Tokyo noir, p.1
Tokyo Noir, page 1
TOKYO NOIR
Jake Adelstein has been an investigative journalist in Japan since 1993, reporting in both Japanese and English. From 2006 to 2007 he was the chief investigator for a US State Department-sponsored study of human trafficking in Japan. He has been writing for The Daily Beast, The Japan Times, and other publications since 2011, and was a special correspondent for The Los Angeles Times. Considered one of the foremost experts on organised crime in Japan, he works as a writer and consultant in Japan and the United States. He co-hosted and co-wrote the award-winning podcast about missing people in Nippon, The Evaporated: gone with the gods in 2023. He is the author of Tokyo Vice: a western reporter on the police beat in Japan, which is now a series on HBO Max, and also The Last Yakuza: life and death in the Japanese underworld (2023). He has appeared on CNN, NPR, the BBC, France 24, and other media outlets as a commentator on social issues in Japan, as well as its criminal justice system, politics, and nuclear industry giant, TEPCO.
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Published by Scribe 2024
Copyright © Jake Adelstein 2024
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CONTENTS
Prologue
Part I
Unusual Events and the Limiting Fault
ONE: Cowboys and yakuza
TWO: From paperwork to fieldwork
THREE: The North Pole of Japan
FOUR: Meet Michiel Brandt
FIVE: When you want rice cakes, go to the rice cake maker
SIX: Occupational hazards
SEVEN: Pachinko wonderland
EIGHT: Pachinko 101
NINE: The world according to Mr Lee
TEN: Scarecrows
ELEVEN: Hanekaeri
Part II
The Meltdown
TWELVE: The envelope
THIRTEEN: How to make a percutaneous ethanol injection cocktail
FOURTEEN: Yakuza to the rescue
FIFTEEN: The dark empire
SIXTEEN: Who goes there?
Part III
Reconstruction
SEVENTEEN: Murder is expensive
EIGHTEEN: The yakuza Olympics: publish or perish
NINETEEN: The yakuza Olympics redux: paying respects
TWENTY: A new life in a ghost town
TWENTY-ONE: Shukumei and the meaning of March 28
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Conduct your victory like a funeral
When many people are being killed,
They should be mourned with heartfelt sorrow.
That is why a victory must be observed like a funeral.
–LAO TZU, CHINESE PHILOSOPHER
October 28, 2008
Sometimes when you vanquish your enemy, you just feel like partying. I had picked the Westin Hotel Tokyo to meet my mentor, ex-prosecutor Toshiro Igari, for drinks. We had gathered to celebrate the demise of our mutual enemy, Tadamasa Goto, who had just been kicked out of the Yamaguchi-gumi on the 14th of that month. Goto was the Richard Branson of the yakuza—charismatic, filthy rich, once the largest shareholder of Japan Airlines, politically connected, and with 1,000 people in his organization. He was also a homicidal sociopath. In 2008 he had put out a contract on me and my family, which had resulted in all of us being put under police protection because I was trying to write something that didn’t please him.
At the time, the Kobe-based Yamaguchi-gumi was the largest of all criminal gangs in Japan, with nearly 80,000 members and a foothold in every industry in Japanese society. Goto had spearheaded their invasion of Tokyo turf and the gang wars that resulted. When he was kicked out, along with ten more top bosses very close to him, that was national news—not in yakuza fanzines, but the biggest newspapers in Japan gave it the kind of coverage reserved for the president of Sony being fired. It created a crisis in the organized crime world, the yakuza equivalent of “The Lehman Shock”—the so-called “Goto Shock.”
I arrived early and waited in the lounge. I recognized Igari without even seeing his face; he had that sort of presence and the build of a yakuza boss in his black suit. There was something about his whole demeanor that reminded me of a bulldog, but a very smart bulldog.
I watched him arrive out of the corner of my eye as I read the tabloids. He found me quickly, and we headed to the restaurant to grab some dinner. He was wearing a bright white shirt under his dark, well-tailored suit, and no necktie. I was dressed in slacks and a gray shirt. I had come to sort of relish not wearing a suit anymore.
I was always impressed by him. It’s not uncommon in Japan for prosecutors to go to work for dubious entities, especially the yakuza, when they retire. The phrase yameken bengoshi doesn’t have good ring to it. It means “a lawyer who quit being a prosecutor,” and communicates the general disdain held for former prosecutors who go into the private sector; it’s almost a synonym for “shyster.” Igari was one of the rare breed who chose honor over money, who chose to fight the yakuza after leaving law enforcement rather than go work for them. It was one of the many things I respected about him. Igari-san had become a legend in the law enforcement world, and was the author of several books on dealing with organized crime and preventing its incursion into the business world.
When we reached our seats, we exchanged the usual pleasantries, and he got right to the point.
“So, did you bring the stuff?”
“I did indeed,” I said, passing him a manila envelope.
