CHAPTER THREE

Gimme Shelter

In 1981, Saigo met the woman of his dreams. Her name was Rimi, and she was gorgeous, moody, loved fast cars, and liked him. He didn’t know what love was when he met her, but he thought she was the most gorgeous woman in Machida. “I wanted her like the way you would want the coolest car on the lot.”

He didn’t want to lose her, so he got her pregnant as soon as possible. Their daughter was born the following year. They lived together out of wedlock, but that wasn’t scandalous in Japan. While Rimi was pregnant, they stopped having sex in her second trimester, and Saigo, not wanting to be unfaithful, pretty much limited himself to going to brothels. He didn’t consider going to brothels as cheating; there was no love involved in it. To him, it was like getting the oil changed in your car.

Nevertheless, Saigo wasn’t irresponsible, and he wanted to make sure his daughter could go to a good school. He began to think about the future. In 1982, a mid-level boss from the second-largest crime organization, the Sumiyoshi-kai, approached Saigo. He asked him if he and his old crew from BGLB would join his registered right-wing organization, Jiritsusha, which had their offices in Kabukicho, the red-light district in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The group was in need of young blood and manpower. In exchange for bringing his men to the group, Saigo would get a title, a business card, and a name to trade upon. In essence, while espousing nationalist values, the group was a front for the Sumiyoshi-kai.

Saigo already spent a lot of time in Kabukicho, a notorious red-light district where all the sex shops were. His extent of political knowledge, however, was limited to knowing that communism was bad and that China was a menace to Japan. As for the divinity of the emperor, he never really thought much about it, but if believing in that was part of being a right-wing leader, then fine, the emperor was a god. He could believe it.

Most yakuza factions have their own right-wing outlet. They allow the yakuza to engage in semi-legitimate extortion behind the guise of collecting “donations.” Many of these outlets go back decades. The group that recruited him, Jiritsusha, had its origins in the era before the war.

Not every single solitary right-wing group is affiliated with the yakuza; however, the majority certainly are. Yakuza and right-wing groups function very similarly and mainly just stand for whatever makes them money. By joining this group, Saigo and his crew became yakuza associates. Saigo’s group all got uniforms as well. In many ways, they had simply switched in their BGLB hot-rodder uniforms for new threads. The history of Jiritsusha, however, was certainly more illustrious than that of their motorcycle gang.

Jiritsusha was founded by one of the most notorious right-wingers in Japanese history: Taku Mikami, a naval officer who participated in one of Japan’s most infamous attempted military coups.

Japan’s golden age of civil government was from 1912 to 1926, and was known as the Taishō democracy. The tax qualifications for voters were reduced, giving more people the opportunity to vote. Then, in 1925, they were eliminated. Party politics flourished, and legislation favorable to the working class was passed. Jazz was all the rage, and the arts blossomed.

Beneath all of this, militarism in the country was growing, powered by shadowy right-wing groups, secret societies, and conservative forces within the government. The passage of the Peace Preservation Law granted the police extraordinary powers and censored the press, helping the agenda of the ultra-right.

Tsuyoshi Inukai was a former journalist who was elected to the Lower House of the Imperial Diet in 1890. He was reelected seventeen times, and held the same seat for forty-two years. He became the prime minister of Japan in December 1931, when the tides were already shifting towards a fascist state. He made moves to limit the power of the navy and military. This led to his assassination on May 15, 1932. Eleven young naval officers, including Taku Mikami, stormed the prime minister’s residence and shot him to death. They were aided by army cadets and right-wing civilians who were part of a secret yakuza-like society. Inukai’s last words were legendary: “If we talked it over, you would understand.” Mikami replied, “Dialogue is useless,” and made the fatal shot.

The coup d’état became known as the May 15 Incident. The nationalist insurgents attempted to overthrow the government and replace it with military rule. Their original strategy included killing the prime minister at a reception he planned for the silent-era actor Charlie Chaplin, who had arrived in Japan a day earlier. They planned to kill Chaplin as well, hoping the act might incite a war with the West. During the prime minister’s assassination, Charlie Chaplin and the prime minister’s son, Takeru Inukai, were watching a sumo match. This was probably one of the few times a spectator sport saved lives.

