CHAPTER THIRTY

Goodbye and get out

In 2007, the police were raiding Saigo’s offices right and left. The Tokyo and Kanagawa cops were going from shop to shop to inform business owners and merchants that they would protect them from the yakuza, but if the shop kept paying protection money, the police would view them as yakuza associates. And if the police viewed them as yakuza associates, that meant getting harassed by the police, the local officials, and possibly even the National Tax Agency.

So his customers stopped paying. Maybe it was because the economy wasn’t looking like it would pick up, or because profits were low for everyone and Saigo’s services didn’t seem worth the extra money. Either way, Saigo’s revenue dried up — and many people left. Maruyama went back to music. There were no hard feelings.

The association dues to the Inagawa-kai were still around $20,000 a month, and he couldn’t pay them.* He started borrowing money from other yakuza to pay his dues. If he didn’t pay his dues, he couldn’t keep the organization running, which meant he couldn’t pay back the loans he’d taken out to pay the association dues in the first place. The business model had worked when there was money left over after the dues had been paid, but revenue had dropped while the dues remained the same.

[* Figure according to police records at the time.]

By January 2008, he was heavily in debt and dissatisfied with the direction that the organization was taking. There were unspoken standing orders to yield to the Yamaguchi-gumi in any conflict. If the Yamaguchi-gumi opened an office in your turf, you were supposed to keep your mouth shut and look the other way. While chairman Tsunoda was still running the show, more and more power was passing to the Inagawa-kai Yamakawa-ikka. Kazuo Uchibori was the silent ruler of the organization, and he was under the thumb of the Yamaguchi-gumi Kodo-kai.

At a meeting of the Inagawa-kai executives, Saigo lost his temper. He had joined the Inagawa-kai, and had fought and lived for the Inagawa-kai crest. He had never joined the Yamaguchi-gumi. They didn’t have a code, and his turf was not supposed to be their turf. He didn’t work for them.

Everyone understood that the Inagawa-kai was falling under the control of the Yamaguchi-gumi, but no one dared say it. Perhaps Hanzawa would have said something, but his uncontrollable meth addiction had led to him being institutionalized.

Some of the upper management began to see Saigo as a problem. He had the potential to rally the anti-Yamaguchi-gumi factions in the organization and to stir up trouble. Not to mention, there was rivalry within the Yokosuka-ikka itself.

The organization had grown weak under Coach’s command, not entirely because of Coach’s lack of leadership, but because Coach was not Yamaguchi-gumi friendly.

The organization, which had 3,000 members in its heyday, was down to under 1,000 members.

One of Coach’s sub-bosses, Takaya Aishima, was vying for power. Although this boss was Coach’s second-in-command, he didn’t particularly love Coach. Instead, he was rooting for Uchibori.

Aishima had quietly taken several other Yokosuka-ikka members as his shatei (disciples). He even approached Saigo, who refused to pledge allegiance to him. Saigo tried to warn Coach about what was going on, but he couldn’t figure out how to do it without being a snitch.

Coach only half-listened to what Saigo was telling him. Sometimes people rise so high they don’t see the earth anymore. They say in Japan that “a lighthouse is darkest at the base,” and that seemed apt to Saigo. Coach was well aware of what was happening in the world outside the organization, but he was blind to what was happening beneath his feet.

Inoue was having trouble as well. He was supposed to be next in line to replace Coach, but Uchibori didn’t like him, nor did Aishima. The factions loyal to Uchibori in the Yokosuka-ikka began reporting Inoue’s activities to Uchibori and Aishima. At Yokosuka-ikka meetings, if Coach wasn’t there, Saigo and Inoue were treated like problem children.

In May 2008, Saigo turned off his phone. He had begun receiving calls from the Yokosuka-ikka head office. He knew why they were calling. He owed money to them.

Saigo simply couldn’t borrow any more money. He couldn’t pay his dues. So he unplugged his phone from his office wall and skipped his board meetings. He’d instead just sit in his office, smoking, and looking at magazines and old photos. He didn’t have any hobbies, and he didn’t drink. He didn’t know what to do with himself.

