattoo artist, and the “medical practice” of which the
indictment complained was the inking of consenting and paying adults in
his apparently spotless studio. His conviction rests on a perverse construction of a law clearly intended not to regulate the tattoo industry but to prohibit quack doctoring, and the case exposes many unsavoury characteristics
of Japanese law and its institutions.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Journal of Japanese Law/Zeitschrift fur Japanisches Recht |
| Publication status | Published - 4 Oct 2017 |