The rebels attacked other government leaders, and tossed hand grenades into the Mitsubishi Bank headquarters in Tokyo and several electrical transformer substations. Aside from the murder of the prime minister, the attempted coup d’état came to nothing, and the rebellion washed out.

Those responsible took a taxi to the police headquarters, confessed their crimes, and surrendered themselves to the authorities. This was not uncommon among the lawless factions of Japan: do the crime and willingly do the time. It was a way of building street cred.

Although the rebels lost, many historians believe that the prime minister’s assassination marked the death of democracy in pre-war Japan and the solidification of a military rule. By the time the prime minister’s eleven murderers were court-martialed, they were being hailed as national heroes.

During their trial, sympathizers from around the country submitted a petition to the court asking for a lenient sentence. The petition had 350,000 signatures signed in blood. The accused gained sympathy by using the trial as a staged performance to proclaim their loyalty to the emperor, and by appealing for government and economic reforms.

The court also received eleven severed fingers from youth in Niigata, who asked that they be executed in place of the accused. The severed fingers were a gesture of sincerity. It was a ritual that would become commonplace in the postwar yakuza world.

The court handed out a relatively light punishment. Many felt that Inukai’s killers would be released in a couple of years, if not sooner. The failure to severely punish the conspirators of the May 15 Incident epitomized the democratic government’s inability to confront the military, and thus further eroded the rule of law and order.

When Mikami was released from jail several years early on parole, he became a right-wing activist. He then created the predecessor to Jiritsusha in 1941. After the war, it was taken over by a Sumiyoshi-kai boss and served as a recruitment center for the yakuza organization.

It was during his Jiritsusha days that Saigo met Takahiko Inoue, a boss in the Inagawa-kai, as well as a member of the prestigious Yokosuka family (Yokosuka-ikka). They hit it off. Inoue was in his mid-thirties, and Saigo was just twenty-one. While Saigo was just starting his career, Inoue was already established.

Inoue was from Kyushu, the southernmost part of Japan, where the men were manly and the women were dark. He liked Saigo’s American-like straightforwardness and sense of humor. Saigo admired Inoue’s tranquil composure and honesty.

By the time Inoue was thirty, in 1977, he was selected to be a managing director of the Inagawa-kai, a distinct honor in a group that had now reached its peak of over 10,000 members. He was the youngest managing director of the group in decades. He also helped run a right-wing group, Daikosha, which was the Inagawa-kai’s own vehicle for expressing nationalist sentiments.

Inoue managed to open the first Inagawa-kai office in the sleazy streets of Kabukicho, and despite the heavy influx of gangs already claiming territory there, he managed to survive without bloodshed. He had 100 men directly under him. In his younger days, Inoue had been infamous for getting into fistfights with other yakuza at the slightest provocation, but by the time Saigo met him, he had achieved a certain mellowness and was well liked in the area.

People called him “The Buddha.” (He would go on to become an actual Buddhist priest.) He was a bit chubby, and his prematurely gray hair gave him a certain air of authority, as did his tendency to wear dark suits. He had a square pug-like face that was usually adorned with a half-smile. He was quite popular among the local hostesses in the red-light district.

He would occasionally lecture Saigo about what it meant to be a true yakuza. Perhaps he was being a bit romantic. While serving time in prison, Inoue’s mother wrote to him and asked him to live the ideals of the yakuza he espoused. And Inoue did his best. He truly believed that without beneficence and goodwill, yakuza ceased to be yakuza, and instead became common thugs and mafiosi. Yakuza needed to help out the locals, or else the locals wouldn’t pay them for protection. That meant they should never cause problems for civilians; never bother ordinary people. When there was a chance to do some good, they should rush to do it.

