Youve just been given your first lesson in engaging Japan, and

the Japanese.

BEHIND THE JAPANESE

MAFIA: DINNER WITH
A YAKUZA MOB BOSS

Several years ago I had been in-country a year or so I

was out with a Japanese friend. We were in a small town near
the village where I lived. A hot spring resort town. An onsen
town. I had learned previously that these spa towns had a
large number of mens clubs, also known as Soap Land.
Basically, brothels. But legal ones, despite the fact that
prostitution is completely *il*legal in Japan. These
establishments are all run by the Yakuza.
Where there are spas, there are mens clubs so, working
girls. Where there are working girls, there are Yakuza. So, spa
towns are mob towns. Basic equation. My math is generally
pretty shitty, but I figured that one out pretty fast. Got a solid
hold on that ura.
My friend wanted to take me to one of his favorite restaurants.
It was famous for its okonomiyaki. The Japanese will tell you
that okonomiyaki is a Japanese pancake. Which is fucked.
First off, its more like hash browns.

The Japanese mafia, known globally as The Yakuza, is a funny

beast.
For example, they dont hide themselves away from the prying
eyes of law enforcement. In fact, you can usually look their
local office up in the yellow pages. They have a sign outside.
When you go inside, some nice lady in some sort of office
worker uniform will greet you, seat you, and scurry about to
bring you tea or a cup of coffee (one stick of sugar, one
packet of creamer) while you wait. Not unlike going to see the
mayor, or making a business call to some corporate office.
Thats what the Japanese call the omote the surface, or
facade. The demeanor. The front. Everything you see, and
everyone you meet, in Japan, has this omote. Knowing it
quickly sets you up to be better informed about whatever or
whoever it is you are dealing with. Much the same as
everywhere else on the planet. Only here, its more like
religion...and pervades and dictates every single interaction in
which you will ever engage. And everyone respects that.
Behind that front office, where youre drinking that coffee, lie
other offices. And any number of various and sundry deals and
deeds are prosecuted from those offices. Drugs, guns,
gambling, prostitution, slavery, import/export, shipping, used
car sales, public works, charities, youth basketball tournaments.
That backroom shit is what the Japanese call the ura the
undercurrent, or back.
The nature. The actual. This balances the omote, and is
balanced by it. And everything in Japan has this, too. Knowing
it is no less important for your situational awareness and
preparedness, but much fucking harder to get a hold on. And
everyone respects that, as well.

But instead of potatoes, they use noodles. And instead of

cheese or onions, that shit is smothered and covered with things
like squid chunks, dried fish flakes, cabbage, and whatever
else the shop youre eating in is famous for putting in it. In this
case, some kind of special sauce. In any case, the shit aint a
pancake. And I was in this place with my buddy shooting the
shit and trying to make sense of this thing as a food.
We exchanged some pleasantries with the guy behind the bar,
and his wife who was clearly not Japanese, but still Asian. I
asked my buddy about that, he said she was Filipina. He said
the bar mans ex-wife is married to the shop owner, who lives
upstairs. Interesting ... the plot thickens.
As we kicked off our shoes and settled into our table, the bar
mans teenage daughter brought over the ingredients and
some beers. You cook this stuff yourself on a flat grill set into
the table. You sit on the floor, J-style. Shoes, obviously, off. She
tried some English on me.
Everyone knows: Im the Eigo-jin. The English Speaker. So,
people always want to try their Herro and Fock and
Sheet on me. I do my part to correct them.

Once the daughter got the stuff on the table, she headed back
behind the bar and the bar man came over. He knew my
friend, so there was an introduction. (Another very important
part of J-culture.)
He had brought over more ingredients, and I noticed as he put
them on the table that he was missing sections of fingers on his
left hand. As I stood to bow and do my introduction stuff, he
hid his left hand behind him and held out his right hand for the
semi-Western bow-shake. Told me I was welcome, and the
beers were free. No such thing as a free beer in Japan.
After he left, I asked my buddy about the missing fingers. He
laughed. Confirmed the bar man had once been Yakuza, and
though youre never really out, all this guy did now was run
this shop. After a few more questions, I learned that the owner
upstairs was also Yakuza, and that the bar man owed the
owner a life debt. So, that life debt got paid in part by the
bar mans first wife, who was now the owners wife.
The rest of the life debt meant that the bar man worked his ass
off, for pennies...until he died. Not really all that different from
the rest of Japanese work life, if you look at it. I started
pounding these free beers, so my friend would do the same. As
he got drunker, and I didnt, I started to ask more questions.
Drinking with the Japanese is part gut-check, part strategy
game. Even with your friends. Watch closely for their red
cheeks. Thats usually your telegraph that shits gonna start
getting weird, and that omotes gonna get shaky.

