CHAPTER SIX

Occupational hazards

Sometimes you love your job even when you know it might kill you. If you spend too much time reporting on the yakuza or uncovering their front companies, it’s easy to forget that violence is an integral part of their culture. Familiarity breeds carelessness. It took a kick in the head for me to remember that no matter how polite, or smart, or friendly some of my underworld contacts were, if they were yakuza, they were always going to be like human IEDs (improvised explosive devices). There is no way to predict what will cause them to explode. I stepped on a landmine in 2010, and I still carry the scar tissue.

I was kicked in the head, by a former yakuza executive, in late January 2010. I think that was when things started to go wrong on the temporal level.

It was bound to happen. If you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas. Reporting on the underworld means you will have to deal with brute force, and you may switch from being the observer and the chronicler of events to becoming a victim yourself.

I had an interview with a former member of a Kyushu gang, now retired and working as a nurse—as an act of atonement perhaps. He explained the rationale of his job to me nonchalantly one afternoon. This is what he told me over the course of our very long conversation.

“In general, we don’t kill the people in our neighborhood, because that would alienate people and we wouldn’t be able to earn any money that way. We are in the business of endurance and enduring pain, as well as inflicting pain, but everything we do is very calculated. Yakuza people come to the yakuza to do things they want to do but cannot. They either don’t know how to do it or they are afraid to do it because they are afraid of the repercussions if they do it. Smart yakuza are into financial fraud, but things are different for most of us. Violence is what we sell, it is what we offer; no violence, you just have a bunch of misfits who can’t do anything.

“Committing an act of violence requires complex calculations. We are selling violent services, but we also have to consider the costs of providing those services. Let’s say someone comes to me and requests that someone be kidnapped, beaten up, and taught a lesson. Maybe they want someone’s arm chopped off. They will pay me a certain amount of money for that. Then, if I get caught, which is likely to happen, what crime would I be charged with? Well, we’re talking then about crimes of confinement, imprisonment, and bodily harm. You could easily get six years in prison for that. That’s not six years of sitting on your ass; that’s six years of hard labor. But they’re offering 50 million yen. Man, that’s a lot of cash. You’re basically getting paid 9 million yen ($90,000) a year, for six years, for one crime, when you do the math.

“Consider what the value of an entire year of your life is to you. What about six years in prison? Is the crime worth the time?

“The cost evaluation is also affected by who’s asking you to do it. Is it your older brother in the organization? Or is it your oyabun (boss)? If your oyabun asks you to do it, it’s not about the value of your services anymore, it’s about your duty. In the old days, if you did it for the organization, they took care of you. You got a bonus and promotion when you got out.

“If you’re being asked to do something violent by someone outside of the organization, then it really becomes a question of which is the best way for both of you to win. Remember, you’re not trying to get caught when you agree to perform a particularly violent act or service. When someone hired me to kidnap a man who defrauded them and beat some remorse into him, I didn’t plan on getting caught and I didn’t get caught. But before you take that deal, think of the worst-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is you get caught and go to jail. Is it worth it then? There’s also the worst-case scenario where you accidentally kill someone while trying to beat some sense into them. If you end up getting hung, no amount of money is going to help you. But we’re professionals, and we know how much beating is enough to permanently hurt or kill someone, and we stop way before that. Still, anything can go wrong.”

I had forgotten that part. Things go wrong. You’re dealing with violent people.

Even if there wasn’t deliberate violence, anything could go wrong. I had grown overconfident and reckless. I should have been more careful, but then again, perhaps it was an unavoidable occupational hazard.

Here’s how it happened.

I had plans to visit Fumio Akiyama (not his real name), a former yakuza underboss. I wanted to interview him. He was a smart man. At one point in time, he was one of the editors of a yakuza news service, for subscribers only, that the Yamaguchi-gumi gave its tacit approval to. The customer base was strictly limited and I had to ask him to secretly forward the newsletter to me. He began to really enjoy writing up stories and analyses of the latest arrests, power struggles, and troubles in the underworld.

Akiyama had been a low-ranking member of a Yamaguchi-gumi second-tier group when I met him in 1999. In the Japanese underworld, he had risen up the ranks before being culled in an event referred to as the “Goto Shock” in late October 2008.

The financial world had what is called in Japan the “Lehman Shock” in 2008, but the Japanese underworld experienced the Goto Shock the same year; it was a large-scale purge of some of the top bosses in the Yamaguchi-gumi.

