CHAPTER ELEVEN

Hanekaeri

The publication of Tokyo Vice in October 2009 changed my life; I felt like it validated the work I had done and closed a chapter on the previous sixteen years of my existence. It also made me a little arrogant. With victory comes hubris. And with hubris come mistakes.

I thought when the book started showing up in bookstores that it meant the end of Tadamasa Goto. He wasn’t a threat to anyone anymore, right? I was still under police protection—but it was police protection without much intensity, the light-beer equivalent of being under guard. A few times a day, a cop patrolled my place to see if I was okay. They often left a note with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department mascot on it—Pipo-kun. The mascot has sometimes been the subject of ridicule by U.S. federal law enforcement. You can sort of understand why if you saw him. He is yellow with strange ears, no pants, no gun, and no dick.

The publication of Tokyo Vice wonderfully coincided with the one-year anniversary of Goto being kicked out of the Yamaguchi-gumi. An auspicious day. That had to mean something. But I wasn’t going to have the last word.

The first inkling I had of the trouble ahead came from my editor at the Shukan Shincho in May 2010, when he called me.

“Jake-kun, have you read Goto’s book?” he asked.

“I didn’t know he had a book,” I replied.

“It’s coming out soon. I thought you knew or should know if you didn’t already know.”

Takarajima Publishing, which had published my explanation of Goto’s backdoor deal with the FBI, had also just published Goto’s biography without bothering to warn me.

The memoir was notable for its use of subtle language that amounted to a yakuza-style fatwa on my life. Before the book was even out, I received another heads-up from a cop.

“Jake, Goto’s written his own book. It’s like a loaded gun. You’ll see. Watch your back.”

I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but it didn’t sound good.

When the book was eventually published, I got a call from a mid-level enforcer in the Yamaguchi-gumi whom I considered a friend, of sorts. In my own head, I called him “Precision Man” because he did everything with such finesse. He wanted to talk to me about that book.

We had lunch a month after Goto’s book was published at a Thai restaurant on the edge of the high-rent Nishi-Azabu district—his choice, not mine.

He was dressed like a character from a Michael Mann movie: dark gray suit, white dress-shirt with the top buttons deliberately undone, no necktie, and stubble that seemed like it had been carefully trimmed to look natural, like a bonsai tree. He had some gray hair around his temples that almost matched the dark gray of his suit. Everything about him was precise.

Precision Man had once worked for Tadamasa Goto before a successful transition to another of the Yamaguchi-gumi factions after the Goto-gumi was dissolved. He had a hardback copy of the book with him, in pristine condition with a plain blue cover, and asked me point blank: “Have you read Goto’s book?”

“I haven’t gotten around to it,” I told him.

“You should read his book. He’s read yours. Or had someone translate it for him. You’re in his book.”

He put it in the center of the table near the Thai fish sauce.

I nodded. “Is there anything in there that I should immediately know?”

Precision Man put down his knife and fork (“In Thailand, they don’t really use chopsticks,” he’d told me with some conviction), and lined them up neatly against each other parallel to the plate. He made a motion like slitting a throat, and looked me in the eyes. I didn’t avert my eyes either, but I did feel like I was going to lose this stare-down.

“It’s an offer to reward anyone who takes you out. Any yakuza who reads it, and there are some who will read it, will understand.” He gestured for me to pick up the book, and told me to turn to a passage on pages 254–55 that was highlighted in bright yellow so evenly that it appeared to me at first to have been printed that way.

It was a quote from Goto that translates roughly like this: “Even though I’m no longer a yakuza boss, if I met this unpleasant reporter, it would be a big deal. He’d go from being a reporter targeted for death to one that was actually dead. (Laughter.)”

The unpleasant reporter was a reference to myself. I didn’t quite get how this passage amounted to a fatwa, but Mr Precision did.

“You know a lot about the yakuza,” he acknowledged, “but you don’t know as much as you think you do. You know the word hanekaeri?”

I told him I did. I had learned the word from yakuza writer Atsushi Mizoguchi. He is the godfather of real investigative yakuza journalists. He was a tough weekly-magazine reporter who rarely pulled punches and treated everyone with equal amounts of deference and respect.