“I’ll look at this later,” he said. “I know myself—if I start reading this now, I won’t be able to put it down, and then our food will get cold and my beer will get warm. So, first of all, congratulations. I’m sure that you are relieved to hear he’s no longer a yakuza boss, but an ex-yakuza boss. And, frankly, he’s such an asshole that I think all of Japan benefits.”
Some cops had given me a rundown of what had happened, but Igari had sources that I definitely didn’t have. I wanted to hear what he knew.
“The reports in the media have been lacking. Here’s what I know. The reasons for his expulsion come down to a few things. He had been skipping board meetings, and when he invited a bunch of entertainers and actors to his birthday celebration while skipping another important meeting, it touched the nerves of the executives. The weekly magazine Shukan Shincho did a lavish article on the whole thing. Not good publicity.”
I smiled. “Yeah, I didn’t think it would be good publicity. I was disappointed to see they didn’t actually have the balls to write his name.”
Igari chortled. “Hah! Well, they wrote down the names of the famous people there. So there was that. And then, of course, your article on his liver transplant, and the book you contributed to—it stoked the fires of discontent. And so he was kicked out.”
I nodded.
And then Igari said, just as he had written me in an email, “Your tenacity and your dedication to bringing him down paid off. You wrote the article that caused him to fall from grace, and that’s impressive. That’s an accomplishment. You did something that the police could never do.”
I didn’t know what to say to this. It still didn’t quite seem real, but I felt I had accomplished something. After a long string of losses, it felt better to be on the winning side. I had written an article in the May 2008 edition of The Washington Post that exposed how Goto had made a deal with the FBI to get a visa to the U.S. How had he done it? He’d ratted out all his friends in the Yamaguchi-gumi, and provided some valuable intelligence to the authorities. In exchange, he had gotten a visa to the U.S. and picked up a new liver at UCLA, jumping ahead of more deserving, innocent people. In fact, three of his yakuza cronies had done the same—all at UCLA, perhaps without betraying their gangster brothers. He had screwed over the FBI as well, only delivering a fifth of what he promised before vanishing from the hospital after his surgery. He’d gotten his liver and gotten away; he must have made a deal with the devil, because no matter what he did, he almost always won. I thought a little about how much my victory had cost, and I ordered a Hibiki on the rocks. Japanese whisky was actually pretty good.
We were both in a fine mood. The Westin Hotel seemed the perfect place to celebrate: on another October night, seven years before, Igari had helpe d the hotel get rid of their most troublesome client and guest, Tadamasa Goto himself. This had once been Goto’s second home. He had been banished from it, just as he he’d now been banished from his yakuza home.
The hotel was located in Ebisu Garden Place, which was once a hotspot in Tokyo. In 2001, it was the trendy place to be, located close to Ebisu Station, full of exciting new restaurants, a museum of photography, and an avant-garde cinema. The Westin was the high-end love hotel of the area, and had a glitzy status. The headquarters of Goto’s gang were in the Shizuoka prefecture, but he was leading the Yamaguchi-gumi invasion of Tokyo, and came to the city often. Of course, he liked to stay in fancy hotels. He had become quite fond of the Westin, and would stay there for days on end. He would put down a deposit that was the yen equivalent of $10,000 every time he turned up; so, in terms of money, he was a great client for the hotel. The problem was that the longer he stayed, the more insolent and demanding he became. He and his cronies had a tendency to swindle the hotel staff, harass guests, and make the place a living hell for those staying or working there.
The hotel manager, who was nearing his retirement, decided that, as his final duty, he should get rid of this unwanted customer once and for all. And so, on a cold night in October, with much trepidation, he decided to pay a visit to Goto himself to ask him to leave. When he went to Goto’s room, his men brought him face-to-face with the gremlin.
The manager did not mince words.
“Everyone here is aware that a famous yakuza boss is staying at this hotel, that being you. And, frankly, all the employees are frightened and uneasy, and this is an impediment to doing their job. I hesitate to ask, but could you do us the courtesy of checking out of the hotel?”
Goto was surprised at the request, but did not lose his temper. He asked to see the accommodation agreements for the hotel. (The agreement is the contract you sign when you register at a hotel in Japan.) While sitting in his desk chair, flanked by two bodyguards, he ran his fingers over the document, line by line, and fired back, “Where does it say here that yakuza aren’t permitted to stay in this hotel? I don’t see a word about it. Show me.”
He threw the papers back at the hotel manager, who was at a loss for words.
Goto continued, “Is being a yakuza illegal? No, it is not. And yet you are asking me to leave. One of your best customers. And on what grounds?”
“On the grounds that you are disturbing the guests and the staff,” the manager replied.
And so this went on. For minutes; for an hour; for three hours. And even the hotel manager refused to budge. Finally, he got on his hands and knees, crying, and pleading for Goto to leave. Goto, out of frustration or admiration, said to him, “You’ve got guts. I get it. Maybe I’ll leave.”