Saigo had another headache in that the owner of the land his house was built on was now asserting that Saigo had no right to live there. That meant “the compound” might be impounded. He was probably going to be evicted from his home. Even if Saigo was legally in the right, what judge would take the side of a yakuza? His parents still had the family home outside Tokyo, but it was a small place.

If he had to move, what would he do with all the jars of fingers buried in the hills behind his house?

Inoue called Saigo a few times, but he wasn’t answering. Finally, Inoue managed to get hold of him at his home. He warned him that the situation was serious. Saigo was on the verge of being kicked out.

“I don’t care,” Saigo told him. “Let them kick me out. They can kick me out, or I’ll quit. Either way, I’m done.”

Rumors about Saigo were flying around. Some people said he was back on meth, and that was why he’d been behaving erratically. His own underling, Mizoguchi, was saying it was time for Saigo to go. Saigo could sense the discontent within his own troops.

He was irritable all the time. He was nagging his underlings to pay their association dues to him, but he understood that the money was drying up for them as well. When he thought about how much money he owed, it made his stomach hurt. Every funeral, wedding ceremony, or succession ceremony he had to attend was more money he had to spend that he didn’t have. If no one could contact him, at least he’d stop bleeding money for a while. He just needed some time and luck. Something would come up. If he could increase his revenue stream, he could stay as a yakuza boss. However, without his position and the backing of the Inagawa-kai, there would be no way to pay back the money he owed already just to stay where he was — balancing on the edge of fiscal ruin.

On the afternoon of June 7, Inoue called Saigo to tell him that the end was near. That evening, Coach called him as well. Saigo expected to be yelled at, screamed at, and lectured. Instead, Coach was apologetic and even sad.

Kane no kireme ga en no kireme — when the money ends, the relationship ends. There are many ways to leave the yakuza, but there is one definite method of getting kicked out: stop paying your dues. The association dues, jonokin, are in a sense licensing fees. You pay the money, and you get to use the corporate emblem and the influence that comes with it. An individual boss in the Inagawa-kai doesn’t just represent his own organization, which might have ten people or 150 people — he represents the Inagawa-kai, which means there are 10,000 yakuza backing him up.

Saigo stopped paying his dues, so the Yokosuka-ikka’s ruling council decided to expel him from the group. Coach didn’t authorize it. In fact, he argued against it, but Saigo had set a poor example. No one could reach him for two weeks, and that was unacceptable.

Coach half-heartedly lectured him. In the yakuza world, the boss had to be on duty 24/7. This was why the men at the top of the echelon usually stopped drinking. You never knew when you would need to be sober.

What if a gang war broke out and Saigo wasn’t around? Who would give orders to the men? Who would mobilize the troops? What would happen if other Inagawa-kai members stopped answering their phones?

Coach did what he could, but it wasn’t his decision, and he couldn’t change it. The hamonjo (notice of banishment) would be issued the following day. Saigo would have to find a better job and move. As his land troubles were going on in civil court, he’d set up a temporary office that was now the property of the Inagawa-kai, since he was no longer a member.

If Saigo behaved himself, and some changes at the top of the Inagawa-kai or Yokosuka-ikka were made, Coach would be in a better bargaining position to get Saigo back into the fold. From there, it would probably take Coach a year to convince them. Until then, Saigo would have to find a new way to make a living. He was no longer a boss. His men were no longer his men, and someone else would be taking over the group. The name Saigo-gumi would probably vanish as well.

Saigo phoned Purple. Purple had already heard. Saigo was hoping that Purple could help him out, but Purple was surprisingly unsympathetic. He called Saigo a pariah, and told him there was nothing he could do for him. “Why do you have to fuck everything up?”

Saigo didn’t see it that way. He’d been off comms, sure, but that wasn’t a reason to banish someone. There were other reasons, Saigo insisted. Purple agreed, partly, but he was not sympathetic. As far as Purple was concerned, Saigo had simply self-destructed. He didn’t want to be in the radius of the bomb blast.