Yakuza fan magazines were sold here in the open: three weeklies, three monthlies. They were read by the yakuza, the cops, journalists like myself, and every man in Japan who fantasized about being a gangster. They ran interviews with the current yakuza bosses, but the questions were limited, and there was an implicit understanding that even after the interview was done, the boss reserved the right to edit or scrap it. As one veteran yakuza writer explained to me, “If you violate that rule, there will be harassment and often retaliation.”

In 1989, after the gang war between the Yamaguchi-gumi and their splinter group, the Ichiwa-kai, finally came to a peaceful end following four years of bloodshed, Mizoguchi began writing a column for Tokyo Sports on the new Yamaguchi-gumi. The post–gang war organization was led by its fifth-generation leader, Yoshinori Watanabe, who looked like a gorilla with a buzz-cut.

Mizoguchi had made a name for himself by taking on stories that no one else would touch. He had written an in-depth investigative exposé about the Soka Gakkai, a powerful Buddhist religious cult that had long used Tadamasa Goto and the Goto-gumi as enforcers to silence their critics and the press. His hyper-realistic and detailed accounts of the gang wars made his works popular, and he was a heavily in-demand writer.

The escalating battle between the Yamaguchi-gumi and the Ichiwa-kai had become a real-life yakuza drama for the public. News about the latest volleys in their never-ending war were food for the morning talk shows, the afternoon variety programs, and the evening news. Some newspapers kept count of the casualties and deaths on each side, essentially a running score of the mayhem. The gangsters themselves would sometimes hold press conferences. Mizoguchi captured all the madness beautifully. However, his column ruffled many feathers.

He portrayed Watanabe as an unfit leader, and hinted that the Yamaguchi-gumi’s gorilla was really a puppet for his second-in-command, Masaru Takumi, a brilliant business yakuza and the Professor Moriarty of the Japanese underworld.

In May 1990, when Mizoguchi had just finished his long-running series about the fifth-generation leader, he got a phone call from the group’s patriarch, Goto. Goto wanted to meet him immediately at the Hilton Hotel lounge in Shinjuku, located close to the Shinjuku Police Station. I was stationed at that station as the fourth-district reporter from 1999 to 2001.

Before leaving the house, Mizoguchi told his wife, “I’m going to have a talk with Goto, and I’ll call you when I’m done. If you don’t get a call from me by evening, notify the police.”

Of course, when he got to the lounge, Goto was not waiting for him, but two of his thugs were. They told the reporter they would take him to where Goto was waiting. The offer was non-negotiable. They put him in a car and drove him to a nearby office building. Their destination on the thirteenth floor was one of Goto’s many front companies. Mizoguchi wasn’t happy to be there.

The yakuza boss told him, slyly, casually, “My friends in the Yamaguchi-gumi have a problem with the series you’re writing. It’s not like you are someone I don’t know, but there are loose cannons in the organization.”

The word Goto used to describe these so-called loose cannons was hanekaeri, which translates as “blowback,” but refers to rogue revenge-seekers. It’s a handy word in the lexicon of a yakuza boss. It can be used to escape blame for the bad conduct of your underlings. The boss can simply say that his naughty soldiers were acting on their own, doing what they thought would benefit the boss without having received any direct orders from him.

He might shrug his shoulders. “They were hanekaeri,” he might say, with a slight tone of apology in his voice, as if to say, “Kids these days—ya just can’t get them to behave.”

And, of course, you can’t hold the boss responsible for what his hot-heated kids decide to do on their own, right?

There was some truth to the idea that a young hot-headed yakuza might take things into his own hands to earn fame and glory during a gang war, or when his boss had been slighted. But in this case, the truth was that Goto was really saying, “If you don’t listen to me, you will be hurt, and I won’t be taking the fall.”

Goto continued his speech to Mizoguchi, making a very veiled threat while expressing concern at the same time. “I don’t want you to be harmed, and I would like to continue my yakuza life a little longer. From now on, when you’re going to write about the Yamaguchi-gumi, why don’t you show me your articles beforehand?”

Mizoguchi informed him that the series had ended and that he was now writing a book. Goto wasn’t pleased, and asked to see the book. Mizoguchi deflected his request by saying it was dependent on whether he had enough time to show it to Goto … or not. Goto countered by asking him, “Isn’t there some way you could stop the publication?” Mizoguchi lied, and said it had already been printed.

