Confessions of a Yakuza Read online

  Nagano told me other stories about the war as well. There was nothing sentimental about him—it didn’t bother him at all that some of his pals had been killed. He said he’d been given any number of decorations, and I expect it was true. Let’s face it, it’s men like him that make the best soldiers, isn’t it?...

  Anyway, a year passed in no time at all, and before long I was outside the gates meeting all the gang. But, for some reason or other, the train was delayed, and we missed the ferry across to the main island. I was furious; I’d wanted to get back to Asakusa as soon as possible. But it was dark by then, so we booked into an inn.

  That was where we were lucky. We were pretty shaken the next morning when we heard that the ferry we were supposed to have taken had sunk. It was the Toya-maru disaster. A typhoon came that way unexpectedly, and more than a thousand people drowned. You never know your luck, do you?...

  Old Acquaintance

  Ijichi Eiji was sitting on the sofa, his head swaying slightly from side to side. A soft spring sunlight shone through the glass of the sliding doors.

  “Isn’t it time you lay down again?” said Hatsuyo.

  “I’m all right. Bring in that thing I was telling you about, will you?” He lit a cigarette for himself and took a puff at it. The woman soon came back, holding a heavy-looking object wrapped in paper. She put it on the table and opened it, to reveal the black rock I’d already seen once before.

  “I don’t want it to be a nuisance, doctor,” he said, “but I wonder if I could give you this.” He squinted at it sleepily. “If you put it in the right kind of shallow dish and pour clean water over it, it looks quite impressive, especially in the morning light.”

  He poked lightly at the stone with a dry, brown finger, and it rocked a little in the sunlight.

  On the way home, I stopped at a shop and bought a low, bluish-colored bowl of the right size. The following day, however, I had a cold and took to my bed. It continued for a week, and it still hadn’t cleared up completely when one day, quite unexpectedly, a letter arrived. According to the postmark, it was from Ishioka, about twenty miles northeast of where I lived.

  When I opened it, this is what it said:

  It’s turned a lot warmer, so I hope you’re better by now. I want to thank you for all the nice talks we had this winter. I’d been thinking that I’d stay in Tsuchiura for the rest of my time, but I suddenly decided to move to Ishioka. My health is much the same as ever. There’s a hospital near here where they said they’d send somebody over to have a look at me whenever there’s anything wrong, so please don’t worry about me. I’m sure you’re as busy as ever, so take care of yourself.

  Yours sincerely,

  Ijichi Eiji

  That was all. It was so sudden that I couldn’t imagine what was behind it. I tried telephoning Hatsuyo, but she must have been away, because there was never any answer. So, once I’d recovered, I decided to go to Ishioka to find out for myself.

  I had no trouble finding the place. It was a restaurant in the center of town, with a miniature wisteria stretching out its branches in a pot beside the entrance.

  I asked for him at the cash register.

  “Just a moment, sir,” the girl said, and trotted off toward the kitchen. Almost at once, a rather refined-looking woman appeared.

  She seemed to be in her mid-fifties, though she might have been older. She bowed and said, as though she’d known me for years: “You’ve been so good to him. I’m afraid his room’s a bit cramped, but would you like to come upstairs?”

  He was lying in an eight-mat room, with a flower arrangement in one corner.

  “You shouldn’t have come all this way just to see me,” he said in a husky voice.

  “How are you?” I asked.

  “As you can see.” He then introduced me to the woman, saying that she owned the restaurant, and was now looking after him.

  She bowed to me again, her forehead touching the tatami this time. Returning the formality, I found myself wondering what her connection with the man was, but he made no move to enlighten me. He changed the subject by saying I’d lost a little weight, and nothing further was said about the matter. There seemed to be some phlegm stuck in his throat, and with every breath he took there was a drawn-out wheezing sound.

  “I haven’t forgotten to water the stone as you told me to,” I said.

  “My old boss used to say it reminded him of Mt. Asama, but to me it looked just like one of the hills near our base in Korea.... Have you ever done any climbing, doctor?”

  “I used to, but I’m a bit past it now.”

  “Don’t be silly—you’ve hardly reached your prime!”

  A grin passed over the dark, mottled cheeks, and he coughed moistly a couple of times. The woman brought a teapot and poured some fresh tea into my cup.

  “Do you want some too?” she asked him.

  “No, I’ll have it later. When I drink tea,” he explained to me, “I always have to take a leak; it’s a nuisance. By the way—do you remember me talking about Saburo?”

  “The man who made a pile at the end of the war?”

  “That’s right. He turned up suddenly just the other day. Five or six days ago, wasn’t it?”

  “Four,” the woman put in.