Perhaps knowing that Saigo was on his way to entering a true life of crime, Inoue advised Saigo to get a real job. There would come a time when Saigo wouldn’t be able to make money as a right-winger anymore. Inoue himself was a smart investor who ran several businesses, owned over ten buildings, and brought in legitimate revenue to keep his organization together. He was one of the first generations of yakuza to make the transition from being an outlaw to being within the law. He even owned an Italian restaurant.

Inoue collected debts when he first started out as a yakuza, but stopped doing so early on. He still accepted “donations” and protection money, and many business owners in Kabukicho and Shinjuku were happy to pay him. He was the much lesser of the evils in the area. The local merchants and yakuza created a forum for discussing problems in the Kabukicho area, and Inoue was the manager of the association. It was called The Tokyo Central Get-Together Association, and Inoue acted as the peacekeeper in the area and between the various yakuza factions. In the lawless seedy world of Kabukicho, he was the sheriff.

Inoue would often invite Saigo out drinking, although Inoue usually drank for the both of them. He’d start speaking in his thick Japanese southern accent, making him nearly unintelligible. Saigo would remind Inoue, “Hey, I’m not from the Kumamoto prefecture — I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“Of course you understand, you idiot,” Inoue would sometimes reply, in his Kumamoto dialect. “In a past life, you were from Kumamoto. I know it!”

In Inoue, Saigo felt like he’d found the older brother he’d never had. He asked Inoue to make him his younger brother and seal the deal with the ritual exchange of sake cups, sakazuki. Inoue refused, on principle. Saigo was a member of the Sumiyoshi-kai-backed Jiritsusha, and while it was possible to have allegiances that crossed yakuza organization lines, Inoue felt this particular match was wrong.

Nevertheless, Saigo began to refer to him as aniki (older brother) in private, and Inoue didn’t object.

About a year into his time in the Jiritsusha, Saigo decided to cut out the middleman and form his own independent right-wing group. However, it wasn’t going to be easy. Jiritsusha was located in Kabukicho. He lived in Machida. The Tokyo wards were roughly an hour apart by car.

To accomplish this, he decided to set up a branch in his hometown. He had the tacit permission of his boss at Jiritsusha, though not necessarily his explicit permission. In Japan, these things are never clearly discussed, but left vague until they need clarification.

In 1984, Saigo rented an office in Machida’s Tsukushino area and gathered sixty young men for his own political organization: Shinnoujuku. The name meant “The Shelter” and/or study hall of the gods and the emperor.

Like other right-wing groups, The Shelter wasn’t officially a yakuza group, but it functioned like one. It had all the earmarks, including a daimon. The daimon is the yakuza equivalent of a family emblem or corporate symbol. Broken into two parts, dai translates to “big,” and mon translates to “family crest” or “coat of arms.”

Saigo’s group also had a code of ethics that was vaguely defined and written on a scroll; they were still associated with the Sumiyoshi-kai, and functioned in a pyramid-like hierarchy in which the guys at the bottom paid the guys at the top.

The Shelter did a brisk business. Saigo found that the system he had set up for BGLB worked just as well for the The Shelter. Young punks with semi-steady jobs would donate their money and time to be a member of the group. They wanted to use The Shelter’s name to impress people, and Saigo and his crew were happy to accept the cash.

They started collecting protection money in the form of “donations” from the bars, hostess clubs, sexual massage shops, and blowjob coffee parlors (pink salons, brothels, and other dens of ill-repute in the area). They offered different types of protection, such as bodyguard services and enforcement services. Like most yakuza and right-wing groups, The Shelter was flexible, and offered different payment plans. Some shops only paid at the end of the year; some paid twice a year. Most places were on a monthly plan. In return, The Shelter would occasionally drag out and discipline unruly customers who refused to use condoms or got too fresh with the hostesses. Sometimes, they’d collect bar tabs from delinquent customers that could sometimes amount to several thousand dollars. The Shelter took the reasonable collection fee of 50 percent. That was still cheaper for the bars than suing someone. That could take years, and amount to more than the bar tab itself.

