BOOK
REVIEW A sad moon
rising Yakuza Moon:
Memoirs of a Gangster's Daughter by
Shoko Tendo
Reviewed by Bertil
Lintner
It is hard to image a life more
tragic than what Shoko Tendo had to endure until
she was more than 30. She lost her virginity and
became a juvenile delinquent when she was 12. She
sniffed thinner and injected speed while being the
teenage mistress of much older men. Some of them
beat her so badly that she several
times had to be hospitalized.
Her sister married a professional gambler, who
spent almost all the money she earned as a
nightclub hostess. And then her parents died while
she was still young.
But Tendo was not
born into an ordinary Japanese family. Her father
was the leader of a gang linked to the
Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest yakuza
group. She grew up in a criminal milieu in Japan's
second city, Osaka, where organized crime gangs
always have been strong.
When she was a child, her father would come home
drunk in the company of two or more bar hostesses,
"draped all over him, right in front of Mom and
me", she writes. "I felt terrible for Mom as she
bowed her head to these women and thanked them
politely for their help."
The house in
which she grew up was large by Japanese standards
and even had a swimming pool. Her gangland father
was obsessed with luxury wheeled transport, and
owned several foreign and Japanese cars and
motorcycles. But, in the end, he lost it all to
loan-sharks, and died in oblivion and obscurity
living in a small rented house far away from
Osaka.
The "moon" after yakuza in
the title of the book is meant to reflect Tendo's
own life as an outcast of society: "How it
constantly waxes and wanes, just like my life with
its highs and lows. Then, in those uncertain days
when I was searching for love, I guess the moon
would have been a crescent. It was probably about
a half-moon when I got married."
Readers
who expect some sensational revelations about the
inner workings of Japan's organized crime gangs
will be disappointed. But it is not about that.
Anyone who is interested in that aspect of the
yakuza should read David Kaplan's and Alec
Dubro's Yakuza: The Explosive Account of
Japan's Underworld, which was first published
in 1986 and then in a new edition in 2003.
Yakuza Moon is a very personal book about a
young woman's struggle to survive in a hostile and
brutal environment, and it gives a rare insight
into "life in the other side" in Japan, which is
usually thought of as a peaceful society with a
very low crime rate.
But also Japanese
society has its very dark sides. The yakuza
is, in fact, one of the largest constellations of
crime organizations in the world. Approximately
85,000 people belong to a number of gangs, which
officially no longer are called yakuza -
because of the almost romantic aura that name
evokes with many Japanese, thanks to movies and
cheap literature - but boryokudan, or
"violent groups".
The largest gang is the
Yamaguchi-gumi with perhaps 39,000 members divided
into 750 "clans" or "lodges". The Sumiyoshi-rengo
with 10,000 members comes second, followed by the
Inagawa-kai with perhaps 7,500 followers.
If families are taken into account, it is
a community of several hundred thousand people,
which are living on the fringes of Japanese
society. Some would argue that they are not really
outcasts as many of the bosses have powerful
political connections - mostly with the Japanese
right - and have invested millions in perfectly
legitimate businesses such as real estate and
construction. And the days when they were famous
for their crew-cuts, dark sunglasses and colorful
tattoos are more or less over; modern-day
yakuza-men come in suits carrying
attache-cases, and have turned crime into a
business, for instance solving conflicts between
different rival companies much faster and more
efficient than the police and the courts would
ever have done.
Their methods may be
somewhat unorthodox, but effective - which is why
many business interests are using the "services"
they provide. Sure, they are also involve in more
traditional pursuits such as running nightclubs,
prostitution rackets, protection schemes, and
loan-sharking. But. as Kaplan and Munro point out
in their second, expanded edition of their book:
"More and more [Japanese] gangsters are opting for
crimes of greater sophistication."
But the
lives of their children is still ridden with
crime, drugs, sex interspersed stints in "reform
schools" and juvenile detention centers. Tendo is
surprisingly candid about her drug abuse as a
teenager, and puritans would balk at sometimes
graphic descriptions of her sexual encounters;
certain critics would perhaps even suggest that
she has included those to facilitate sales. But
that would be unfair to Tendo, whose teenage years
no doubt were characterized by crime, drugs and
sex.
In the end - and especially after the
death of her parents - she makes a clean break
with her past, determined to "start over with the
next new moon". Symbolically, she deletes the
number of her last yakuza-lover from the
memory of her cell phone, takes control of her own
life - and decides to become a writer. Now 39 and
ornately tattooed, she lives with a photographer
and her baby daughter in Tokyo where she works as
a freelance writer. This is her first book, and
the original Japanese version already has become a
bestseller. So, in the end, she may warrant a full
moon after a life full of abuse, tragedy and
violence.
Yakuza Moon: Memoirs of a
Gangster's Daughter by Shoko Tendo. Kodansha
International, Tokyo, New York and London, 2007.
ISBN-10: 4770030428. Price US$22.95, 192 pages.
Bertil Lintner is a former
correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic
Review. He is currently a writer with Asia-Pacific
Media Services.
(Copyright 2007 Asia
Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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have been strong.
When she was a child, her father would come home
drunk in the company of two or more bar hostesses,
"draped all over him, right in front of Mom and
me", she writes. "I felt terrible for Mom as she
bowed her head to these women and thanked them
politely for their help." 
