Confessions of a Yakuza
SynopsisPlot
In his low, hoarse voice, he describes the random events that led the son of a prosperous country shopkeeper to become a member, and ultimately the leader, of a gang organizing illegal dice games in Tokyo's liveliest entertainment area. He talks about his first police raid, and the brutal interrogation and imprisonment that followed it. He remembers his first love affair, and the girl he ran away with, and the weeks they spent wandering about the countryside together. Briefly, and matter-of-factly, he describes how he cut off the little finger of his left hand as a ritual gesture of apology. He explains how the games were run and the profits spent; why the ties between members of "the brotherhood" were so important; and how he came to kill a man who worked for him.
Story
About this book
Confessions of a Yakuza presents the life story of an aging gangster as told to his doctor, Junichi Saga, shortly before the man's death. The narrator grew up as the son of a prosperous rural shopkeeper, then drifted into Tokyo's criminal underworld and eventually led a gang running illegal dice games in one of the city's liveliest entertainment districts. Saga recorded the conversations and shaped them into a first-person account.
The narrator recalls his first police raid, and the harsh interrogation and imprisonment that followed. He speaks about the ritual amputation of the little finger on his left hand, offered as an apology. He remembers a love affair and weeks of wandering the countryside with the girl he left home with. He explains how the dice games were organized, where the profits went, why bonds among brotherhood members mattered, and how he ended up killing one of his own men.
Saga worked as a doctor in a country town and gathered oral histories from elderly patients. This account comes from one of the last yakuza of the older traditional kind, whose story reaches back through decades of Japanese life at the margins of the law.
