BLACK LEATHER AND TATTOOS
Harriet Sergeant recounts her
experience of being taken out by a Japanese gangster
Tokyo THE Japanese gangster is as ubiquitous as the crows which infest this city. Top yakuza befriend the heads of Japanese ministers, companies and former prime ministers. The well-off monopolise prostitution and gambling while the small-time lend money, collect debts and run street festivals. At every level blackmail and extortion comes as naturally as defecation. Like Tokyo's crows, once they choose your car roof, nothing will shift them. So when a Japanese man in black leather winked at me in the street, I should not have winked back nor asked for directions.
I was on my bicycle, lost, a usual condition in Tokyo, and studying my map. The young man who wore a James Dean hairstyle and sunglasses, peered over my shoulder. 'A little far,' he said in abrupt and guttural Japanese when he saw my destination. I was intrigued. Japanese men usually avoid Western women and maps fluster the most competent. Instead the man took my bicycle from me, mounted it and pointed behind him, 'Sit!' he comman- ded. Hesitantly, I perched sideways, my handbag balanced on my knee. We set off at a wobble, he in black leather, me in a business suit, down the middle of the four-lane highway. Drivers slowed to gape at us. A truck swerved to avoid us. 'I am Yuno,' stated my companion, ignoring the line of cars now crawling behind us. He seemed the antithesis of the Japanese salary man and the Tokyo I knew. Was he, I wondered, a designer? Yuno snorted, 'I am a professional gambler,' he informed me. In Japan professional gamblers are usually members of criminal syndicates. The name itself, yakuza, stands for 8.9.3, the losing combination of a popular card- game. Yuno, the son of divorced parents, had started playing when he was eight. By 12, he was gambling against grown men. 'Now! am 29 and pretty strong.' I gave him my telephone number. He had, after all, got me to my appointment on time.
Yuno rang me from a mahjong parlour on his portable phone. It was two in the morning. 'Say something to bring me luck,' he commanded. I heard the click of mah- jong titles. 'Have you won?' I asked. 'No,' he replied and cut the connection.
It took a month to persuade him to take me gambling. 'Very dangerous,' he said, 'Not for foreigners and certainly not for women.' Finally he picked me up in a black convertible Corvette. He wore a pink, crêpe de chine shirt, a jacket of lime silk and a suntan. 'First day of spring,' he announced in explanation. One night's winnings had paid for the car. He spoke about that night often. Its memory had obliterated all subsequent losses. Instead of dinner, 'I never eat before I gamble. It makes me sleepy,' we drank coffee in a bar owned by a friend passionate about moun- tain climbing and South African politics. 'Please give me your opinion of Winnie Mandela,' he asked. Yuno had enjoyed a wild adolescence. He 'shot ice (speed) all the time', got into fights and went to prison for a year. 'Just for a fight?' I asked, astonished, 'Well, he nearly killed the man,' explained his friend. Like a soldier displaying his wounds, Yuno showed me that his front teeth were fake and his left eye almost so. He took pills continually for an ulcer. 'But you are not yakuza?' I said unable to associate this eccentric and attractive young man with them or, for that matter, his own past. 'Oh no, I am a professional gambler,' said Yuno and took out his wallet for me to admire. 'Made in England,' he explained. I was more in- terested in the contents, a thick wad of ten thousand yen notes.
We drove to a block of flats in a respectable area of town. Yuno was ner- vous. 'We are going to meet very danger- ous men,' he said. I was instructed to sit behind him, not to say a word and to pretend to be his girlfriend. Shortly after- wards I found myself in a room with ten Japanese gangsters.
The room itself boasted a low ceiling with strip lighting and no furniture but a plastic sofa on which I perched. The gangsters had punch perms or crew cuts. Most wore track suits. They squatted on the tatami or stood about making a point of not looking at me. There were no other women. Apprentice yakuza took coats, made tea or proferred a kitchen stove full of sweets. They behaved as deferentially as any Japanese salary man to his section head. The boss, an intelligent man in his early forties, asked me if I enjoyed gamb- ling, 'Money's no problem here,' he said encouragingly. Above his head hung photographs of karate experts and an oil painting of a roaring tiger. Through the doorway I glimpsed longjohns pegged up to dry. These men were also celebrating the first day of spring but rather differently from Yuno.
Local street traders now arrived and joined the gangsters around the sheet taped onto the tatami. They played Tehon Biki, a Japanese form of liar dice. Yuno dealt first. He shuffled the cards behind his back then slapped them down beneath a cloth. The men bet on which card lay uppermost. It was not a difficult game but, posing in his sunglasses, his pink shirt falling open, Yuno kept on asking ques- tions and getting things wrong, like a spoilt and beautiful woman. 'My family,' he said, effusively, and then, nodding towards the boss, 'my elder brother.' A small Japanese squatted down next to me. Behind him towered his companion, a massive yakuza in a yellow track suit. At the sight of this couple the street traders went quiet and concentrated on their bets. I wish I could have done the same. The small man spat out a command. Im- mediately an apprentice yakuza appeared with an orange juice. The massive yakuza grunted a dismissal. The small man now made himself comfortable. As he did so, his jeans ruckled to reveal suspenders holding up his socks. Between socks and suspender the tattoo of a red dragon's tail thrashed against peonies on one leg and purple clouds on the other before disappearing upwards. Tattoos are the stigmata of the dedicated yakuza. They cover the body in an agonising process lasting six months. Yuno pushed back his sleeve to reveal a single, bleeding heart, 'American style,' he explained, 'and so not painful at all.' The small man was more interested in the size of my feet. He edged one of his next to my much larger foot, then withdrew it quickly in a huff.
He cheered up as Yuno began to lose more and more money to him. 'I'll win it back,' confided Yuno. The massive yakuza stared at us, then rubbed his punch perm reflectively. I pressed Yuno to leave. He looked vague. 'Just a little longer,' he murmured. Reluctantly I stood up and, on Yuno's instructions, bowed to elder brother. At the door Yuno handed me 30 thousand yen. 'From elder brother. Now you are family friend too, neh?' he said, and pushed me out before I could protest. I have not heard from Yuno since. When I tried his portable phone, a recorded message in a prissy lady's voice announced the owner had gone for a short walk. So far the walk has lasted two months.
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