On 14 January 1958 the disfigured, amputated body of a man was discovered near Lake Sembako in Japan. Two investigators from Tokyo came to help the local police, and for the first time a photographer was authorised to accompany them. Watabe followed the inspector as he questioned witnesses and pounded the streets of Tokyo’s most insalubrious neighbourhoods, and his images reveal 1950s Tokyo in a way rarely shown.