In mid-October 2008, while the Yamaguchi-gumi executives were debating whether or not to banish Tadamasa Goto from the organization, a group of yakuza bosses sent a letter of protest to HQ. The letter opposed Goto’s expulsion and lodged a litany of other complaints. The second-in-command of the 40,000-member organization, Kiyoshi Takayama, responded with a massive purge on October 20. The organization permanently expelled two top-tier bosses, removed five from their rosters, and suspended three others from work. The purge was bloodless, but tensions were high.

Those too close to Goto or who violently opposed his expulsion from the organization were sidelined or removed. It was rumored that Goto had planned to overthrow the organization in a coup, which was part of the reason he was expelled. One more nail in his coffin was his betrayal of the organization to get a new liver in the U.S.

As with many former yakuza, Akiyama had left or been forced out of the group during the Goto Shock, but kept in touch with the organization. He ran a small real estate business out of an office in Shinjuku close to the south exit. He had always had meth issues, and maybe that was part of the reason he was expelled.

When I went to his office, I asked permission to quote him in a book I was working on, The Last Yakuza, and permission to share some delicate information he had given me with a third party.

Though it was a formality, I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask. Well, I was very wrong about that. Sometimes asking the wrong questions can get you seriously hurt.

He opened the door to his office as soon as I knocked and let me in. There was a reception area and his personal office was behind it. There was a wooden cabinet on the left, a couch near the wall, and a small white sofa to sit on. There was a low wooden table with a crystal ashtray and a crystal jar full of cigarettes and a fat crystal lighter between us. Under the table there were stacks of magazines—weekly magazines, yakuza fanzines, some porno, some business magazines. The ashtray overflowed with cigarettes. The small trash can in the corner of the room was full of empty Coca-Cola cans.

Akiyama looked more like a teacher than a yakuza. He wore a navy blue suit, with a red-and-white necktie, and had a slightly receding hairline. His tiny eyes seemed even smaller because he wore thick frameless glasses. His brown loafers were polished and shiny, but they had a couple of holes. I assumed these were from cigarette ash.

He offered me a Coca-Cola from the mini-fridge at the back of the room, which I gladly accepted and took a sip. He gulped his down like a man in a desert finding a glass of water, then opened another.

He asked, “What can I do for you today, Jake? Or rather, do you have some info on a good piece of property for me?”

Akiyama specialized in problem real estate. When a person dies in Japan, or is murdered at a location, the real estate agent must inform the customer. This reduces the value of the real estate or makes it nearly impossible to rent or sell. Akiyama had a knack for buying up troublesome properties and working around the law to unload them for a greater price than he paid. If there was a murder or suicide on my beat, I would send him the address of the crime scene so he could do his thing. I got information back in return.

“Well,” I replied, “I am writing a book about the yakuza’s postwar history, to be called The Last Yakuza, and I’d like to interview you for it and use your real name if it is possible to do so.”

He nodded while listening, drinking his Coke. He kept scratching his arms as I explained what I was working on.

I then said something that may have been the trigger: “There was something you once told me about Tadamasa Goto and I promised not to tell anyone else. While I have respected that promise, I would like your permission to share it with someone who should know about it. I know she will not share it with anyone else. I have my reasons for telling her.”

A long silence followed, and then without a word, he reached out and grabbed my shirt, slamming me into the low table. When I tried to roll off the table, he kicked me once or twice in the head with the heel of his shoes—and he didn’t miss. I felt a blast of pain. Then, all I could see was black. He landed another kick on my back, yelling, “I’ll kill you.”

I rolled off the table and grabbed the crystal lighter as I went. I saw him over me and threw the lighter at his head. I hit him square in the face, which was a miracle; I’m horrible at pitching.

The crystal lighter was heavy and had a jagged-edge design. I figured it was like getting a brick thrown into your face.

He fell off the table and onto the couch clutching his face. He was screaming something at me now, but I wasn’t really paying attention.

I was up and he was down. I grabbed his leg with one hand and with my other hand I smashed his knee with the crystal ashtray. Cigarette butts spilled all over the floor. And I did it again and again, in a cloud of ash, until I heard something pop.

He tried to stand up, but fell over. He only had one working knee now. He grabbed my arm and dug his nails into it, but I hit him in the face with the ashtray, and he let go.

I’m not a good fighter, but I know that someone with only one knee isn’t going to be able to catch up with you if you run away. Over and over, he said, “Traitor, traitor, traitor.” I suppose I could have asked for clarification, but I wasn’t in the mood to talk. I instinctively grabbed his cellphone when it fell out of his jacket during the fight. For leverage. For information. Or maybe it’s just because I’m a bit of a data hoarder. I didn’t feel like sticking around. I couldn’t focus my eyes properly, and things sounded strange. Like I was hearing them from the room next door.