Two days later, while Mizoguchi was riding the bullet train, he got a call from the yakuza boss demanding that Mizoguchi either show him the book or cancel it. Goto offered to pay him all the royalties he would have earned on the first printing. Mizoguchi furiously refused. He pointed out that if he took Goto’s offer, he would be the laughing stock of the journalism world, and would be finished as a writer.

“Let’s say this conversation never happened,” he said, and hung up with Goto still on the line.

Several weeks later, Mizoguchi was stabbed in the back by a member of the Yamaguchi-gumi Yamaken-gumi while leaving his office. The assailant had meant to kill him, but missed his vital organs.

In 2006, his son was stabbed by Yamaguchi-gumi members when they couldn’t find Mizoguchi. The two men were arrested, but their boss was not. Mizoguchi took the organization and the boss to court, and sued them for damages. He won.

When he talks about the attack on his son, the venom in his voice gets thick. You can feel the outrage, the indignation. The Japanese yakuza aren’t supposed to bother the innocent in the straight world. That’s something the Italian Mafia or the Russians do. That’s against the Code.

I’ve met him a few times, and interviewed him twice. He’s a humble man. His home resembles a mini-fortress, with security cameras and double locks. He’s not taking any chances. He once offered me some advice over drinks at a little bar near the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan. I think he had coffee and I had booze, or it was the other way around.

He said, “I envy you. You can leave this island. You can go back to America. But I’m stuck here. That means I have to live with the repercussions of what I write. Maybe someday, the yakuza or at least the Yamaguchi-gumi will fade away, and I won’t have to watch my back. But until then I can’t back down. It’s a duty to stand up to them, to let them know they can’t win. But I also can’t stop writing.”

“Why would you want to stop writing? If you stop writing, you’ll be bored to death,” I joked.

“No,” he shook his head, almost sadly. “If I disappear from public memory, if I’m forgotten, or fade into obscurity, then the people who hold a grudge against me will make sure that I really do vanish. Forever.”

He raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders, and said, “You should keep that in mind as well. You’re already past the point where you’re dealing with the worst of them on just the printed page. You’re in their world. You’re almost stuck there with me.”

There’s that song, “Stuck in the Middle with You.” It started playing in my head as I thought about where I was now in my life. Me and Mizoguchi.

Hanekaeri can be both an action and a person. It’s the yakuza equivalent of the civilian word sontaku. Sontaku is a concept in Japanese, almost like social telepathy, that could be translated as “guessing how another person is feeling” or “following an implicit wish of another.”

For example, if you’re a yakuza underling, and your boss says in your presence, “I’m really troubled by that city council member, Muramoto. He’s blocking our company bid on that public works project. The world would be a better place without him.”

You would then sontaku that the boss wants you to either kill Muramoto or neutralize him, and you would do it. There would be no direct orders that could come back to haunt your boss.

If you were a smart yakuza, like Saigo, you’d extricate yourself from the situation by playing dumb and immediately asking, “So, boss, you want me to whack him?”

To which your boss would get angry, and mumble or yell, “I never said that. No, forget about it. You’re so fucking stupid.”

The kanji for sontaku is made of two parts. The first part means to make a deduction of some kind, and the second refers to the depth of that deduction. The word came into vogue in 2017, after many bureaucrats took it upon themselves to cover up the misdeeds of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on their own, allegedly, without being ordered to do so. Criminal conspiracies are very hard to prove when they’re done with telepathy—and a lot of destruction and alteration of public documents. Japanese publisher Jiyu Kokuminsha even selected it as the New Trending Word of The Year in 2017.

Back in 2010, Goto expressing displeasure with me in his book was a subtle way of saying, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”

It’s not a very nice thing for an alleged Buddhist priest—like Goto—to say. Precision Man understood this.

“Well, there’s your problem. Goto still has his fans. He has money, connections, and power, and in this book he lays out the proper way of dealing with ‘unpleasant’ people like you. And he says that, in the past, he has generously rewarded those who dealt with those described as such. It’s an invitation to all the ronin, ex–Goto-gumi members and literate yakuza, that he’d like to see you dealt with—and that there will be a reward. Except, the text ends the sentence with a laugh—so he can say he was joking.”

