Best Tattoo Parlor

Once the adornment of gangsters, sailors and other members of the demimonde, tattoos today decorate the lower backs, arms and ankles of everyone from millionaire soccer players to bankers to young mums. Japan's undisputed tattoo sensei, Horiyoshi, is unimpressed with these amateurish scratchings that now abound. Born Yoshihito Nakano in 1946, he is the second tattooist to be bestowed the honorific title—the tattooist affixation "Hori" means engrave—in a line started by his master, the legendary tattoo artist Yoshitsugu Muramatsu, or Horiyoshi of Yokohama (Muramatsu went on to dub his son Horiyoshi II, and later Nakano was named Horiyoshi III). He also...