John Bester - Confessions of a Yakuza: A Life in Japans Underworld

The Author: Junichi Saga is a doctor among whose patients was the subject of this book. Realizing how unusual the mans life had been, he began taping his reminiscences, collecting in the process over a hundred hours of talk.

Dr. Saga, who shares a practice with his elderly father in a country town northeast of Tokyo, has somehow found time to write a number of documentary and fictional works, including a study of Japanese emigration to Hawaii which won the NHK Prize, and Memories of Silk and Straw, voted Best Book of the Year by the foreign press of Japan.

A Life in Japans Underworld

JUNICHI SAGA

Translated by JOHN BESTER

Illustrated by Susumu Saga

KODANSHA INTERNATIONAL

Tokyo New York London

The original edition of this work was published with the help of Kazama Motoharu, of Chikuma Shobo, to whom I am deeply grateful. The English version has been indebted at every stage to Stephen Shaw of Kodansha International, who with his wife Toyomi showed a constant interest in the work from the outset, recommending even before the Japanese version had appeared that it should be translated into English. I am grateful, too, to the translator, John Bester. That he should have chosen this work from among so many possible candidates for translation says something, I feel, about the peculiar fascination of Ijichi Eijis worlda world apparently alien from Japanese norms, yet revealing in fact so much of the average mans thoughts and feelings.

All Japanese names in the text are given in the Japanese order: family name first. A number of cuts have been made in the original, with the authors permission, in order to eliminate passages that would be perplexing or tedious to the non-Japanese reader. I am particularly grateful to the editor, Stephen Shaw, for his excellent work in tightening up and enlivening the translation.

It was a winters day, several years ago. An elderly man, tall and solid-shouldered, turned up at my clinic in Tsuchiura, a town about an hour away from Tokyo by train. His face was a good deal larger than the average persons, with a forehead deeply lined with dark creases, thick, purplish lips, and a muddy, yellowish tinge to the eyeballs: the kind of face that at first glance set him apart from most people.

I got him to strip to the waist. His whole back was covered with a tattooa dragon-and-peony design, though the colors had faded with the years, leaving the dragons scales pale, like stylized clouds, and its whiskers almost at vanishing point. Even so, the design was striking and, in its way, oddly attractive. Inside the petals of the peony stood a woman. The dragon was about to swallow up the peony, and the woman with it. Her eyes were half-closed and her palms joined in prayer, but an enigmatic smile played around her lips.

I would have liked to photograph it if possible, but Id never seen the man before in my life, and something about his air of absolute assurance made me hesitate, so in the end I never got around to making the suggestion.

Examining his abdomen, I found the liver enlarged. It was obvious that there was fluid collected in the abdominal cavity. As I waited for him to get up from the examining table, I said,

Ill give you an introduction to a general hospital; I think youd better get treated there.

But he smiled slightly and said,

Im seventy-three, doctor. Ive done pretty much as I pleased all my life, and I dont expect to be cured at this stage.

The inside of his mouth was black with nicotine, so that it was like peering into a small cave. His voice was low and hoarse.

I was a bit wild when I was young, Im afraid, and now my body refuses to do as I say any more. So I decided to hand the gambling place over to one of my younger men and retire here to the country. You know the massage woman who lives below the embankment? I had her give me a rubdown two or three times; quite a hand at it, she is. She was the one who recommended me to come to you.

I see.

Im not going to get better, whoever treats me, am I?

Did they tell you that at some hospital or other?

I can tell myself. To be honest, I didnt come here with any high hopes. I just thought maybe you could give me a shot sometimes when it hurt. Now, dont worryIm not asking for drugs or anything. I expect its because of the diabetes, but my legs hurt like hell at times. I thought perhaps youd take a look at me then, and make things a bit easier.

Since he seemed unwilling to accept any fuller treatment, I decided to do what I could to help. I had my own reasons, though, for agreeing to this arrangement. I see dozens of different people every day in the course of my work, but Id never come across anyone like this man before. There was something intriguing about him. And privately I decided to get him to tell me all about himself someday.

He began to come to my clinic twice a week. Fortunately, the abdominal fluid didnt increase as much as Id thought it might, and the pain in his legs, too, continued for a while to give him little real discomfort. Then, one day about a month later, he asked me if Id care to go and see him at his place when I had the time.

Its just a shack, Im afraid, he said, but I can manage a cup of tea and a warm place to tuck your feet in. I imagine youve had a normal, decent sort of life, so it might be interesting for once to hear about something a bit different.

Early the next evening, in a cold, driving rain, I went to visit the man at his house. He was waiting for me, with a pile of mandarin oranges in a bowl on the small table covering the sunken hearth, ready for his guest. Occasionally, the faint sound of someone playing a samisen was audible through the drumming of the rain.

Its the girl amusing herself, he explained.

As to whether it was his daughter, though, or how old she was, he told me nothing. That evening, I listened to him for about three hours. Every thirty minutes or so he seemed to get tired, and we would take a break for a cup of tea; politely, he would invite me to take one of the mandarins, then peel one carefully for himself and eat it before proceeding in his hoarse voice with the next short section of his tale.

In this way I came to visit him, with a tape recorder, at least once every three days. And by the time I had more or less heard him out, the cold winter had slipped away and spring breezes were blowing across the land.

What follows is a part of his story as he told it to me. Now I come to set it down, I find myself wishing that I had questioned him more closely about all kinds of things; but he is gone, and it is too late now.

I was fifteen when things first started to go wrong.

His voice was quiet as he began to talk, but he spoke carefully, so there was no problem catching what he said.

My father at the time owned one of the best general stores in Utsunomiya, selling salt and sugar, fabrics, bedding, and so on. The farmers from the country round about used to come pulling handcarts and buy everything they needed there, from ordinary household things to gifts for people on special occasions. He must have had at least fifteen employees; the young assistants would be dashing around among the piles of goods, and the clerks clicking away at their abacuses. We used to give our best customers their midday meal in a separate room; the maids kept a great pot of rice going for the purpose. Its years ago now, but I can see it all as if it was just the other day.