He leaned in. “I know this grudge-holding geezer way too well. He isn’t joking. You should take that as a threat, and take it seriously.”

He pushed the book over to my side of the table, “Take it. I don’t need 300 pages of his bragging and bullshit. You need to read it.”

We talked shop until the check came, and I took the book home. Avoiding my roommates, I went up to the second floor of my house, propped my feet up on my desk, and started reading. If you were to summarize the life of Tadamasa Goto, born on September 16, 1943, the best word would be “unpleasant.”

It’s a particular Japanese version of the adjective fuyukai, which literally means “unpleasant,” but also “vile” and “rude.” It may seem like a benign description of a man the Japanese police think is responsible for countless crimes and several murders. Goto had never been convicted for murder—at that point—but his underlings had stabbed a real estate agent to death in 2006, and the police were still working the case. He was suspected of having initiated eleven more murders, but there was no solid evidence. Eleven seems like a low number for a gang boss, but then again, how many people do you have to kill before you can be deemed a ruthless psychopath?

Unpleasant.

As I read his self-congratulatory biography, I could see how he had become the man he was. His mother died when he was two, and his father, who was a very honest man, was also an alcoholic who’d erupt into violence after one drink. Although his grandfather had been extremely wealthy, little Tadamasa grew up poor and the youngest of four brothers in a troubled household—a classic juvenile delinquent and a bully. There was one incident that firmly seems to have set him on the dark path:

When I was 16, I was thrown in jail for a few days with my buddies, for brawling and threatening people. The others in my group, of which I was the clear leader, all ate bento [lunch boxes] provided by their families, who came to meet them when we were released. I ate only the issued jail food and no one came to meet me upon release. I then realized I had no one to depend on and vowed to solve my own problems, run my own life … I also vowed never to suffer from lack of money again. I vowed to keep half of every 10,000 yen that came my way, so that the next time I was thrown in jail I could buy my own bento and change of undershirts. I had been feeling miserable when comparing my situation with my buddies’, but this humiliation turned into pride in myself and in my own independence. I have lived by that pride to this day, and have kept my vow to myself regarding money my whole life, even after joining the yakuza, and even now after I have left that world.

Despite his claims of retirement and reformation in the book, Goto was still an underworld crook, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. He was a successful businessman in his prime, with over 100 front companies in real estate, entertainment, and the financial world serving him. Even in “retirement” he was running a criminal empire in Cambodia. A police report from 2007 recorded that at the height of his power, Goto had four mistresses—one a semi-famous actress—and nearly 900 people working for him. At one point, he was the largest individual shareholder of Japan Airlines. He hit upon a winning formula early in his career, and kept it:

I stayed in my home turf, building up the Goto-gumi through fights with other gangs, taking control of street punks who were young and just pretending to act like a yakuza. We would beat them up and make them apologize, then have them join our gang.

Times changed, but his methods basically stayed the same. He befriended or blackmailed politicians, and did the dirty work for the Soka Gakkai, which conveniently had its own political party, the New Komeito. He helped chase out the locals to build Tokyo’s sprawling monument to luxury, Roppongi Hills. Goto moved up in life, but he never moved beyond being a thug.

His memoir, Habakarinagara (Pardon Me, But …) was published after he had essentially clad himself in a bulletproof vest by very publicly becoming a Shingon Buddhist priest in April 2009. It was a smart move; even in a generally secular Japan, killing a priest is looked upon poorly. And there were a lot of people who wanted Goto dead; he had enemies. Everyone loves a tale of a badass who becomes a good guy, that universal archetype of redemption, even when it’s not true. The weekly magazines, which were all alerted to his “conversion,” ate it up. The book’s structure consists of a series of grueling interviews by a seasoned journalist. Even then, the book only captures a portrait of Goto that he wants you to see, built from what he is willing to show you. What he unwittingly shows you is that he has no remorse for the pain he’s caused.

Most yakuza like to think of themselves as the good guys. What made Goto different was that he didn’t need that illusion. He knew he was the bad guy, and he didn’t care. As long as he was winning and someone else was losing, all was right in the world with him.