In the morning, Goto and his entourage took off. But they left one thing behind—their $10,000 deposit. This was a pain in the ass for the hotel, an albatross in a safe-deposit box. They didn’t know where to send the money, and even if they did, might sending it back unilaterally be perceived as an insult to the yakuza? On the other hand, they didn’t really want to invite the boss and his gang to come back to the hotel to collect the money. And so they decided to consult with a retired prosecutor, already well known for his ability to deal with yakuza and for his dislike of them. That man was Toshiro Igari, my mentor.
The bunch of documents I brought to Igari had come from one of Goto’s underlings. They were the notes distributed at a meeting of the Goto-gumi upper echelon about changes in Japan’s laws on organized crime. Of course, there was a former prosecutor who attended the meeting, now a lawyer for the mob, who explained the laws and its loopholes. You might wonder why one of Goto’s own men would give me internal documents. The answer is simple: He hated his boss. I disliked him, too. I had many reasons. It was thanks to him that I was still under police protection and had had to hire an ex-yakuza as a bodyguard. I had been under protection since early 2008. There were nice things about that, but it was also expensive. Saigo, or Tsunami, as he was sometimes known, wouldn’t drive anything less than a Mercedes-Benz, of course. The car ate gasoline like Takeru Kobayashi, the competitive eater, devours hot dogs. Saigo was a former Inagawa-kai yakuza boss, at one time having 150 men under his command. He’d been in the organization for twenty years before he was kicked out. He was not a fan of Goto, either.
“He’s always been an arrogant, homicidal prick. If I ever saw him while driving you around, I’d run him over without flinching. I’d just claim I mistook the accelerator for the brake.”
He earned his nickname Tsunami because, just like the natural phenomenon, he was an unpredictable storm of violent destruction that washed away everything in its path—if you pissed him off.
Goto’s departure from the Yamaguchi-gumi had set off waves. A group of sympathizers, some big yakuza bosses, sent a protest letter to the executive branch of the Yamaguchi-gumi. When a copy of it leaked, the response of Kiyoshi Takayama, the underboss of the organization, was to permanently banish several of Goto’s sympathizers, demote others, and temporarily banish several others. Igari explained that the Yamaguchi-gumi feared a yakuza civil war if Goto and his buddies weren’t excised from the organization. The Yama-Ichi war a few years back had been a bloody debacle.
“What’s next for Goto?” I asked Igari.
“If he’s not careful, the Yamaguchi-gumi will decide he’s a loose end and take him out. He’s a simmering dumpster fire. The decision to remove him from the roster (joseki), rather than banish him, is a curious one. It does let him leave with some grace.”
“Now that he’s out of the yakuza, maybe he’ll come check into the hotel again.”
Igari laughed.
“I don’t think so. A guy like that stays on the rosters as an organized crime member for at least five years. It’ll be interesting to see what he does next.”
I wanted to know a little bit more about his tangle with Tadamasa.
“So, I know that you had a run-in with him, but tell me the rest of the story.”
And he proceeded to tell me.
The hotel had contacted him after they finally got rid of Goto and entourage, but hadn’t figured out what to do with the deposit money that Goto had left behind. After a long back and forth between him and the cronies of the gangster, he drew up a legal agreement settling the bill and sent it to the offices of Goto.
Goto’s personal secretary made a trip to his offices, and he handed over the deposit in cash. That would have been the end of the story, except that it inspired Igari—it made him think.
What if there had been something in the accommodation agreements that expressly forbade members of organized crime from staying at the hotel?
In fact and in theory, there were already restrictions on what organized crime members could do, and it was within the province of the hotel, or any establishment, to refuse service to criminal elements. The major crime groups had been designated as such under Japanese law, and their members were subject to restrictions. It was after much thinking on this incident that Igari came up with a simple but brilliant idea: the organized crime restriction clause. In Japanese, it was called bōryokudan haijo joko.
Igari enthusiastically explained it to me.
“I decided that we should use contract law and create an organized crime exclusionary clause that could be inserted into any contract or any agreement in Japan that would give people leverage when dealing with yakuza. As you and I both know, the laws here for dealing with these ruffians are weak and ineffective. That’s when you limit the conversation to criminal law. But with contract law and civil law, we could certainly handicap the yakuza. And maybe, just maybe, we could create a foundation for not only keeping them out of hotels and golf courses, but also shunting them out of Japanese society.”
He continued to explain with great enthusiasm.
“This hotel manager had a lot of courage, and I admire him. But you can’t expect everyone to be a hero. So what if we took this case and learned from it?
If there had been a clause in the accommodation agreement that forbade yakuza from staying at the hotel, they could have kicked him out. It would have been easy and simple. If all businesses put in an organized crime exclusion clause in their contracts and trade agreements, they would have an easy out when there’s trouble.”
