Confessions of a Yakuza Read online

  That sent Tsuru right up the wall. There were endless quarrels between them, and the mother came in tears to see me and beg me to give her up. Tears or not, though, that was too much to ask; I might have done it if Omon herself had said she wanted to split up, but she didn’t, so there wasn’t anything I could do. Anyway, after a lot of wrangling, Tsuru gave in, looking fit to howl.

  That made me feel pretty bad about it, too, so I went to see her several times to try and bring her around. But she still hadn’t really given up the fight. Whenever I went, she had some complaint or other to make. The bitching just went on and on. If I kept quiet—she was the girl’s mother, after all —she just took advantage of it, got carried away.

  In the end, I decided things couldn’t go on like that, there was no telling what would happen. So one day I stuck a knife in my sash and took Kamezo, with a coil of rope around his shoulder, and burst in on the dancing master and Tsuru just as they were having a nice cup of tea together. We looked pretty threatening, and it shook them up.

  “What do you want?” they said, and tried to get away, but their legs just buckled under them. So we grabbed hold of them, bound them up, side by side, with the rope, then flung the end over a beam and hauled them up in the air. Then I drove the knife home into the tatami underneath them.

  “Well—how about it?” I said. “D’you want to go on as you’ve been doing? Or will you stop complaining about us from now on?” They just hung there, too startled to say anything. So this time Kamezo said:

  “See here, lady. Eiji’s a big man in our business. I mean, you’ll be much better off with him than if you’d made the girl some rich man’s mistress. Look—he’s offering to fix you up for the rest of your life, so why not relax and enjoy life together?”

  Tsuru by now had gone quite pale and just nodded and grunted, again and again. So we pulled the knife out of the floor and let them down.

  “Well, then,” I said, putting my hands in front of me on the tatami and bowing down low. “I’m sorry things got a bit rough. But that’s the way I am, and I just hope we can get on better for a long time to come.” And before I left I put an envelope with some money in it on the table.

  She never made any more fuss, you know. I’d drop in occasionally to leave some pocket money for her, and she’d just sit there, all quiet and shrunk up. I was hoping she might call it quits and cheer up, but it wasn’t to be. So I left her to it, and Omon herself didn’t say anything more about her, either.

  Without either of us wanting it particularly, we soon had another woman on our hands. It happened like this.

  It was the end of 1937, when business was good at my place and I was getting to be a proper boss in the gambling world. One day, I had an early bath, then put on a kimono and went out for a stroll in Asakusa with Kamezo. We were walking along when I saw this Salvation Army man in an old-fashioned uniform standing at the corner of a little shopping street, beating a drum and asking for money. Even nowadays you still see them sometimes in the better parts of town, but in the old days the Salvation Army was very active everywhere, preaching and fund-collecting at the same time. So I got out my wallet and gave Kamezo ten yen.

  Shopping street near the Kannon temple

  “Here—go and put this in his box,” I told him.

  That brought the man straight over. “Many thanks,” he said, “and God bless you—He won’t forget.”

  As far as I was concerned, the more God forgot the better, and I wondered if I hadn’t gone a bit too far for once.

  But then I noticed he had these terrible burn scars all over one side of his face. All swollen and purple—you couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. He got a card out of his pocket and said, “Please contact me if ever I can be of any help.” The card had the Salvation Army address on it, and the man’s name: if I remember rightly it said Hashiba somebody or other, and he was a captain in rank. The burn apart, he looked rather distinguished, with a good, strong sort of face. I was impressed; I’d never realized they had that kind of man in his sort of work.

  But we’d come out to enjoy ourselves, so we said goodbye and left him, and we hadn’t been strolling around long before we’d forgotten all about the Salvation Army. We dropped in at two or three places for a drink and a bite to eat, and got fairly plastered, then I called a cab, sent Kamezo on home, and told the driver to take me across the river to a brothel I knew called Yamaki. But I must have gone to sleep, because before I realized it the driver was saying we were there. Feeling nice and comfortable I hauled myself up, paid the fare, and got out. I then made my way into the waiting room and called for them to bring me a cup of tea.

  At this, the madam turns up and wants to know if I’ve ever been to her place before. So I tell her, rather sharp, that she must be half asleep or something, and not to be so unfriendly.

  “No, really,” she says, perfectly serious, “this is the first time I’ve seen you, sir.”

  I couldn’t believe it. So I took another look around me, and something didn’t seem to fit. Damned if I hadn’t got the wrong place!

  “Hey—where exactly am I?” I asked.

  “Why, at Komonjiro, of course.”

  “Well, I really have screwed things up! Sorry.” And I got up to go.

  “But it doesn’t really matter, does it?” she said—she was only doing her job, after all. “Maybe it was lucky in a way. So please—why not stay now that you’re here?”

  “Well, then, perhaps I will...,” I said, and popped upstairs.

  So I spent the night with one of the girls there called Okyo. But for someone in a place like that she was a real amateur. When I asked her how long she’d been working there, she said only three months. It must be pretty tough, I said. That made her look like she was going to burst into tears, and she began to tell me all about herself, things she’d never told anyone else, apparently. It was—well, a miserable story. But I’d come there for a good time, and I couldn’t afford to be too softhearted. So I just kept saying “I see ... oh, yes ... dreadful,” and so on, to make her feel better.