A lot of yakuza hated him, even before his book came out, which wasn’t surprising.

If you asked me, “What destroyed the yakuza?” my answer would be two words: Tadamasa Goto. He was almost solely responsible for the criminal empire’s destruction. Goto addressed the attack on the director Juzo Itami in his biography. “Of course I didn’t order it, but he deserved it because his film made fun of us and was unpleasant.”

Fuyukai.

Juzo Itami and myself: unpleasant.

The attack on the director showed the world that the yakuza weren’t noble outlaws; they were just tribal profiteers. The incident accelerated police crackdowns tenfold.

Goto was a lucky and powerful fellow. When his liver was about to fail him, he sold out all his fellow yakuza and jumped ahead of hundreds of Americans on the transplant list. Law-abiding, hardworking men and women died waiting for a liver, but the crime boss lived.

However, Goto’s fortune came on the back of all the other yakuza he’d thrown under the bus. In his lifetime, the former yakuza boss inspired the two most devastating catastrophes to hit the organization in decades: the organized crime exclusionary ordinances, and the exclusionary clauses in contracts.

I’ll admit that while reading Goto’s book, I got a queasy feeling. Of course, nowhere in the book did the fake priest address his deal with the FBI, nor express any remorse that other, more decent people died so he could live. At one point, I hurled the book across the room and into the closet where I kept my futon. He was an arrogant motherfucker and a braggart to boot, but his jabs at my own work without bothering to name me pissed me off. I didn’t need journalism tips from a lying sack of shit. Of course, after hurling the book into the closet, I had to get up and sort through the pile of unfolded towels, clothes, socks, and my aikido dōgi (uniform) to find the damn thing and continue reading.

I’m neither particularly brave nor faint-hearted, but I could sense the intention in Goto’s words. I figured that the best thing to do was to get help from his legal nemesis, Toshihiro Igari. Maybe I could have the threat removed or the distribution of the book stopped, and possibly have my own rebuttal inserted among the pages. I had a vague idea of what might be done, but Igari would know what could be done. I decided to write him an email and outline the problem.

I was drafting the letter on my Mac in early July 2010 when one of the police officers from the Kitazawa Police Station Organized Crime Division, who were responsible for keeping me alive, dropped by the house. It was Officer Osaki. He looked like a walrus with bad eyesight that had been turned into a human being, and he walked like one, too. Despite the walrus exterior, he had a solid reputation as a detective, and was well known for his ability to get people to give up more information than they should. Maybe that was because he seemed so harmless—people underestimated him. As soon as he came in and flopped down on the couch, he got down to business.

“Have you read Goto’s book?”

“I have,” I replied.

“Then you know. There’s a threat not so cleverly concealed in there. It appears to be a sort of threat. You want to press charges?”

I sighed.

“I’d like to, but read it closely. The part where he makes a threat notes that he’s laughing. So he could say it was a joke.”

I pulled out my copy of the book and showed him the page. He read the lines a few times, his finger tracing the words. He looked disappointed.

“These were interviews, right? If we have the tape, we can prove the intent was different. Maybe.”

I nodded.

“Well, what should I do?” I asked.

He cocked his head and thought.

“We’re talking about this in the department at headquarters. Don’t do anything for the moment. But watch your back. And lock the door when you leave.”

I nodded.

“And when you’re home,” he added.

I have to admit that at the time I was pretty bad about locking the door. There were many people who never bothered to lock their doors, but I shouldn’t have been among them.

“And also, sort the plastic bottles and the cans better. Plastic bottles are on Saturday. Cans are on Friday. Your neighbors complain.”

I agreed to do that, too. I was going to offer to spend more time brushing my teeth as well, but that might have seemed like sarcasm. Sarcasm in Japan just comes across as being rude. Parody works; irony is appreciated. Mockery does not go over well in a society where losing face makes people lose their cool.

There were good things about being under police protection in Japan. You did feel secure. You had someone who cared where you went and when you were coming home. Every day, sometimes at night, sometimes in the morning, there would be a little yellow note in the mailbox with a picture of Tokyo Police mascot Pipo-kun on it, letting me know if anything was out of the ordinary. Usually, everything was just fine.

