Confessions of a Yakuza Read online

  I say train, but it was more like a toy railway, huffing and puffing along through the hills with smoke pouring from a tall smokestack. Wherever you looked there were mountains—bleak-looking mountains, with the rock all bare. They went rolling on, those bare mountainsides, up and down, up and down forever, with nothing but the odd shrub growing here and there. The grass was flattened down all over. There’d be mountains and a valley, more mountains and another valley, getting gradually higher all the time. Not a house to be seen. We went on through this for hours. “God, what a place,” we sat there saying to each other in low voices. “You wouldn’t even catch bandits living in a hole like this!”

  Eventually, the transport officer came around again and said, “We’ll soon be arriving in Komusan. But you lot are going on further, so make sure you don’t get off the train.”

  It was getting dark outside. Komusan was a miserable spot, enough to send chills up and down your spine. The recruits who’d got off there were each handed a rifle and ammunition. Then they all formed up again, an order was given, and they marched off the platform and out into the dark.

  Being raw recruits, of course, they didn’t actually have any idea how to fire a gun. Only a few days before, they’d been farmboys or shop assistants, and this was the first time they’d so much as laid hands on a rifle. But off they marched, these troops in their baggy coats over their kimonos, with their ammunition bound around their waists, and rifles on their shoulders. A long line of them, straggling on, then disappearing into the darkness....

  We started off again, but it was night now and you couldn’t see anything. There was just the sound of the train—clickety-clack, clickety-clack. The seats were wooden, and the backs too, so there was no question of sleeping. Right there in the middle of the coach a stove was going, glowing red-hot. In those days, any amount of coal was to be had in the mountains in the north of Korea, so they weren’t mean with it. A soldier was shoveling the stuff up and stoking the fire, making a steady clanging noise.

  I was tired out and kept trying to get some sleep, but I was too keyed up, and the seat hurt my butt, so I stayed half-awake, half-asleep all night. The faces of the soldiers sleeping around me looked like children’s. But then, all of a sudden, everyone was woken up by the NCO yelling. His voice sounded quite different this time; it was as though a dog had turned into a wolf overnight.

  “Rise and shine!” he bawled. “We’ll be at our destination soon. Now, you don’t want to disappoint your officers and the other soldiers already there, do you? So I want you on your mettle. Standing up tall and straight, right? None of your shivering and looking cold. Got it?”

  His voice had had plenty of practice after years in the army, and it rang all the way down the coach. There wasn’t anyone left asleep when he’d finished.

  Dawn came and we arrived in Hoeryông. About eight o’clock, I’d say it was. There was a thin layer of snow on the station platform. It was a small, miserable-looking station, with just one wooden building standing there on its own. There must have been about five hundred of us left by this stage, and everyone was looking around as if to say what the hell are we doing here?

  But almost at once an order was barked out: “Fall in!” and we all formed up in two lines, and moved outside. And there, in front of the station, drawn up in ranks, were the troops sent from the regiment specially to meet us, around sixty of them in all.

  “To the new recruits—sa-lute!” someone shouted, and the guard of honor gave a smart salute, all together. You never saw anything so overdone in your life, it was like something on the stage. You’d wonder how they managed to strike poses like that, like a bunch of Kabuki actors. Not a muscle twitching. I took another look, and I could see the officers’ moustaches were all frozen, with icicles hanging from them. It made their eyes seem to bulge all the more. Their faces, too, were quite different from soldiers I’d seen back home, they gave me quite a shock. I wondered if troops trained in the cold always got that fierce sort of look.

  They’d already decided which of the new men were to be assigned to which unit, and an NCO from each company came forward and read out the names. As your name was called, you stepped forward and lined up. When the number was completed for each company, the NCO reported to his commanding officer: “Company recruits all present and correct, sir.” In due course, a sergeant bellowed an order, and the troops who’d come to meet us marched off in front, boots crunching along the icy road, with us slipping and slithering behind them in our wooden clogs. First one then another of the men would fall on his ass, getting bellowed at in the process:

  “You there—what d’you think you’re up to? Get a move on!”