Saigo was also making money though kanpa (fundraising campaigns). They would hold kanpa for worthy causes, such as protesting at the Russian embassy to force the return of the northern territories. Granted, Saigo would pocket much of the money, but his organization had an image to maintain. He and his crew would hop into their black vans aka “sound-trucks,” which were decked out with the Japanese flag, slogans in Japanese, the group’s emblem, and outfitted with loudspeakers that would blast out music or their rantings at ear-numbing volume.

They gained danbe (sponsors), ordinary citizens who admired certain groups or individuals, and provided them with funds, support, land, office space, and sometimes just dinner. There was something glamorous about hanging out with men of action that the ordinary white-collar salaryman found exciting. Of course, a right-wing group wasn’t as cool as the yakuza, but they still had fans. Old men who felt that Japan had been forced into a war by America that they couldn’t win, and had then suffered the indignity of the U.S.-imposed democratic constitution, liked the rhetoric of Saigo’s group. Plus, Saigo was a local boy, and some businessmen in the town were rooting for him.

The Shelter created a newsletter, Shinnojuku Ippo, and began offering subscriptions to businesses around the neighborhood. The newsletter was a great money-maker. The cost of an ad was anywhere from 30,000 yen to 300,000 yen, depending on the size of the company. Companies and individuals would buy the ads out of patriotic zeal, to pay for services, or out of simple fear. It was implicit in the offer that businesses who subscribed to or advertised in The Shelter’s newsletter would get protection from hoodlums, youth gangs, yakuza, and, of course, The Shelter itself. The Inagawa-kai had offices in Machida under Hideo Hishiyama, who was the head of the Hishiyama-gumi. In theory, they could have offered to protect those businesses, but they had very few people on the ground and thus no real presence or influence there. They collected money from only a few businesses, and were hardly a force to be reckoned with.

Some people paid because they agreed with Saigo’s half-baked right-wing ideology, but most paid because they were afraid of what might happen if they didn’t. Saigo never retaliated against any person or company that didn’t want to pay. Just the implied threat of violence was effective. He didn’t believe in making good on that threat. It would only piss people off, and give the cops an excuse to do something.

Although the Inagawa-kai was hardly a force in Machida, there was another group everyone had to take into consideration: and that was the Kinbara-gumi, headed by Norimasa Kinbara. The Kinbara-gumi was an organization under Japan’s fifth- or sixth-largest organized crime group at the time: the Kyokuto-kai. Kinbara was Korean, and bad-tempered. Kinbara had 120 men in the area, double the number Saigo had.

Many businesses actually subscribed to Shinnojuku Ippo because they they preferred Saigo and his crew to the Kinbara-gumi. Their methods were notoriously brutal and uncouth, so they were not well liked. This helped Saigo out immensely. For example, a forty-one-year-old woman opened a small hostess bar near Machida station. Several members of the Kinbara-gumi repeatedly visited the business and demanded payment for her operating on their turf. They’d find fault with her service as well, calling her girls “ugly bitches” and complaining about the whiskey. They would sometimes come in groups, scaring away other customers. They threw shochu, cheap Japanese booze, in her face. They pelted her with ice, and urinated on the carpet. She called the police, but they never came when the yakuza members were still there. Eventually, she paid. The payments the Kinbara-gumi demanded kept escalating over time. That didn’t make for satisfied customers.

The Shelter seemed like the better option. Just a month after opening shop, Saigo’s bank account was growing significantly. However, Kinbara didn’t take the invasion of his turf lightly. He soon called Saigo at his office and ordered him to come visit him, by himself. Kinbara had heard things about Saigo and The Shelter, and he wanted some clarification.

Saigo immediately went to visit Kinbara at the Kinbara-gumi office. Two scary-looking thugs guarded the front door. They guided Saigo to the back office, where Kinbara was waiting for him. True to his word, Kinbara was alone. He had the young Saigo take a seat at his desk and began interrogating him. Saigo was operating on the Kinbara-gumi turf. What was he really up to, and, most importantly, was he taking away Kinbara’s business?