Heion Buji was the phrase. Of course, I also knew that when you called the police and asked them if there was anything happening in the area that you should be reporting on, they’d always reply, “Heion Buji,” even if nine headless bodies had just been found in an apartment. But it was peaceful and quiet where I lived, as far as I knew.

Later that same month, the walrus started returning with his supervisor. They never seemed to call or make an appointment. They would just show up during the day, which was fine with me. One time, over coffee, they explained that they could take a criminal complaint from me, but the prosecutors were unlikely to back them up. Goto was no longer a yakuza. He had allegedly had a change of heart and had become a priest. And as I’d pointed out myself, the threat in the book was punctuated with a notation, “laughter,” meaning it could all be dismissed as a joke.

I thanked them for their efforts, and asked them to give me time to think it over. I’d never written to Igari, and now I felt it was the time to do it. I rewrote my email and explained the situation. I finally sent it on August 5. The reply from his office was immediate.

Dear Jake,

This is Suzuki from Igari’s office. He is currently overseas at the moment and will be back on the 8th and then taking a vacation on the 11th. He can meet you on the 8th, the day he returns. Please let us know if that works.

I saw him on August 8. It was a Sunday; he had come back from Brazil and gone directly from Narita Airport to his office to meet me. I had spoken to him earlier that summer to see if he would cooperate in a yakuza documentary I was working on for a television station owned by NewsCorp. He was tanned, looked healthy, and was in great spirits. He was still wearing a suit, even in the midst of Japan’s unbearable summer, and a crisp, white shirt that looked like it had just been taken off the rack.

It was a relief to see him with that bulldog face and black hair slicked back. In his deep, booming voice, he welcomed me into the office. He had a copy of the book with him. There were bookmarks and Post-its coming out of the sides, as though the book was exploding with colored paper.

“I need your help to deal with the fallout from the book,” I said.

He understood. I was worried that maybe I was overreacting. It was just a book, after all.

“It’s not just a book,” Igari said. “He impugns your honor, your work, and he threatens you. It’s a slap in the face. You were right to come to me. He’s done everything possible to avoid criminal prosecution in the wording, but I doubt that’s what he originally said. We will find out.”

After much discussion, he and his two colleagues came up with a plan. Igari knew people at Takarajima Publications. He’d take it up directly with them to remove the threat and correct the false information, and if they wouldn’t, he’d sue the publisher. He pointed out that because of the way the book was written, suing Goto would be more difficult than suing the publisher. He suggested I sue for one yen. I asked him why.

“It shows that you aren’t doing it for the money, and it also shows that you think the book is a bunch of worthless shit. One yen is the right amount.”

I laughed.

His parting words to me were: “It’ll be a long battle. It’ll take money and courage, and you’ll have to come up with those on your own. But we’ll fight.”

On August 27, I sent a follow-up email to his office to see how things were progressing. The next email came from one of his colleagues. He regretted informing me that Igari had died in the Philippines. What he could tell me was that, on August 27, his body had been found in his vacation home in Manila with his wrists seemingly slashed. The time of death was unknown.

Igari had been working on his final book, Gekitotsu (Collision), prior to his death. It’s an amazing work that pulls no punches, using the real names of the yakuza and the politicians and individuals connected to them.

Before leaving for Manila on vacation, he had told his editor, “I’m nosing around in dangerous places. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. Let me sign the publishing contract now.”

I went to Igari’s offices in September to pay my respects; there was no funeral. There was a little shrine for him in his office, but everything was pretty much as he’d left it. On his desk was a heavily notated article about the Sumo Association’s match-rigging. His secretary told me, “Igari-san was really happy to take your case. He laughingly bragged to everyone, ‘I’m representing a reporter from National Geographic—that makes me an international lawyer!’” I could visualize him saying that with his deep, rolling laugh.

Grief is a funny thing. Seeing his empty desk, I got a little misty-eyed for the first time. I just couldn’t believe that he would kill himself, especially after that roaring pep talk. That wasn’t the man I knew.

Igari’s partners picked up his case, and they helped me draft a letter to the publisher as a prelude to taking legal action. I wasn’t sure that they would have my back if things went forward, and I didn’t blame them. I was the last client he had ever had, and after taking my case he was found dead. Sometimes you really are on your own.