  You had to feel sorry for us—we were like prisoners of the Red Army being led away. The road was wide, and went on for miles, white all the way. There were houses lining both sides but not a sign of life in them.

  It was on December 20, 1926, that we got to the regiment, if I remember rightly. The place where it was stationed was literally the most northern point in Japanese territory, with Kilin province, Manchuria, next to it in the west and Soviet Siberia in the northeast. Between Korea and Manchuria on the one side and Russia on the other ran the Tuman river. This froze over so thick in winter that you could drive a horse and cart across it. The base was on the outskirts of the town, with an embankment all the way around it. Beyond the embankment there were fields as far as you could see, then gently sloping hills. At the foot of the hills was a training ground. But it couldn’t be used till spring; during the winter the training was done in an open space called the “barrack square,” inside the base itself.

  As soon as we arrived, we were given the usual pep talk, then issued with our kit and equipment. This included uniforms, but I weighed about a hundred and ninety pounds and was six feet tall, and there wasn’t anything my size in No. 2 Company, which I was posted to. They immediately got the tailor to alter one to fit me, but it wasn’t ready in time for the next day, so I turned up for the colonel’s address in the same clothes as before: a kimono with a fur coat over it.

  We all lined up in the barrack square, with a company commander in front of each company and the battalion commander in front of them—three companies to a battalion. The senior officers looked like old men, their moustaches all frozen white.

  One at a time, the company commanders would report to the battalion commander:

  “No. 1 Company—its commander and a hundred and so many men!”

  Each report was greeted with a salute and a “Carry on.” When this was over, the colonel rode over on a horse and stopped in front of the battalion. He had a fine moustache and a row of medals on his chest.

  The battalion commander then shouted out:

  “No. 1 Battalion—its commander and so many hundred men!”

  As he shouted, he raised his sword in front of his face. The colonel returned the salute without saying anything. It looked impressive, but they did the same thing again, and again, with each battalion in turn. The more time went by, the stiffer your body got. The recruit next to me had gone as white as a sheet around the forehead and gills and was shaking like a leaf. I was thinking that the skin under my nose felt a bit tight when I suddenly realized there was an icicle hanging down from my nose.

  The colonel got up on a stand and began his address.

  “I am your commanding officer, Colonel Kuga,” he started off, up there on his pedestal. Everything in sight was covered with ice, so his voice carried well. Very dignified he was, with the medals glittering on his chest, and his peaked cap. “You are all soldiers of the Empire, specially chosen from among its citizens. You should consider it a great honor....”

  Honor, my ass! I was too cold to worry about that kind of thing. Even if you tried to stand still, your body started trembling of its own accord, and your arms and legs felt like blocks of wood. My feet were a bit more comfortable than the day before, as I’d changed from clogs to boots with a fur lining, but under my overcoat I was still wearing the
kimono, and an icy breeze came blowing in between my legs. I’d bound gaiters around my bare legs, but that was worse than useless in weather like that.

  “The 75th Regiment, to which we belong, has the privilege of defending the very front line of the Empire. Beyond us lies not a single unit of friendly forces. This gives us a very special role to play, and I want you to respond to the great hopes our nation pins on us by devoting every possible moment to training yourselves, physically and mentally, to become the kind of troops that will serve as models etc. etc....”

  On and on he went with his fine words. But suddenly the soldier next to me tilted to one side and fell flat on his face. His body was as stiff as a frozen tuna fish. The squad leader and a private picked him up and carried him off to the infirmary on their shoulders. That seemed to set things off, and soon another two or three men collapsed in another company. From their faces, you’d have thought they were dead. It would have been a bit better if we could have stamped our feet or waved our arms about, but we weren’t supposed to move at all, and it was no wonder people froze. I was just beginning to hope they’d take me to the infirmary myself, when all of a sudden the talk ended.