There isn’t a great Japanese equivalent for “What the fuck?” except maybe “nani nan dayo”—meaning “What is this?”—and that’s all I could think of saying. Akiyama was blabbering something now and making strange noises. I had a headache.

“Akiyama, shut up,” I told him.

Rather than screaming in pain, he had his eyes closed and was muttering obsessively under his breath. I was tempted to kick his knee to get his attention. As he stared at the ceiling, his leg hung funny, the good one hooked on the top of the couch.

“Here’s the deal,” I told him, “I’m going to call an ambulance for you. You’re going to say you were attacked and robbed—you don’t know who it was, but he looked Korean.”

The police always ask this when a foreigner is assaulted—and maybe they ask the same questions to Japanese citizens as well.

They’ll ask you, Did he look Korean?

Why? Because many cops are racists. If Akiyama said what I told him to say, he’d be giving them what they wanted and they might not ask probing questions.

I continued, “I’m going to get the fuck out of here. If you name me, if you rat me out, not only will I say it was self-defense, but I’ll also tell them you tried to kill me and they should give you a piss test because you’re high on meth.”

I said this in my very serious low-octave-I-am-speaking-Japanese voice. There are linguistic cultural stereotypes here that I have learned. Cute women are supposed to speak with lilting, high voices and serious men are supposed to speak in deep, low voices. I was also trying very hard not to black out. I restated my proposition.

“I’m going to call you an ambulance. If you don’t want me to tell the dogs [cops] that you’re high on meth—which I suspect is the case—then you tell them the cover story I just fed you, you stupid asshole.”

He must have been paying attention. The threat of telling the cops about his meth problem made him spew out a stream of curses in Japanese that would delight any linguist studying the language, which some say has no swear words. They are wrong.

I left the office and went close to the station to find a payphone. I called the fire department, dialing 119, and told them I’d heard a quarrel in Akiyama’s office and screams. I also knew the fire department would contact the police. When they asked for my name, I hung up.

My head hurt so badly that I decided to grab a taxi home. I should have gone to see a doctor immediately, but I wasn’t thinking straight.

You might ask, why didn’t I call the police?

Because Akiyama was and still is a source. You can’t turn your sources over to the police. I was pretty sure that he was as high as a kite.

I didn’t think it was really anything personal. After doing some research, I was pretty much convinced that he was in the middle of a meth-induced psychosis. I just happened to be there at the wrong time. It was like being hit by lightning. You can’t really blame the lightning.

From a mutual friend, I found out which hospital Akiyama was taken to and how he was doing. They had to perform surgery on his knee and leg, and on his nose. He was going to be in the hospital for a while. Fortunately, the cops didn’t bother to check his urine or blood for drugs. He was treated like a robbery victim.

I went to visit him in the hospital. He was sheepish and apologetic.

“What happened?” I asked him.

“I’m sorry. Things were crazy. You know. I thought you were out to get me. That you were setting me up.”

“Yeah, okay, but why? Is it what I asked?”

“I don’t remember,” he said. “I don’t remember much of last week. Because too much of that,” he said, making the gesture of injecting himself with methamphetamines.

“I’m sorry about your knee,” I said.

“It’s alright. Thanks for not turning me in to the cops. I appreciate that. How are you?”

“My head hurts a lot. You kicked it twice.”

“Is that so? I’m sorry. Have you seen a doctor?”

“No.”

“You should see one. Head injuries are bad news.”

The advice was offered in a strangely detached tone, as if I was telling him about being attacked by someone else. We shook hands. We’ve never discussed “the incident” after that.

He still walks with a limp; I carry around my wounds where they can’t be seen.

The beating did some damage to my temporal lobe. My sense of chronology has never been the same. Events from the past seem very recent. I have flashbacks to events long since finished with all the emotional memory and feelings that I had at that time. It makes it a little hard to move on with life. 

Because you don’t really forget. The past rarely stays the past. I can only explain it by rephrasing the words of the Teacher in the Book of Ecclesiastes:

What has been is still happening now

What has been will be again and be as it is,

just as it was

There is nothing new

Under the Empire of The Sun.

Over and over, I get this feeling that there is nothing happening that hasn’t happened before in this world and in my own life.

That doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing again. And, sometimes, being in touch with your past is useful in the future.