I asked around about what happened to him. I couldn’t find anyone who had a solid reason for him to kill himself. There were a few newspaper articles speculating that he had been murdered and that it had been covered up, but nothing substantial. I spoke to his editor. I spoke to his friends. I spoke to his law partners.

There was a rumor he had gotten into trouble with a young female lawyer and that she was going to sue him for sexual harassment. I could never verify the rumor. It would have been a very yakuza way to kill someone. They invent a scandal that might justify a suicide, and then they kill their target and make it look like suicide. In Igari’s case, there was no note left behind—not even one written on a word processor and printed out.

I was still in a bind. I was going to need help, because I was lost. I hated to ask yakuza for favors. I hated to owe anyone anything, because I generally feel an obligation to repay my debts, no matter how long it takes. Well, maybe I wasn’t going to ask for a favor, but I was going to ask for some advice; asking for advice and asking for a favor aren’t the same thing—although, to be honest, I know that in the yakuza world it often is the same thing.

It was never easy to reach the Elder, who was sort of my benefactor in the organization, but I did reach out to him anyway. On September 11, I went to the payphone that had been designated to me, and he called right on schedule.

The first thing he said to me was, “I heard your lawyer is dead. Igari was a pain in the ass, but he was a brave man. I’m sorry for your loss.”

He always seemed to be one step ahead of everyone else, or at least me.

“Yes, he has passed and that’s why I’m calling. I have a quick question for you: have you read Goto’s book?”

There was a short pause at the other end of the phone.

“Yes, we’ve all read it. He’s a cheeky bastard. What is that Italian thing called?”

I didn’t immediately follow the conversation, “You mean Mafia stuff?”

“Yeah, that code of silence thing. Omeletta, or something like that.”

“Omerta.”

“Yes, well, he has no idea of that. We are at a loss as to what to do. If it was only his business he was screwing up, that’s one thing. There are things in there that no one is supposed to know. But since it’s a bestseller, shutting him up might draw a lot of attention. And he’s a priest now. It’s his confession, right?”

“Yeah. I don’t read much remorse in there.”

“He takes a few pot shots at you. And you know that there is certainly an implied threat.”

“I know. I hired Igari-san to address the problem. He was going to demand a retraction from the publisher, and then we were going to take both of them to court.”

It was such a long silence on the phone that I thought we had been disconnected.

“When was this? When did you hire him?”

“August 8. I was the last client he had.”

If it was anyone else, they might have asked if I thought that Goto was responsible for my lawyer’s death. Of course, I had considered the possibility, and, of course, so did he. I didn’t even need to say it, because I knew that he understood.

“Let me look into this. In any event, the council would like to have a word with him, and so would I. I am coming up to Tokyo next week. Can you meet me at the Grand Hyatt on Sunday?”

Of course, I agreed. At the time, the Grand Hyatt was still one of the few places that seemed oblivious to having a yakuza boss stay there now and then. Either they didn’t know who their clientele was, or they didn’t care. The room wasn’t booked in his name, but his Tokyo lieutenant met me at the French Kitchen, on the second floor, in the smoking section, and took me up to the room. There was a pack of my cigarettes waiting for me, some yatsuhashi (a popular souvenir snack from Kyoto), and him. Maybe it was because it was a Sunday, but he wasn’t in a suit. He was lounging around the room in a dark bathrobe, and barefoot. The room was huge, in two parts, and it was dominated by a long table. I stood until he motioned me to sit down.

We chatted about the changing world. The crackdown on yakuza in the stock markets was still going full-force, and the Democratic Party of Japan had supposedly gained the support of the Yamaguchi-gumi, a subject on which he conversed with me wryly, pointing out that everyone knew that one of the Kansai DPJ members was in their pocket. I didn’t bring up the elephant in the room, because I knew that he would. He did not disappoint me.

“Your lawyer was looking into a lot of things that make people uncomfortable. He was looking at our involvement in sumo, our involvement in baseball, and his book will likely ruffle many feathers as well—if it’s ever printed. I will tell you that I know he did not die a natural death, and that’s really all I can tell you. Your concerns about Goto are noted, and as you know I have no fondness for the man. I’ve made it clear to him that it would not be in his best interest if anything happens to you. So you can breathe easy, for the time being.”