  “Was it?... Anyway, he hadn’t changed a bit. The same funny little man with shifty-looking eyes. ‘Nice to see you, boss,’ he said, ‘it’s been a while. You’re looking pretty well.’ But he went straight on: ‘To tell the truth, I heard a rumor you hadn’t long to go, so I hopped on a train to see you one last time before you croaked.’ And he roared with laughter, the little bastard. Then we got to talking, said what fun it’d been in the old days, when you could do more or less as you liked. Everybody’s so serious nowadays, there’s no fun in things at all. Anyway, I asked him what he’s doing now, and it turns out he’s got a job cleaning bars, snack bars—that sort of place. Not that he’s ashamed of it—oh no. ‘I like to do things properly,’ he said. ‘Once they’ve seen what I can do, they never ask anyone else. I do two places before lunch, and two more in the afternoon. Then I get on my bike and go fishing. Or go to the races if I feel like it.’ ”

  “So he hasn’t changed much?”

  “Just the same as ever. But he’s getting on, too, like the rest of us. If you want to hear his story, you’d better hurry up.”

  “I would like to meet him, actually.”

  “I thought you might, so I got him to leave his phone number. If you’re interested, I’ll call him for you.”

  “I’d appreciate it. Still, it’s more important to me that you get better. I haven’t heard all you have to tell me yet.”

  “You mean you don’t want me to die till you’ve heard the end of the story? You’re more of a stickler than I thought, doctor. Actually, though, nothing much happened after I came back from Abashiri —nothing worth telling you about, at least. Well, there was one little incident that ended up with me cutting off another finger, but ...”

  “When did it happen?”

  “No, don’t ask—honestly, it was a silly business.... Anyway,” he went on, “Kamezo died soon after I got out, and I was getting a bit decrepit myself, so I decided to retire.... You must have thought at first that, being kind of well known in the yakuza world, I’d have some pretty exciting tales to tell. But, you know, the yakuza live on the shady side of life—it’s not half as flashy as people think. I feel a bit bad about letting you come so often to that shack of mine, and not being able to tell you anything really interesting.”

  “Nonsense! You’ve no idea how much it’s meant to me, getting to know you.”

  The woman put a little plate in front of me, with a cake in the shape of a nightingale on it.

  “I don’t know if you like sweet things, doctor...,” she said.

  “It’s clever how they make them, isn’t it?” I replied, looking at the cake admiringly.

  “I went to Fukagawa yesterday,” she said, “to the Tomioka Hachiman shrine. I bought them
on the way back.”

  “Do you often go to Tokyo?”

  “No, hardly ever.”

  She smiled and poured me another cup of tea.

  “I remember, doctor,” the man put in, “you had a picture in your place. Asakusa in the old days. They said your father did it. Is that right?”

  “Yes. He didn’t start painting till he was well into his sixties. That one was done when he was around seventy. And he’s still working as a doctor, too.”

  “It’s just like the Asakusa I knew when I was young. The slum area, with the wives squatting outside their shoddy little tenements, gossiping as they cooked some fish for supper on little charcoal grills.... The kids behind the shoji with their tattered paper.... And the men in cotton half-coats, walking home along the boards that covered the open drains.... When I worked at the coal depot, I used to see that kind of scene every day, but almost before I realized it, the whole thing had changed. Then, after I retired, I came to see you—and there was that picture. It really took me back.... Is it still there?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “I’m glad.”

  It was past two o’clock by the time I called a halt to the conversation and, with a promise to come again soon, went back downstairs. The woman came out into the road to see me off. I was still completely in the dark as to who she was.

  Ijichi Eiji died less than a month later. The funeral was a very quiet affair. I met Saburo there, and was astonished to find him exactly as Eiji had pictured him. I introduced myself, and he told me that Eiji had phoned him about me. “Come and look me up sometime,” he said.

  I also saw Hatsuyo at the funeral, for the first time in several months.

  “How are you getting home?” I asked.

  “Well, I came by train,” she said, so I offered to take her in my car. This gave me a chance to ask her about the woman in Ishioka.

  “That was Omitsu,” she said. “The girl he ran off with all those years ago. Didn’t he tell you?”

  “Who’d have thought it.... I had the impression they never saw each other again.”

  “To be quite honest, I didn’t know much about it myself. I only took up with him during the war, years later.”

  She glanced over at me as we drove along.

  “So you’d never met her before?” I asked.

  “When Kamezo died—it’s quite a while ago now—she came to the wake.... I heard later that she’d had a rough time after that business with Eiji, but in the end she went back to the inn her parents ran, married a decent man who was adopted into the family, and kept the inn going after both her parents died. I expect Eiji knew about it, but he doesn’t seem to have gone to see her. When Kamezo died, though, she turned up at the wake, alone. And it was only a few months later that he cut off the other finger.”

  “What did he do it for?”

  “He went to visit her, and got into a quarrel there. It was all so stupid.... He just went out in the morning, and when he came home the finger was gone.”

  “It must have been quite a quarrel.”

  “If only it had been, I wouldn’t have minded so much.... Anyway, after Kamezo’s funeral he went over to her place, and found her alone. So they were sitting there chatting, just the two of them, when the husband got home. According to Eiji at least, the man seemed to be a bit peculiar. He’d checked up on her, and knew all the details.

