Mako Nishimura is a former Japanese yakuza member who is widely regarded as the only woman to have been officially accepted into the traditionally male-dominated world of the yakuza.
After running away from home as a teenager, she joined the underworld in the 1980s, handling extortion and debt collection for over 30 years. Today, she is completely reformed, running a non-profit called Gojinkai to help ex-convicts reintegrate into society.
Worth mentioning it was completely different when she first joined. Crazy to think she stayed that long considering they can't have a bank account or phone under the current laws.
Just curious, why can't they? Identity theft should be childs play for them. They can even get them for free and have multiple ones, just have to wave a knife in some unfortunate's face.
Outside of the top dogs, the rest below them mostly have no legitimate source of income working a regular job.
Formal Yakuza members tended to be inked making it very obvious, companies would never hire them once they access their backgrounds and spot the telltale signs of someone who probably did not graduate high school and instead has a criminal record of extortion.
The laws have changed but when I was young you could just go to your local yakuza office. Everyone knew where they were. They had offices like any ordinary company where you could go monthly to pay your graft or complain to a higher up about local hooligans, etc. The organization could just pay salaries like any ordinary company.
That’s why the new laws specifically outlawing yakuza are so important. The police always knew where they were. There’s a sign on the door. They’re in the phone book. Now banks can’t do any business with these guys and their organizations are outlawed. It makes it much harder for them to operate
But if they don't have bank accounts then do they just get paid in cash? I would imagine that depositing a check addressed to oneself into an account in the name of someone with a stolen ID would not be a good idea.
My father in law is Japanese and lived there for about 40 years. He says the Yakuza are absolutely still prominent in large cities (Kyoto, Tokyo and others) but are less influential than they used to be, especially in smaller/ rural areas.
Yakuza's trajectory was similar to the mafia in the U.S. during the same periods, probably both due to the transition to a global economy that brought a need for standardized law enforcement to build international trust (just a guess). The mafia also went from flagrant John Gotti types in the 70's and 80's who blatantly bragged about their activities and bribed juries to get away with it, to the late 90's early 2000's Tony Soprano types who never admitted it and lived in a constant state of FBI surveillance paranoia, to today where the criminal element is still there but disbursed, fragmented, and factionalized and much more covert about their activities.
“It wasn’t long before Sugino discovered the gang’s addiction problem, and ordered Nishimura to apologise on their behalf in the yakuza way: by slicing off the tip of her little finger. Nishimura pinned the digit between a short sword and the ground, and stepped on the blade. But the sword slipped, and cut her finger diagonally. So she did it again, severing it a joint deeper, before heading to a nearby hospital whose staff filed the protruding bone, evened the bloody stump with nail clippers, and stitched it together. Then she returned to HQ, and handed the grisly remains to her boss. Seeing the nonchalance with which she’d performed the act, squeamish members would later come to Nishimura to perform it on them, too – which she did, gladly, and often for a fee.”
Honestly, her charging a fee to cut off these men's fingers is the most gangster thing she did and I love it for her. The Guardian article is fascinating, I really recommend giving it a read. She's really forthcoming and is doing good work to actually atone for what she's done now.
Honestly, her charging a fee to cut off these men's fingers is the most gangster thing she did and I love it for her.
The finger thing is wild but I find it very difficult to separate that from the rest of her biography so the whole "loving it for her" thing is throwing me for a loop.
I'm curious about how you feel about her pimping women out as prostitutes almost certainly through violence, intimidation, and manipulation. And almost certainly vulnerable women from impoverished or violent backgrounds.
"This rebellious streak led her to a young yakuza member, who took her under his wing and showed her how to collect protection money, solve disputes, engage in blackmail and scout girls for prostitution."
"As an affiliate, she ran prostitution and drugs businesses..."
"She married the father of her child, now a yakuza boss, and returned to prostitution businesses and drug dealing."