And that was that.

I did eventually get a copy from the Philippine police of the autopsy performed on Igari. He had been found dead in his hotel room in Makati City at 3.00 p.m. on August 27. Beside his body was a utility cutter, a cup of medicine that might have been sleeping pills, and a glass of wine. He was found face-up on the bed. There was a laceration wound on his left wrist. The autopsy found the cause of death to be a myocardial infarction. Suicide was not determined to be the reason for his demise. His brother, Tetsuro Igari, identified the body, and he was cremated. The ashes were flown back to Tokyo. Jaime Masilang, chief of the Homicide Section, made notes on the report.

The laceration wound on the left wrist seemed odd. It wasn’t enough to bleed to death, and who would try to kill themselves with a cutter knife? But if you’re going to stage a suicide without getting blood everywhere and possibly on yourself, maybe that’s a good way to make the attempt.

I once asked Igari-san over wine, “Have you ever been threatened? Do you ever fear for your life?”

He didn’t answer my question directly.

“I became a prosecutor because I wanted to see justice done in this world. When I quit and became a lawyer, I didn’t go to work for the yakuza, like many ex-prosecutors do. I continued to fight them. Not all yakuza are bad guys, but 95 percent of them are leeches on society: they exploit the weak, they prey on the innocent, they cause great suffering.

“If you capitulate, if you run away, you’ll be chased for the rest of your life. And if you’re being chased, eventually whoever is chasing you will catch up. Step back, and you’re dead already. You can only stand your ground and pursue. Because that’s not only the right thing to do, that’s the only thing to do.”

And so I stayed. Igari-san wasn’t an investigative journalist, and he wasn’t a saint. But he fought for justice and for truth, and as an investigative journalist, I’ve always believed that’s what our job entailed. Forgive me if that sounds naive. I believe that if no one stands up to the anti-social forces in the world, we all lose.

I expected that, when I called Igari’s editor to find out more about why Igari felt his life was in danger, he would be reluctant to speak with me. That wasn’t the case. He knew who I was. “Igari said you were one of the most trustworthy, crazy, and courageous journalists he knew.”

It was the first praise I’d ever received from the dead, and it was more than I deserved. But it made me feel obliged to live up to those words. Sometimes, the best way to honor the dead is to fight for what they died for. That’s the only way I know how to mourn. I wrote an obituary about him for the Committee to Protect Journalists. His life was spent as a prosecutor, but he died as a damn-fine investigative journalist. In the afterword to his book, Igari wrote the following. I have translated it as best I can, referring to what I remember from the earlier draft he had been kind enough to show me:

I have tried to write this book using real names (not pseudonyms) as much as possible. I know that this is a great risk for me.

I know that there are risks involved. But I wanted to write as frankly as possible about my struggle against the absurdities and injustices of society. To do this, it is only natural that we should write about our opponents by their real names.

Have we become too insensitive to the absurdities of our society? Have we become too inward-looking, too concerned only with what others think of us? Are we being swayed by the powerful? Do we pretend to be indifferent to the injustices around us for fear of upsetting the powers that be?

I don’t give a damn whether anyyone likes me. I never flattered anyone. I’ve always lived that way.

Because I lived a stupidly honest life, there were many unforeseen circumstances, disadvantages, and great losses. But there is no point in regretting it now.

In my own way, I wanted to appeal to people that there is meaning in life only when we confirm our existence and live with conviction. If even a few readers can relate to this or learn from my experiences, it would be an unexpected delight.

Before I began writing what you are reading now, I read those words many times. Even after he died, Igari had a lot to teach me. These days, his book is out of print. I still have a copy. Perhaps there comes a time when fate is inescapable, but I am certain that we have a great deal of choice in our lives. I knew that Igari would never choose to die as he did. His mysterious death in Manila is not the ending he would have envisioned for himself. Maybe he knew it was coming. Regardless of how he lived, he wrote the final chapter of his life in his posthumously published book. We all desire to be the master of our own destiny, and sometimes we do so by any means necessary, no matter how painful that may be.