  “Anyway, Eiji introduced himself, and the husband—apparently he was fairly drunk—got Omitsu to bring them some more saké, then started rambling on about the past. Eiji felt a bit awkward and tried to leave, but the other man wouldn’t let him go. Before long, he’d got himself worked up and began to shout, laying into Eiji for showing up suddenly like that when he wasn’t there.”

  “It took some guts to do that, knowing Eiji was a yakuza.”

  “I expect he thought his wife had cheated on him. And he wasn’t sober, either. Anyway, he ended up punching Eiji.”

  “That bad, was it?”

  “And you know what Eiji did then? Of all the stupid things—he went and cut his finger off—there, on the spot, the middle finger of his left hand. I ask you!”

  “When was this?”

  “He was over sixty-five at the time.”

  “Not so long ago, then.”

  “No, it wasn’t. And just think of it—losing both fingers for the same thing! I suppose he wanted to make himself look good in front of Omitsu. I mean, no yakuza’s going to do that just to save some little innkeeper’s skin—a lousy small-town drunk like that. But Eiji—no, he has to chop it straight off for his old flame’s sake. Just to impress her.”

  She gave a faint, ironic smile and lit a cigarette. On both sides of the road, paddy fields swept past, and the sunset still lingered in the sky beyond the hills.

  “And what happened then?”

  “She left home. Eiji made various arrangements to help her get by, and then—I’m not sure, but I think he bought her the restaurant she’s got now.”

  “I see....”

  “I suppose you’re wondering why he didn’t move in with her right away,” she said, looking over at me.

  “Well, I can’t help being curious.”

  “I know you can’t, and I’m not blaming you. But don’t forget, I may not be much to look at now, but I’m still a woman, and I’ve got my pride.” She spoke rather more strongly than usual.

  “Around the time I first went to live with him, I wasn’t well and couldn’t do anything much. Okyo used to do all the work by herself. Even so, once Okyo had set up in business on her own, I ran the household. And for a long time after that, I looked after him myself. It may have been because of that—maybe he felt he couldn’t just throw me out. And besides, we had a daughter; I expect that was another reason, too.

  “We came to Tsuchiura in the first place because our daughter took up with a man there; they said there was a nice house near them, and couldn’t we join them, so we decided to move. Unfortunately, she fell out with the man and went back to Tokyo—she’s got a place of her own now, where she teaches Japanese dancing. Anyway, the two of us were left there by ourselves. But now that I knew about Omitsu, I was forever wondering whether I shouldn’t give him up. Of course, I’d always rather be with somebody than live alone, even if the other person’s sick. But I couldn’t help brooding about it, and I began to think it was cruel in a way to keep him with me. And in the end it got too much for me.

  “So one day I went to Ishioka and put it to her. Yes, she said, she’d like to take him, if it was all right with me. So I said, well then, I’ll make you a present of him, and that settled it.

  “But you know, I never meant to keep him till he got that feeble. By the time out daughter went back to Tokyo, I’d already made up my mind. It was your fault, doctor, that it got so late.”

  She struck a match, without taking her eyes off the dark road ahead.

  “I thought his talks with you would be over in no time. But then you started coming almost every day—all through the winter, too. In his heart of hearts, I imagine he wanted to be with her as soon as possible. But he wanted to talk, as well.... So it was put off, and put off, and then his health broke down. If anybody, it should be you, doctor, that Omitsu resents, not me.”

  “I had no idea....”

  “Don’t worry—I wasn’t really serious. If he’d really wanted to go, he wouldn’t have waited a single day, even. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, really, that he left it so late.”

  Outside the car windows, the lights of Tsuchiura were already flicking by.

  “Incidentally,” said Hatsuyo, “there’s one last thing I’d like to ask you. What do you really feel about him? I mean, he had a pretty wild life, and he killed a man, whatever his reasons, and he went to jail several times. It was a rotten world he lived in. Maybe that’s what made him interesting for you. But you went on seeing him, for months on end. Why?”

  “Well.... You know, you were too close to him; that’s why you can say things like that. It may t
ake a while, but you’ll see him differently then.”

  “Really?...”

  “I promise you.”

  “All right, I’ll take your word for it.... Could you drop me off at the station, please? You see, I’ve moved in with my daughter in Tokyo. Why don’t you come and visit us sometime—when the morning-glory fair is on, for instance?”

  As she was getting out of the car, she wrote down her address and phone number on a scrap of paper.

  “Well, then—goodbye, doctor.”

  “Goodbye.”

  And she went off slowly up the station stairs.

  Originally published by Chikuma Shobo in 1989 under the title

  Asakusa bakuto ichidai. Previously published as The Gambler’s Tale.

  Distributed in the United States by Kodansha America, Inc., and in the

  United Kingdom and continental Europe by Kodansha Europe Ltd.

  Published by Kodansha International Ltd., 17–14 Otowa 1-chome,

  Bunkyo-ku Tokyo 112–8652, and Kodansha America, Inc.

  Copyright © 1991 Junichi Saga. Illustrations by Susumu Saga

  All rights reserved. Printed in Japan.

  ISBN 978–4–7700–1948–6

  First edition, 1991

  First paperback edition, 1995

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  www.kodansha-intl.com