  But that only made her more serious still. “If only I could get out of here,” she said, sitting on the quilt and crying, with this bright-colored shift draped over her shoulders. But what did she expect me to do about it? I was in a fix. She seemed to mean business, too, which made it all the more awkward.

  So I told her: “OK, listen ... maybe it was fate or something, me coming here, so let’s talk about it again next time we meet. Then I’ll do whatever I can.”

  I was just talking, of course—I wasn’t planning on going there again, and, after all, she was in the trade, she’d forget all about me as soon as the next man came along. But I was wrong there. You see—it must have been about two months later—she actually came to call on me, bringing another woman with her.

  It was in the daytime, around noon, and I was reading the paper in the back room when one of my youngsters came in and said,

  “Boss, there are a couple of women out front saying they’ve come to see you.”

  “What kind of women?” I asked, puzzled.

  “Personally, I’d say they were that kind of woman.” It was obvious what he meant, but by then I’d forgotten all about Komonjiro and hadn’t a clue who “that kind of woman” could be. So I told him to show them in, kept them waiting a while, then went out to see them. And, of course, it was the girl I’d been with in the brothel.

  “Hey,” I said, surprised. “What’s up?”

  “Well, actually, I came to ask your advice, I thought you might help.”

  “What is it, then?” I said, and it turned out she’d run away.

  “For a while after I saw you I tried to put up with it,” she said, “but just then a letter came saying my father was sick and they were in trouble at home. So I asked them if I could go back for a while, but they refused to let me go.”

  Whenever one of the women in the red-light district went out, a man called a “minder” used to go with her, so usually there wasn
’t any chance of running away even if the woman wanted to. I asked her how she’d managed it, and she told me that just around that time there’d been a circus in the area.

  There was a pond with quite a big open space around it, and the circus had taken over this empty ground for a while. They had all the usual things: elephants and tigers, and trumpets tootling away, and a man at the wicket shouting, “The world’s greatest circus! Elephants! Acrobats! Just beginning! Roll up, roll up!” As she and another girl were going past the tents, they found a place where you could see into one of them, and they stopped and watched for a bit. The “minder,” too, got wrapped up in it, so she thought: it’s now or never. She signaled to the other girl with her eyes, and they ran for all they were worth.

  “I get the picture...,” I said, feeling this was really awkward. You see, for a prostitute to run away in those days was a full-fledged crime. The brothel keeper had bought the woman for so many hundred yen, and if she ran off before she’d paid it all back the police were called in. Even if she reached her own home, they’d bring her back again, so there was no real point in escaping in the first place.

  It put me, too, on the spot. It was out of the question to keep them there at my place, but, seeing them, I hadn’t the heart to kick them out, either. I was wondering what the hell to do, when all of a sudden I remembered Captain Hashiba of the Salvation Army.

  In those days the Salvation Army had its headquarters in Kanda. They were very keen on the “emancipation” of prostitutes, and they’d already got some quite good results. What they preached was that prostitutes should be free to give up the job if they wanted to. And they spread the idea that women who tried to give up the work should be given protection.

  Just the thing, I thought to myself, and I phoned them up right away. Luckily enough, Captain Hashiba was there at the time, and remembered who I was. So I explained the situation and asked him if he couldn’t do something.

  “That’s a very good thing you’ve done,” he said. “I’ll come immediately.” And he arrived within the hour. They told him their story, and he listened carefully.

  “I see,” he said finally. “I’ll try to fix things up.” The girls bowed happily and said “Please!” and went straight off with him. Later on—several weeks, I suppose it was—Hashiba turned up to say it had been arranged for them to get out, and I wasn’t to worry any more, and I was to get in touch if I ever needed him again.

  As he was talking, I took a good look at his scarred face, and thought to myself that it takes all kinds to make a world.

  Anyway, that’s not the end of the story. One day not long before the beginning of the war, the same girl suddenly showed up at my place again. I asked her what the hell she was doing there, and she said she wanted me to give her a job—like that, right out of the blue. “If I stay at home I think they’ll sell me off again,” she says, “so I’ve run away.”

  I asked her a bit more about it, and it seemed her father was a real bastard; I even began to feel I’d have run away myself if I’d been in her shoes. As it happened, my wife, Omon, turned up just then and asked what was happening. Omon had a house she used as a school to teach dancing in; she had about ten pupils, and was doing pretty well.

  “Listen, why don’t you send her to work at my place?” she said.

  “But you’ve got a maid already, haven’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said, “but she’s such a slut, I’ve been thinking I could do with another one as well.”

  Then she said straight out to the girl: “I’m not easy to please, and I may be a bit of a nag, but if you don’t mind that, will you come and try it?”

  The girl wasn’t in any position to pick and choose. So that decided it: she went to work at Omon’s house.

  This was the Okyo that was so helpful to me later on. Seeing that I’d been to bed with her at Komonjiro, I had my doubts about the arrangement, but it didn’t seem to bother Omon at all.