After awhile, I learned that the owner was also the towns
Yakuza boss. And was known for being brutal. Ran a lot of
foreign girls through the local spa towns for whatever creepass sex shit was going down. That could have been anything
from rape fetishes on imitation trains, to vulva mini-golf. My
buddy knew more, but wasnt talking. He changed the subject.
Hes into Harleys. So we talked Harleys. I know exactly three
things about Harleys: 1) they are a motorcycle, 2) jack, and 3)
shit.
A few minutes later, I heard a door open upstairs and heavy
feet coming down the stairs. The stairs were in the back part of
this shop, at the far end of the bar. The owner and his wife
came down. There was an exchange between the owner and
the bar man.
The women stayed quiet. The bar man kept his head down.
Japanese kinesics might as well be neon signs. The bar man
motioned over to me and my friend. The owner turned, smiled,
said something to the bar man, and came over. I stood up
again, bowed, bullshitted through another intro, and shook his
hand. Or, what was left of it.
I was pretty surprised. This guy had about as many fingers
total as a jack-o- lantern had teeth. Which means that this
guy had been around awhile, and fucked up a lot. See, you
lose one section (tip to first knuckle, knuckle to next knuckle,
then on to the next finger; left pinky, working toward thumb,
then right hand) for fucking up. This is called yubitsume, or
finger cutting.
This guy was bulging out of his sweet powderblue Members
Only jacket. Used to be cut, you could see. Still moved like he
was fit, though he wasnt. Couldve been a wrestler back in the
days when Japans economy worked. This helped explain why
he was known as being brutal. He was *physical*.
He said something to his wife and then again to the bar man.
The wife bowed and headed back upstairs, though she was
clearly dressed for a night out.
The bar man brought over a bottle of sake, and some edamame (fresh soy beans, in the pod; salted), while Tanaka Twofingers kicked his shoes off and made himself comfortable at
our table, across from me, leering like a retard. My friend was
smoking, and nervous, but there was no submission in his body
language. That was telling.

So, we drank and I got to know my local mob boss. I dont

remember it exactly, but I think the rhyme goes a little
something like this, Beer before sake, is this technically a
liquor? Or some shit. But we were hitting it pretty heavy.
Therere some rules to drinking in Japan, like I said. Even more
rules if youre drinking with someone above you. I make it an
effort to not ever really abide by those rules.

If you go by those raw public numbers, the Yakuza is the

largest criminal organization in the world. They have offices, or
at least representatives, in any town with more than about
10,000 citizens. Or, if there are spas. And again, thats only
going off the public numbers.
So, we drank and talked and exchanged questions. Turns out
he was a boxer. Into high school girls (some of my high school
students worked in his mens clubs). Never

I aint nobodys boy.

But one of those rules is that you pour the drink for the person
who is above you. Boss, husband ... whatever. So, no one
poured sake for like five fucking minutes, and then the
daughter came over to do it and the boss man got all pissy. So
he poured it. It struck me as weird that he could even hold the
f***ing bottle.
We cleaned that bottle and started another. My buddy was
eyeballing me for us to get the f*ck out. But there was no real
easy way to do that, in this case. And I had more questions to
ask. I learned all kinds of crazy shit from this guy. Stuff Id use
later to make certain connections, understand certain networks.
Stuff Id wish Id never found out, in some cases.
The Yakuza boasts about half the workforce numbers of the
Japanese Self-Defense Forces, or Jieitai. Officially over the
100k mark. Officially. They dont count the street-level lackies,
who dress like roadies from some bad 80s movie, in that
number.
They dont count the fall guys, who take the rap for the higher
ups, and do their jail time. They dont count the people who run
their front businesses like the bar man in the restaurant I
was in. So, those number, just like the rapes, murders,
trafficked humans, and suicides, are streamlined before they
ever hit the light for public consumption.
The news and polite society refers to the Yakuza as a
boryokudan, or violent group. They refer to themselves
openly as a ninkyo dantai, or chivalrous group. Neither of
these is entirely untrue. As mentioned above, they do all kinds
of shit. Including search and rescue, and disaster relief. (Check
out the Kobe earthquake of 1995, and the Tohoku
earthquake/tsunami of 2011.

