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For
Shoko Tendo, nothing brings back the bad memories like
bloody fingers in the night.
“As a
child, there would sometimes be knocks at the door at
all hours from men holding pinkies that they’d just cut
off,” the 39-year-old author tells me in Tokyo. “It was
my earliest realization that my family was different.”
Tendo
isn’t tapping her imagination, but her life story. Her
father was a crime boss linked to the Yamaguchi-gumi,
Japan’s largest yakuza group. The late-night visitors
were underlings looking to atone for some failure, part
of a yakuza ritual.
Much has
been written about Japan’s gangsters—their full-body
tattoos, boozing, womanizing, strict honor codes and
occasional explosions of violence. Very little has been
heard from their lovers, daughters or wives. Tendo has
been all three, and her book Yakuza Moon offers a
fascinating look into one of the darkest and least
understood corners of Japanese culture.
Hearing
Tendo’s life story firsthand is just as difficult as
reading her powerful book, which has just been published
in English. Matter-of-factly, she talks about her teen
years of hard drugs and promiscuity. Her face was
scarred by repeated beatings and her psyche was marred
by rape and addiction. Her eyes have the aura of someone
who genuinely has been to hell and back.
Tendo’s
experience also is intriguing because it dovetails with
Japan’s economic boom in the 1980s (during which the
yakuza thrived as rarely before) and its bust in the
1990s (which forced the yakuza to fend for its way of
life as never before).
Tough
life
Life
became difficult after 1992, when Japan passed an
antigang law. The good times of the bubble years were
replaced by the deflationary “lost decade.” While the
police made it harder to profit from mainstay interests
like prostitution, gambling, extortion and drug
smuggling, recession reduced the number of construction
projects, another traditional yakuza income stream.
“I saw
it in my own family—how quickly the good times can be
replaced by hardship and pain,” Tendo explains. “When my
father fell on hard times, health-wise, and into debt,
things turned very fast for my family.”
As her
father’s health waned, Tendo found herself forced into
sexual relationships with men to whom her father was
indebted (of which her father was unaware). “It’s not a
part of my life I like revisiting,” she says.
Tendo’s
efforts to lead a normal life these days are belied by
the slightest movement of arms, which expose a hint of
the full-body tattoo beneath.
Tattoo
On the
surface, Tendo looks like any other stylish 30-something
Japanese woman. Only when she removes her sweatshirt
does her persona take on a deeper, more mysterious
dimension. Her body becomes a colorful and defiant
canvas featuring a medieval courtesan, elaborate
dragons, phoenixes and flowers.
“I know
some people may judge me for my tattoos, and in a way
they may limit my chances in life, but they are who I
am, where I come from, and I find comfort in them,”
Tendo says.
Tattoos
remain reasonably rare in Japan and largely taboo. My
health club in Tokyo, for example, doesn’t accept
members with the smallest of tattoos.
Tendo
has broken with the past—well, as best as one can. Long
divorced from a husband with gangster ties, Tendo is now
the unmarried mother of a two-year-old girl. Yet, she
still harbors strong views about the life she left
behind. One of her firm beliefs is that Japan’s efforts
to clamp down on the yakuza are backfiring.
Diversified mob
“On the
surface, it looks like the yakuza are being pushed back,
but really, they are diversifying and becoming harder to
track,” Tendo explains. “They have gotten into areas
like IT [information technology] and others. I don’t
think there are any sectors now that the yakuza isn’t
involved in.”
A
government “white paper” in July found that
organized-crime syndicates had broadened their fund
raising methods to stock trading, real estate and other
economic areas. In some cases, gangsters were said to be
working with corporate extortionists and traders to
manipulate equity prices and even to take over
companies.
For many
Japanese, such news is hardly surprising. Organized
crime arguably has long been a bigger force in Japan’s
economy than in, say, the United States. For example,
economists have long buzzed about the yakuza’s alleged
role in prolonging Japan’s bad-loan crisis of the 1990s.
Gangland
There
were 86,300 yakuza members as of December 31, 2006,
according to the National Police Agency. The ranks of
the Kobe-based Yamaguchi-gumi, with which Tendo’s father
was associated, were estimated at 21,700, an increase of
about 900 for the year.
Gangland
data are getting more attention following a handful of
mob-related shootings this year, including the death of
Nagasaki City Mayor Itcho Ito. These stories and others
aren’t light reading in a nation where gun violence is
rare. But then, neither is Tendo’s heartfelt memoir.
“Even as
I have left this life behind, it will always be who I
am,” she says, as her eyes fall onto her tattoo-covered
arms. “Just as it will probably always be with Japan.” |