  The Payroll

  About two years before the war, I took over as head of the Dewaya. Strictly speaking, Muramatsu was still boss, but he’d ruined his health with drugs and was in and out of the hospital, so I was left in charge. The trouble was, though, that by then Japan had got itself bogged down in the war with China, business in general was in a slump, and we were feeling the pinch on our side, too.

  I told you before—maybe I didn’t—that our headquarters was at 1-1 Shinhata-cho, Asakusa. That meant it was slap bang in the middle of the entertainment district, and our territory was one of the best. Even so, good territory doesn’t mean you can afford to sit around and take things easy. As they say, every stream has its depths and shallows, and our business is no different. What it boils down to is that you can’t win at gambling, or bring in a lot of players, just by willing it. You wonder sometimes why, when you’ve got a perfectly good gambling joint, everybody goes elsewhere; but it’s not something you can explain logically.

  And it’s just as likely to go the other way, too. I mean, that the right kind of customers can pour in even though you’re not putting yourself out to attract them. When that happens, your popularity attracts more people still, and you find yourself doing a roaring trade. Looking back on it now, I can see that the period when I first joined the Dewaya was one of the very best—the money was just rolling in. But maybe I ought to tell you something at least about where the money went to.

  In my time, twenty percent was deducted from the day’s earnings right at the start. Suppose that on one evening there was an income—by today’s reckoning—of ten million yen, we’d set two million aside. Then the boss would take sixty percent of the remainder, and divide the rest among the other men. What about the twenty percent deducted at the beginning, you’ll say. Well, first there was the money that went to pay allowances to anyone in jail. Then there were the everyday expenses—they came out of the twenty percent as well.

  But what about the sixty percent that went to the boss? It looks like a hefty profit. It wasn’t as simple as all that, though: it wasn’t as if it went into his pocket and stayed there for him to do what he liked with.

  The first thing to remember is that in that trade people, all kinds of them, flock around wherever there’s money. It’s like having ticks—there are just too many of them for you to shake them all off, however much you try. You find yourself with ten or twenty hangers-on, for a start. These aren’t people you’ve asked to stay with you—they’re mostly young gamblers. And they don’t bring any cash with them, either; no, they’ve drifted over because they’ve heard you were doing well, and so you have to give them something to play with.

  If you ask why we do that, it’s because among gamblers there’s always been a sort of mutual aid system. Well, I don’t know whether you could really call it a system. Anyway, say you’ve got ten brothers—ten gambling bosses who’ve all made a solemn promise to help each other out. Well, it never happens, under any circumstances, that all the gangs are going strong at the same time. If thirty percent are doing fine and thirty percent are getting by, then you can be sure that the other forty will be doing practically no business at all. And that’s at normal times, too; when I became the boss in Asakusa, business as a whole was more or less at a standstill, and you could have counted the number of gambling joints making good money in Tokyo on the fingers of one hand. I’d say about a third at most were just struggling along. The rest were “open for no business,” as we used to say.

  Now, once the customers stop coming, there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t make a river flow backwards, and it’s the same with them. That’s a pretty serious matter, however you look at it—particularly if you’ve got a lot of men you’re responsible for. You’re stuck. So what you do is farm some of your guys out with another boss who’s doing better. They don’t stay there at night, but they hang around during the games, and the boss gives them some pocket money to gamble and buy food with. It wouldn’t be right, of course, to dump dozens of them on one single joint, so you divide them up
among several. Even so, if there are several bosses in trouble at the same time, the number of guys put out to pasture goes up accordingly, and it gets difficult to look after them all.

  With gambling, you never know when you’re going to lose your players; just because things are going well at the moment doesn’t mean it’s going to be the same in a few years’ time. So there was a kind of rule that bosses who were doing OK should look after those who weren’t. It was quite common for someone who had, say, thirty men of his own to be feeding as many as twice that number. It was tough, but if you couldn’t do that much you might as well have quit. There’s a yakuza saying that you should be willing to risk your life to give a brother a meal and a night’s shelter. In actual practice, though, there’s much more to it than that: even at normal times, we were always helping each other out, and whenever some real trouble cropped up we’d make any sacrifice to meet our obligations to each other.

  In movies and novels, the yakuza are always reaching for a sword or a gun, but that’s just bullshit. Professionals were different in those days. Their job, the job they depended on for a living, was to shake the dice and give their customers a good time, which meant it was actually quite rare for them to quarrel. There were bosses who didn’t see eye to eye, of course, but if they’d started carving each other up just because they didn’t get on well, the police would have clamped down on them, and their business would have folded. So in a way you could say we were more accommodating generally than ordinary people.

  Anyway, what about other expenses? Well, there were things like presents at funerals and when people were sick. These set you back quite a bit. If the boss of some gang or other died, you had to send along a gift of money, on a scale that matched the connection you’d had with him. Or if his wife, say, or a close relative died, you still had to fork out a fairly large amount. Even when some youngster from a brother’s gang had finished a spell in jail, it meant another little envelope with cash inside.