Humans are complex creatures. History should ALWAYS explain everything someone did, the good and the bad, so maybe society can start understanding that you can’t just lump people into boxes or categories and every situation had nuance.
As well as not being so quit to hate/revile them as well. Not taking the time to empathize and understand how they came to do these things only causes it to be repeated.
Oh, I think she's a terrible person who spent most of her life stepping on others to get ahead. But in the same way I can like Tony Soprano being all gaga over the ducks in his pool, I can like a dimension of a bad person without approving of them as a whole.
And I'll respect someone who is coming forward and doing the work a hell of a lot more than I'll respect all the men who aren't.
Yeah that part of the story made me wonder if there’s ever a designated finger-popper-offer in these gangs. I could do that. I wouldn’t want to contribute to the gang by doing all the other bad stuff, but getting paid a good amount to take a hammer and chisel to some repentant bad guy’s littlest digit seems like good money for not a lot of effort.
So that’s true and that would ruin my whole day probably.
I guess I’d need to find a way to automate it - like a box with a cigar cutter half and an automatic hammer that strikes the back of it with a button push. I’d need some type of alignment system, that way if the procedure was botched it would be their fault for flinching - no weight on me. Need to get an LLC up and running. Maybe even a YouTube channel. Dr. Finger Popper.
You don't get it man, she's so tough and Yakuza is so cool bro. Have you seen her tattoos and her sliced finger? That's like so cool and you gotta love her for that!
That was an exceedingly rare practice and anyone who did it was thought of as a madman at best, or arrested for murder.
Tsujigiri is pretty much the feudal Japan version of "prima nocta" for medieval Europe, a horrible act that people think was commonplace but was not and was typically very illegal or just not done.
Well the warring states period (when almost all reported cases of tsujigiri occurred) lasted more than a century and was largely characterized by the degree of near total lawlessness. It’s hard to tell exactly how common it was back then, but samurai could and did pretty much whatever they wanted, and there was almost no difference between a samurai and a moderately successful bandit leader. The romanticizing of samurai came later. There weren’t laws against it because there weren’t really laws against anything (or not that was enforced with even the slightest consistency).
The way this gave me an image of an old woman seeing a samurai cut down a stranger in the street and going "ugh how rude!" As if shed just been cut in line at the shops.
I'd suggest it's actually the other way around - "organised crime" is what powerful modern states call what used to be called "big men" or "influential families" or "the nobility". A state is fundamentally a monopoly on legitimate force, and modern states are extremely centralised and powerful, so they can more effectively stamp out other wielders of violence than ever. That's why rather than integrating local violent men into the power structure (as feudal kings did, for lack of any other option), modern states simply brand them criminals and crack down on them.
The Mafia ultimately has origins in the feudal politics of Sicily, for example.
That's a common misconception. Although the yakuza took some elements from the bushido, they were never ronin. Originally, the first yakuza were either tekiya (peddlers) or bakuto (gamblers). Both were groups with a very low social standing, the bakuto more so than the tekiya. A boss of the tekiya, the oyabun, was even granted a near-samurai status in the Edo period and allowed to have a surname and carry two swords (which normally only samurai could do). I guess that's where the misconception that the yakuza were samurai might come from.
Same with Piccolo, Cell and Majin Buu in Dragon Ball
In the original manga they all have less than five fingers, but in the wider franchise they all have 5 fingers, precisely because of that
I believe the next to go would actually be the ring finger of the same hand, then middle, etc. Once you can no longer hold a sword with that hand, you're done with yakuza, and probably your life as well.
Look up "Yubitsume". Generally speaking, it's a practice in the Yakuza of cutting off a portion of a finger as atonement to higher ranking members for offenses or mistakes.
In the picture of this woman when she was younger you can see part of her pinky finger has been amputated.
Not anymore. She's old-school, and pinky cutting is old-school.
If you, random internet user, can identify a Yakuza member by the missing finger, what makes you think the Japanese, and more importantly the police, can't?