Saigo told Kinbara that he was not running a yakuza group. The Shelter, Saigo said, was just a right-wing organization. For some reason, Kinbara decided that Saigo was truly just a clueless punk unaffiliated with the yakuza, but still trying to make money using a bullshit right-wing group. He didn’t like what that implied — that Saigo was probably racist; specifically, anti-Korean. After all, saying you’re a right-winger is pretty much declaring you hate Koreans and that the Japanese are the best.

So Kinbara made it clear that he was Korean and that Saigo was on his turf. Then he told Saigo to behave himself and to get the fuck out of his office.

On his way out, since Kinbara didn’t see Saigo as a threat or a competitor, he made an offer that would benefit himself. “As you get your business going,” Kinbara said, “if you run into some expenses or need some cash, let me know. We provide financial services for the locals.”

In other words, Kinbara was a loan shark. Saigo said he would remember that, and he did — but Saigo would find that borrowing money from Kinbara was like walking down a slippery slope.

Japan’s semi-legal sex industry exists on a mind-boggling scale, yet there are very few books or articles that give even a rudimentary idea of how big a role it plays in the national economy. It’s not that the sex industry exists in a gray zone in Japan. If anything, it exists in a pink zone — it’s overwhelmingly legal, except for when the authorities decide to make a token crackdown. Even though selling pornography that depicts uncensored sexual intercourse is a crime, paying for sexual services isn’t. Services such as oral, anal, bondage, and S&M are legal. The only form of prostitution that the law forbids is vaginal penetration with the penis, and it sets no punishment for the prostitute or the customer if caught. There are exceptions to that, as well. So-called soaplands are one such industry.

The best sex Saigo ever had took place in a soapland. “The women know how to make you reach ecstasy like no ordinary woman could.” Inside a soapland, a man enters a large private bathroom, often with a bedroom or sauna attached. His chosen “attendant” helps him bathe, a process that might include an actual bath, though it most famously involves the girl lathering up every nook and cranny with her own naked body. The customer pays for the “bath” up front. Afterwards, the man and his attendant may decide, as two consenting adults, to go to the room next door and to take the encounter further at a mutually decided fee. This post-bath encounter remains completely independent of the soapland’s business.

Not only is a soapland a unique experience within Japan’s adult-entertainment industry, but they are also among the top tier. The women who work there are well known to be the most beautiful in the industry. They use their entire bodies to wash customers, and provide services in a bed. Because there’s a bedroom and bathroom, the working area is large. Customers go there looking for high-class service, so technique is important. The women are thorough and professional. They must be able to give a really high-quality massage, stay in excellent physical shape, wash the customer thoroughly, and provide him with at least one orgasm during the service.

The fees for soaplands are top tier as well. In magazines aimed at women who want to work in the sex industry, this is how the job is introduced:

Soap

Intelligence required: ***

Nudity required: ****

Work when you want: ****

Easy stand-by: *****

Calorie burner: *****

Payment: ***** (At a shop)

The payment is the highest because sexual intercourse is understood to be a part of the package. The calorie-burner rating is a reflection of the fact that many women working in the sex industry are very conscious of their weight, and that sexual activity is a form of exercise. Flexible hours are also good for married women or single mothers. Some establishments provide daycare as well.

Almost every time Saigo went to a soapland, he borrowed money from Kinbara. It would soon become a problem. Going to a soapland was an expensive habit that sometimes cost him $1,000 a night. It was not like his friends had much money and, because he was under eighteen, he couldn’t borrow money from a bank. Plus, to most people, the amount he was asking for seemed like a lot of money to spend on soaplands.

The more Saigo went to soaplands, the more money he borrowed. He ended up owing the Kinbara-gumi 60 million yen ($60,000). At one point, Saigo’s tab was so high that Kinbara goons grabbed him off the street and took him to their office. Kinbara demanded to know what the hell Saigo was spending all the money on and how he planned on paying them back.

Saigo told him, “I go to soapland. A lot. I can’t get enough.” Kinbara was so dumbstruck that he laughed.