been anywhere but Korea...and he actually spit on the floor

when he mentioned Korea. And got into the Yakuza in the 80s
to pay off some debts.
All Yakuza groups, and there are several, are very
nationalistic. Most of them are counted among the most ultranationalist organizations in the country. You can spot them
driving around town in black cars and vans, with loud-speakers
condemning foreign-friendly policy, and flying the old-school
Japanese flag with the outreaching sun rays.
This boss was apparently right on script. The largest minority in
Japan is the ethnic Koreans. Some of them are 5th and 6th
generation citizens of Japan...but theyre not really citizens.
And they are definitely not Japanese.
He started to get pretty belligerent. He stopped talking to me,
and started talking to my friend about me. I mean, we all knew
I was sitting there, but as I was a foreigner and from a
nation that actually subjugated his I was now b***s-deep in
this guy's ura. (Pun intended.) So, he would ask questions about
me, and my friend would answer, or ask me, or Id answer (in
Japanese)...which my friend would then repeat. He was losing
control, and pretty quickly. I dont wear a watch, so I asked the
bar man for the time.
Throughout all this, hed occasionally bark something at the bar
man. No one else was in the shop. In a moment of silence, my
friend added that I was into Japanese martial arts, and had
served in the U.S. Army. Thanks, buddy. The boss man laughed.
I understood the word pig in Japanese, by that point. As a
bacon lover, why wouldnt I? Then he asked my friend if I
thought I was a tough guy. My friend said he didnt think that I
thought so, but he (my friend) thought so.
This was getting sketchy real f***ing fast.

At this point, the boss man turned to me, drank the rest of his
sake, and laughed again. That was bottle number two, with
intermittent beers. He moved to stand up, and the bar mans
wife hurried over to get his shoes ready for him. We all stood.
As we did, I asked the boss man if he needed help getting up.
My friend shot me the oh f*ck look. So did the boss man. We
all slid off the little step and into our shoes. I said salamat po
to the Filipina. The bar man edged toward the door, with the
daughter and wife, to tell us all goodbye with that noisy series
of bows. I bowed back and shook the bar mans hand again.
The boss man called toward the ceiling to his wife. She started
down the stairs.
We all moved out into the entryway Japanese houses and
businesses have these little airlock areas, the genkan. The boss
man was drunk, and pretty unstable on his feet. His wife kept
close enough to help out, but far enough not to get hit. The boss
man was rummaging around in his pocket for something, while
my friend gave the bar man some cash, which he did not take.
Once outside, we all the boss man, his wife, my friend, and I
just sort of hovered there in the night air. I mentally
calculated my way home again. Then reached out to shake his
wifes hand and say goodnight, in English. The boss man let out
this noise that junior high kids love to imitate when they are
surprised or disgusted,
Ehhhhhhhhhhh?! And he yelled something to my friend.

tattooed guys in shades and old Cadillacs were. I clearly did

not understand what was going on.
My friend was repeating, We need to go. But he never said
anything to the boss man. Never apologized, or excused the
situation. So, I trapped the boss mans right nub and deflected
it off my chest, stepping backward as I did. I pivoted a
very nicely executed half-right face, I hope bowed to the
boss mans wife, said goodnight and apologized in proper
Japanese. The boss man was screaming at this point. As I
turned toward my friend, the boss man called me a coward
and yelled, What about our challenge?
I stopped, yelled back in Japanese, for the neighborhood,
Fine, lets play piano together sometime, buddy.
The Japanese dont really have a word for f*ck, but he used
the closest one they have.
On the drive home, as my friend was yammering about that
being dangerous and a close call, I formulated what became
my collection plan. By that same time the following year, I had
buried myself so f***ing deep in the seedy underbelly of the
Land of the Rising Sun that I was teaching English privately in
the homes of other bosses, drinking with and tracking several
agents (the men who import girls, then keep their passport
until their debt is paid), paying for time with those women ...
and building the cover Ive been working under ever since:
Crazy Eigo-jin into freaky shit.
Im not sure where the wire is here, but I am way the f*ck
outside it by now... Eyes on, and b***s deep in the dragon,

T.O.

He then put his right nub on my chest and pushed me back.

Spitting as he yelled whatever he was yelling in my face. I did
hear gaijin...outsider. I stood there as he moved closer to me,
big as he was he was shorter than me. And Im short. (But I am
pretty big in Japan.)
We were then face to face like some kind of schoolyard
d***heads about to start talking shit about each others
mother. His right forefinger was in my chest. My friend was
asking me to leave. I would have been happy to do so.
The boss man then offered me a challenge. I didnt understand
what he said, so still face to face I asked my friend to
translate. He did, but was clearly shitting bricks by this point.
The boss mans wife was just standing there staring at her
drunk husband, patiently smiling. I was wondering where the