Yukichi Watabe is the first Japanese photographer to have obtained permission to accompany the police and document an ongoing criminal investigation, revealing a universe stamped with the aesthetics of a film noir. The subject of his reportage is not the murderer or the victim, but the investigation itself, with the detective playing the leading role, followed in his daily peregrinations by the photographer. More than a simple photo-reportage of the investigation, these documentary images powerfully capture postwar daily life in Tokyo in the late 1950’s.