Kinbara wanted his money. But, of course, Saigo couldn’t pay Kinbara back immediately. He did, however, promise to pay him back eventually, but asked Kinbara to wait until his lust was satisfied. Saigo told him it would take years to pay it all back, but that would be better than not being reimbursed at all. Kinbara believed that Saigo was a man of his word. He patted Saigo on the shoulder, agreed to his terms, and wished him luck.

Saigo thought to himself, “Hey, the yakuza are sometimes pretty reasonable.”

A short time later, Kinbara finally figured out the extent of Saigo’s money-making activities. Saigo had long crossed the line between right-wing group and yakuza.

On a bright summer’s day in 1984, Kinbara called Saigo’s office and said, “I’m going to come by and say hello. Let’s have some tea.”

Saigo said sure.

Kinbara showed up with two soldiers and his right-hand man, Takeda, who was rumored to be a rather short-tempered and violent individual. Kinbara was dressed in a navy-blue suit, double-breasted, exquisitely tailored. Yet he still managed to look like a menacing thug. However, his tone was cordial.

As they talked, Kinbara mumbled to himself. Takeda had a small notepad, and was taking memos. “A signboard on the wall. A paper lantern on the wall with the group name on it.”

Saigo felt something was wrong, but Kinbara assured Saigo that everything was fine. He was just admiring his office. Patriotism must pay well. Kinbara had heard about their local support and wanted to gauge what they were up to. He asked Saigo if he could take a company newsletter from the pile stacked in the corner. He looked over the newsletter, which, in addition to local business ads, had advertisements featuring the names of Inagawa-kai, Yamaguchi-gumi, and Sumiyoshi-kai members.

Kinbara looked at the picture of a Sumiyoshi-kai boss posted on the wall of the office and tipped his head towards it, making eye contact with Takeda. Takeda made another scribble in his notebook.

Kinbara didn’t stay long. As he was leaving, he gently tapped the daimon on Saigo’s kanban (signboard). It was the same as the daimon on Saigo’s men’s jumpsuits.

Kinbara thanked Saigo for showing him the office, got up from the leather sofa, and left.

A day later, ten soldiers from the Kinbara-gumi burst through the door of Saigo’s office, when they knew he was not there. They went straight up to his second-in-command, Yusuke Yamada.

“You’re supposed to be a fucking right-wing group, but you’re just a gang.”

One by one, they listed everything the group had that made them look like a yakuza group, pounding the desk, rattling off each “tell.”

“When you next hear from Saigo, tell him to come to our office. We’re going to talk. And we’re taking this hostage in lieu of him.” And, with little or no resistance, they pried the kanban off the wall and carried it out.

They had a point. In almost every way, Saigo’s group was indistinguishable from a low-ranking yakuza group, and Kinbara wouldn’t stand for it. The loss of the kanban was devastating. The kanban was a symbol of the group’s power, their unity, their face. Just like a yakuza, without a kanban, Saigo’s right-wing group was nothing but a bunch of punks. Come hell or high water, Saigo was going to take that signboard back.

Saigo summoned all of his soldiers to the office, telling them to bring baseball bats, metal pipes, knives, whatever weapon they could find. The office phones were ringing off the hook, and Saigo sent men to the train station to use the public telephone to call in the stragglers. He had almost 100 men assembled that night, many of them in uniform. They were excited. Nobody really knew what was going on, but they were going to rumble. This was no ordinary excursion. A rusty scent of sweat, anticipation, and fear filled the air.

There was barely room to stand, so Saigo climbed up on his desk and explained the situation. It didn’t take long. “Without our kanban, we’re nothing. We’re not going to stand for this. That’s why we’re going to storm their offices and take back our kanban!”

Saigo had thought it was a pretty inspirational speech; he’d expected a flood of raised hands. All he saw was a sea of heads, many of them looking at the floor. There was a long silence.

“Senpai,” said one of the crew, “they’re yakuza. We aren’t yakuza. They’ll kill us.” There were some murmurs of agreement.