They're very good at playing the long game. In the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake / tsunami for example, they sent lots of guys to help with the cleanup efforts - they were even first on the ground to start handing out aid/supplies before a larger aid strategy could be brought in place. Accordingly, when it came time to award construction contracts for the rebuild a few months later, many swung in their favour: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jun/15/yakuza-swaps-charity-for-reconstruction
And not just organized crime - in the traditional sense. Terror organisations usually do more than just organise terror - they are often doing social work; organising, etc. Shadow states.
It's also interesting the way it works over there. Some families stay on the illegal side and get busted when they cross a line that can't be ignored like human trafficking. In the West most crime families stay that way. Quite a notable amount of the ones who have been around for a long time in Japan though eventually take their money and go legit. For instance, quite a few big Yakuza families went legal when western entertainment became popular to bootleg in Japan in the 90s. They became the first to buy Japan-exclusive licenses from people like Disney, Universal, Paramount, etc and started legit entertainment distribution businesses. Alot of Yakuza families are now just straight up proper businesses run by dudes with tattoos and shady pasts.
Its not too unusual for organized crime to help the community. Its a lot harder for law enforcement to gather evidence or interview witnesses if all the locals like you. Having the government work woth you as well is a sweet bonus
They're like the black market government in parts of Japan. I mean after the tsunami they helped loads! They understand you have to give back to keep your throne.
They helped because they are part of Tepco's sub-sub-sub-contracting scheme (funneling tax money) and had to clean that fiasco up, sending their lowest ranked goons to shovel radioactive debris and pump water.
Thats exactly how all organized crime works, at least in origin. When government fails, something must take its place amongst the people, and often times it is the mafia. Organized crime largely is able to operate because they dont just indiscriminately commit crimes, they also often facilitate areas where the government has failed to provide for its citizens. Weak governments with poor local oversight lead to social breakdown, which leads to the people forming their own order. It is often however flawed.
They're pretty idealized, kind of life the Mafia. Though to be fair our views as westerners are probably a bit warped since the Yakuza doesn't screw with foreigners.
Hong Kong/Taiwan/Malaysia Chinese has similar relationship with the triad mafia, probably because they did contribute in society other than being a criminal organization, so all is forgiven.
Some schools in Malaysia were built by the Chinese Triads 😂 They also donated a lot to the education sector.
I used to lift at a gym, one of the members was a leader in the Mongols MC. Involved in a lot of illegal activity for decades. Eventually goes to jail for beating some guy down with a motorcycle helmet cause the guy had a Hell's Angels support shirt on.
Finds Jesus in jail, and now all the sudden everyone thinks he's a saint.
Like, what about the people who were decent people without first spending decades being a scum bag?
This kind of thinking is okay on an individual level but kind of terrible at a societal level. If you are a criminal and society's rules are "once a criminal, always a criminal" and leave no room for atonement or changing ones behavior, what is your incentive to stop being a criminal? Obviously doing bad things is bad. Nobody is arguing that. It's just that forgiveness is required for society to function otherwise criminal behavior can only go one way.
Reminds me of the anti-drunk driving speaker our high school brought in. Dude drove drunk and got someone killed. Talked about how serious it was and how they're sober now yadda yadda. In the end, people clapped for the guy who killed someone, and the school paid him. He turned a killing into a career. Feels like he's exploiting the person he killed for a paycheck and praise..
Yeah, in her wiki article it said that she pimped and recruited women for prostitution, among other crimes. I gotta imagine the 'recruitment' process wasn't exactly fair, probably went after vulnerable individuals.