  “To the commanding officer—sa-lute!” someone bellowed. The guy in charge of No. 1 Company had his parade sword high up in the air.

  “Eyes—right!” He had an impressive voice, I’ll say that much for him.

  “Not that way! Right! Right!” a sergeant was shouting, and I could see a man looking to the left. That’s the army for you—they even have to tell you how to move your eyes!

  Once No. 1 Company had finished, it was our turn to salute the colonel, and when we’d all finally had a go, the colonel went off on his horse, still stiff as a ramrod, back to headquarters.

  I heaved a sigh of relief, but then a new order rang out:

  “To the battalion commander—sa-lute! Eyes—right!”

  And we had to go through the whole rigmarole again, company by company, till all the senior officers had pushed off. If we hadn’t, at long last, been ordered to dismiss, we’d all probably have frozen to death.

  The next day, instead of pep talks, they had us jogging around the parade ground. Dozens of times, “left, right, left, right,” with our rifles on our shoulders and knapsacks on our backs. And all the while, they bawled at us: “Don’t slouch, there ... keep your cap straight”—breaking us in, like horses.

  Four or five days had passed when training was suddenly suspended. The Emperor Taisho had died; it was December 25. I remember it well because they told us the whole regiment was going to pay its respects at the exact time that his remains left the palace in Tokyo. A sergeant briefed us:

  “You’re to wear the cleanest underwear and socks you’ve got, and you’re to shave, clean your teeth, comb your hair, and shine your boots. You can wear gloves, but not greatcoats. There must be no more talk than is absolutely necessary, and, even then, keep your voices down. No running in the corridors. Get your supper early, and go about it quietly.”

  We all got ready and waited, then around eleven at night the order came to assemble on the barrack square. We trooped outside in the dark—and immediately started shivering, of course; it would’ve been bad enough even in thick furs. After a while, each company was told to light a beacon, using firewood they’d already got out of supplies; quite high piles of it, in bamboo frames. Once these got going it was a lot brighter, especially as the ice around them reflected the flames like a mirror. In fact, the whole parade ground stood out like it was broad daylight, though it was pitch-dark where the light didn’t reach. The fires crackled, and the red flames blazed up into the sky.

  “Eyes—right,” we heard, and the colonel appeared, armed with another speech: “It is with a deep sense of awe that I have to inform you that His Imperial Majesty passed away at 1:25 this morning....” The colonel didn’t have a greatcoat on, either, but he was “setting an example.” Anyway, when he was done, we all turned to face east, and bowed low. On the stroke of midnight, a bugle played. And went on playing. The inside of my nose had been frozen for some time, and with each breath I took you could hear it crackling. But the bugle stopped, and our company of loyal, shivering troops filed back to our barracks.

  If there was one thing about the army that was better than jail, it was the food. The number of men in the forces had gone down thanks to disarmament, so there were plenty of supplies. We got our three meals a day, and something to eat in the middle of the afternoon as well—all kinds of different things, every day. One time, they doled out five big chestnut buns each. Besides that, we sometimes got sweet bean soup or butamame. There’d be three big rice cakes in the bean soup. Butamame was a kind of pork-and-beans stew—and they gave us a whole plateful of the stuff.

  On Sundays, we could go off base. There were shops in the town, and eating places too—most of them run by Koreans, but two or three run by Japanese as well. And then there were the usual brothels, of course.

  These were bunched together in a sort of small-scale red-light district. Most of the whores were Korean women. They also had quite a few White Russians, since this wasn’t long after the revolution there. I guess some of them couldn’t make a living any way except by selling themselves.