Saigo was outraged. “Listen, our reputation is on the line here. We have to go. We’re tough. There’s 100 of us. We’re young. We’re right. We’ll win.”

There was another long silence. Exasperated, Saigo changed his sales pitch. “We’ve come a long way together. We are The Shelter. If there is any man here who isn’t man enough to go on this mission, if there’s anyone here too scared to come with me, then raise your hand now and get the fuck out of my sight. Because if you raise your hand, you’re saying you quit.”

A single hand went up in the back of the room. Saigo couldn’t see who it was because the guy raising his hand was so short that his face was hidden. Other hands followed.

Saigo had his ocean of raised hands, but they weren’t the ones he’d been hoping for. Many of the crew shuffled backwards out of the office. Some bowed in his direction, apologizing, and ran out. Saigo was flabbergasted. This wasn’t how he’d envisioned it. He’d thought the members of the group that had rumbled with him during their speed tribes days would be up for the good fight. No such luck. Within ten minutes, there were only five of his crew left, including himself. Five out of 100. Maybe that was actually a good number.

Yamada shrugged his shoulders and said to Saigo, “You know, we’ve been acting like big-shot yakuza. Kinbara and his guys really are yakuza. So you know.”

Saigo knew.

He asked them what they wanted to do.

“Let’s go get it back,” said one of the crew. “If we bring it back, that’s our victory.”

Saigo couldn’t guarantee they’d even walk out alive.

But his small crew was loyal. They thought, if it happened, it happened. So they left their office and headed towards Kinbara. They were unarmed and scared out of their minds. When they arrived, there were several gang members hanging out in front smoking cigarettes. One of them ran into the office, and suddenly Saigo heard the sound of beepers going off. The Kinbara-gumi had sounded an alarm.

They walked into the office. It was Saigo’s second visit there. The men inside sprang up from their chairs and grabbed him and his crew. They were frisked, and held in the reception room. Kinbara came out of his office and looked at them, dumbfounded.

“What the fuck do you want?”

“We came for our kanban,” said Saigo.

Kinbara burst out laughing. “Are you crazy? You think you’re getting that back?”

“Please give it back.”

Kinbara punched him several times, Saigo stood his ground. He asked Kinbara to please stop hitting him and to give him back his kanban.

Kinbara launched into a tirade about what a dirty double-crosser Saigo was and that he had no right to violate the Kinbara-gumi turf. Saigo should just tuck his tail between his legs, get the hell out of Machida, and flee to Tokyo.

Flanked by his men on two sides, Saigo apologized for upsetting Kinbara and impugning the honor of the Kinbara-gumi. Meanwhile, the word spread among Kinbara-gumi members that Saigo and his crew had been kidnapped by the gang and were being held at their office.

Additional gang members began swarming into the office to jeer at Saigo and to offer suggestions to Kinbara. Some suggested they bury him. Others suggested that, for his insubordination, Saigo should cut off one of his fingers and offer it to the boss.

Saigo didn’t budge. Kinbara was impressed. He offered to induct Saigo into his own gang.

Saigo declined his offer.

Kinbara told him that he’d let Saigo live if he turned all his men over to the Kinbara-gumi. Saigo didn’t have the nerve to say that these five were all that was left of his crew. He refused to cough up even one man to the Kinbara-gumi.

The gallery of yakuza were still suggesting that they kill Saigo and his men, and bury the bodies.

After what seemed like hours of threats, Kinbara surprised everyone by letting Saigo take his kanban back. In return, Saigo promised to dismantle his group, set them all on the straight and narrow path, and get the hell out of Machida.

He was lucky to leave the office alive, but there was no way he was going to leave Machida.

Saigo figured it this way: he owed money to Kinbara. Kinbara told him to join his group or get out of town, but there was another option, in which he could maintain his independence, not pay back Kinbara, and regain his kanban and his dignity. As the old saying goes, if you can’t beat them, join someone else.

He wasn’t going to flee to Tokyo; he was going to talk to Inoue. He was going to join the Inagawa-kai.