Saigo had expected more support than that, but he wasn’t going to get it. Reluctantly, he still had to beg Purple for help. Saigo needed help moving. He needed to find someplace to stay.

There were many reasons he needed to get the hell out of Machida. It wouldn’t take long for word to get out that he’d been kicked out of the Inagawa-kai, and that meant more trouble. The people he owed money to would know that he couldn’t possibly pay it off now, not in the near future, and possibly never. He owed a lot of people. There would be a scramble to collect what money he had left first. He was no longer under the protection of the Inagawa-kai, either, which meant that Kinbara might decide he could settle some old grudges against Saigo with impunity.

Saigo felt surrounded. He had to go somewhere, but he had nowhere to go. He felt like a dead man standing on the edge of the Sanzu River without enough coins to cross over. He was going to be washed down the river straight to hell.

He did actually have enough money to cross over with, but his bank account was practically empty. It only contained a couple of thousand dollars. He’d once had over $1 million in the bank. He’d bought a Mercedes Benz for $300,000 in cash just a few years before. He’d bought one for his boss as well. And now? Now he wasn’t sure he’d have enough to put up the deposit and the honorarium necessary to rent an apartment in Tokyo.

Purple called back and said he’d try to find Saigo a place to stay. Saigo tried reaching Inoue, but he wasn’t picking up his phone, either.

A banished yakuza is immediately treated like a leper. The rules of banishment prohibit other members from associating with the individual. Thus everyone avoids him. Your closest friend doesn’t know you within hours after you’ve been kicked out.

He told Yuriko to pack their bags. They were going on a long trip. While they were packing, he got a visit from the rapper Barbarian. He’d heard what had happened.

He’d brought Saigo a bag of cash — the equivalent of a couple of thousand dollars. Saigo didn’t know what to say. Yamajin told Saigo that he didn’t have to pay it back. Saigo was like his older brother. He had helped Yamajin before. He’d also kicked the crap out of him before, but that was besides the point. Saigo needed the money, and he had to take it.

Saigo’s face crinkled. His eyes watered. Twenty years in the yakuza, and this was how it ended: kicked out, broke, and the only person who had his back wasn’t even a real yakuza. He was a rapper, a punk, a civilian. They weren’t even kyodai.

Yamajin offered him some pot, and Saigo thought about smoking it, but he declined and sent Yamajin on his way.

Coach hadn’t abandoned him entirely. He sent one of his direct underlings to Saigo’s home with 1.5 million yen ($15,000), who gave it to Saigo’s wife with clear instructions: pay back the debts he owed to loan sharks as much as he could, and get out of town.

Coach hadn’t told Saigo that he was going to give him money. He just did it. Saigo found out when his wife, Yuriko, called him and told him the news. But it was only a fraction of what he owed.

Saigo had to think clearly. He could sell his solid-gold Rolex at a pawn shop. That might be worth something. He had a friend in the Sumiyoshi-kai who owned a moving service. He could store the bulk of his possessions at his in-laws’ home, and move the essentials to a new place — if he could find a new place. The Saigo-gumi kanban — he would take that with him.

The only other condolence call he got was from Detective Lucky. Lucky didn’t offer any help, but did offer some advice — the same advice that everyone was giving him: get the hell out of town. Even Lucky knew that Saigo owed money to a lot of people. Saigo thought he’d been good at keeping his perilous financial situation quiet, but apparently that wasn’t the case. Yakuza talk.

On June 8, 2008, the Inagawa-kai officially expelled Saigo. The hamonjo was circulated to all yakuza offices in the Kanto and Kansai area as a postcard, a fax, and possibly even as an email. Coach’s name was not on the notice — a highly unusual situation. Saigo had been banished by the Yokosuka-ikka executive committee. His oyabun hadn’t been able to save him from expulsion, but he had at least not condoned it. There was some comfort in that.

His parents moved back to their family home.

Purple hadn’t abandoned him completely, either. He called up a journalist they both knew, Tomohiko Suzuki. Suzuki would make sure that Saigo had a place to stay.