  As for money, we got twenty-two sen a day—two yen twenty sen every ten days. That was about twice the pay soldiers back at home were getting. It was more than enough to buy food with when you went off base—I mean, a bowl of noodles was just five sen. But it didn’t go far in the brothels, except maybe at the cheapest ones. A woman who was anything like decent cost a lot. So you had to choose between spending twenty days’ pay on a single night or eating out for quite a while, which wasn’t easy. But just around that time I got a sudden windfall. The boss of the Dewaya sent me a letter with twenty yen in it.

  “Apart from getting a new emperor,” it said, “things haven’t changed much here. Asakusa’s as lively as ever, and everybody keeps busy enough. Just make sure you don’t get sick. The money I’m enclosing isn’t much, but you’ll be able to buy yourself something decent to eat with it. I’ll send some more when it’s gone.” I was so pleased with the letter, I took it to bed with me that night.

  I never got to spend any of the money, though. Our letters were censored, and the company commander was told about the cash.

  “Ijichi—what do you think you’re going to spend this money on?”

  “I was thinking of getting myself something to eat, sir.”

  “You mean army rations aren’t good enough for you?”

  “No, sir, it’s not that, it’s just I thought it’d be nice to eat in town once in a while.”

  “There’s far too much money here for you to use. I’ll keep it for you till you’re discharged.”

  I didn’t have any say in the matter, and I didn’t see the money again all the time I was in Hoeryông. There was a White Russian girl in one of the brothels who was a real beauty, and I’d hoped to get something going with her, but I never managed it in the end.

  The Cage

  There was talk of tigers being seen over in Komusan; in Hoeryông, we had wolves. One night, I was on sentry duty, about three months after I was drafted. I was standing with the hills right in front of me, and a moon shining bright and white, and suddenly I heard a wolf howling somewhere up there on the ridge. I looked up and saw the slope of the hill to the east shining silver all over. It was bare—Hill 294, they called it.

  I looked carefully, and I could see a small shape standing out quite clearly against the snow at the top of the hill. It was howling at the moon. “Yeow, yeoow, yeoooow ...,” it was going, dragging it out. It made your hair stand on end. When they heard it, the pigs and chickens who’d been grunting and clucking in the farms round about all suddenly stopped, just like that. Dead silence. Before long, several more shapes turned up alongside the first one on the ridge. Then the number doubled and trebled till there were too many of them to count—and the leader started coming down in this direction.


  There was a deep gully between Hill 294 and another slope. Well, they followed that gully down. I’d already heard that the wolves were attracted by the rubbish dump outside the north gate of the base, and it seemed that was what they were after now. They came to scavenge there when they ran out of food up in the hills.

  Before long, the pack reached the bottom of the gully and headed straight across the frozen fields, with their leader out in front. I had my gun, of course, but they kept coming on quite steadily, so I didn’t feel too happy. The other sentry and me were still wondering if it was all right, and whether we shouldn’t alert the sergeant, when the wolves came right up to us.

  It’s funny, you know—the wolves on their side seemed to know that we weren’t going to fire our guns without good cause. If this wasn’t the case, they’d hardly have had the nerve to come right up close like that. In the end, this great pack of wolves was only about thirty yards away. Then the leader and what seemed to be his followers started eating, with one of them, a tough-looking brute, acting as a sort of guard to keep an eye on us. By now, Sergeant Sugano had got wind of what was happening and came creeping up with three men to have a look, but though one of the pack was still keeping a wary eye in this direction, the rest went on busily eating without paying us any attention.

  I don’t know how long this lasted, but in the end the leader stretched his head up into the air and howled—“yeow, yeoow, yeoooow ...”—and the whole mob suddenly stopped what they’d been doing, just like that. Some of them must have wanted to go on eating, but I suppose they’re a bit like our own gangs, and the boss’s word is law.

  The wolf bringing up the rear kept looking back as they scampered off. They really had things well organized, those wolves; the sergeant and the rest of us just stood there marveling at it. Ordinary animals wouldn’t stand much chance against the likes of them. It’s not so much that wolves are strong, it seems, as they’re intelligent.