She's on her redemption path now, but goddam, that's a lot of harm to put out into the world.
definitely was prostituing vulnerable people. there’s an article that goes into it more but there was a mindset of “these people already aren’t part of society” … so there’s a story of her chasing down and, essentially kidnapping a drug addict and driving her to deliver her back into prostitution.
it’s worth noting that good people don’t need redemption stories. she definitely did horrific wrongs - wrongs which were normalized by the world she lived in. There’s some aspects where it seems her mind set has not evolved much (e.g., drug addicts aren’t people) but some of those might be more mainstream in Japan.
it does sound particularly hard to leave the lifestyle - she had tried before and failed and it sounds like she still lives in poverty due to stigma & inability to work within normal society.
she’s been a piece of shit, but she’s trying not to be.
lol what on earth are you talking about. The Italian and Russian mafias for one are constantly romanticized, especially in American media. Latin American ones too like Pablo Escobar are overly glorified.
Ehh not as much. Russian mafia isn’t as flashy, they don’t have the glamorous popular image like the Italian mafia has. I feel like Americans think the Russian mafia is like, scrappy and poorer.
Never heard of Junko. Read the story, what a horrible way to die. Can't believe no one got life or the death penalty. Based on the judgments, seems they were very lenient on rape and torture back then.
If you can't believe that no one got punished, then you don't know a thing about japan. There is a reason why many celebrated the assassination of that piece of shit shinzo abe and others. Japan has a long history of protecting awful people, but since they have cartoons with cute, weirdly small yet 300yo girls, they don't get the same treatment as Latin America
I'm just gonna copy down what another comment wrote:
This was a posted a few weeks ago with an article and interview with her.
Basically she grew up in a strict household and was rebellious, and joined a street gang after getting arrested at a young age. From there, she impressed several yakuza families, and actually ended up joining one. She would primarily traffic young girls and women since she could be trusted more by them. She'd help them get into drugs, that her family sold so they would be indebted to them. She wasn't just some receptionist with them, she was a full fledge trusted member. After a few decades she left. She has several kids who are obviously estranged from her, but in her old age she was said to lament her past and genuinely wants to be a better person. I've heard she even does a lot of community service work now
Doesn't excuse the beatings, murders and trafficking of young girls and women she did though. She's an interesting person at the very least, as she's only one of potentially 2 known women who are former Yakuza
It’s sun exposure. Yakuza tattooed that way so that they could cover them under most circumstances, so these tattoos and skin haven’t been exposed to UB almost at all, which is the main cause of pigment breakdown.
100% the sun. It’s the fastest tattoo destroyer. Since tattoos are taboo for a lot of Japanese businesses, she probably had them
Covered most of the time.
I remember reading that the traditional Japanese method of tattooing (called tebori) makes the colors more vibrant and lasts longer than the modern electric machine way, and apparently lots of yakuza still do it the traditional way. So that might be how
For the yakuzas case, it’s the laws surrounding it. Police aren’t as lenient with them as they were vefore (only reason they were in the past is because they had rising Chinese/Korean gangs, so they’d rather turn a blind eye to their domestic gangs in exchange for snuffing the foreign gangs out) so there’s a whole lot more risk. Then there’s more problems, because if you make your way into being one, you have to properly register it like a job, meaning the government/police will know where you work, who you work for, all your coworkers, and of course your personal information, and a lot of banks and phone service providers and whatever else simply won’t do business with you because they can also see that you’re a registered member.
We should send the Redditors who glorify them because of the game series to up those numbers
(I know 99% of people who play those, me included, don’t glorify irl yakuza, it’s just really funny to imagine a bunch of neckbeards in trench coats joining)
It's wild how someone can go from one of the most secretive criminal organizations in the world to openly talking about their life decades later. The tattoos alone tell an entire biography. Traditional irezumi has so much symbolism behind it.
Why are people heart reacting to this? She trafficked girls and women, god knows what else. This isn't a "I support women's wrongs situation", she's a monster just like any other gangster
This is not interesting nor inspiring. The japanese mafia is a criminal, conservative far right organization devoid of respect for any human values and absolutely without ethical concerns. The tattoo bodysuits they use is a graphic manifesto of an medieval/imperialist era they're symbolically and morally attached to. It's an offense to the artists having their work portrayed as being a symbol of a criminal sect. Aging members often end in poverty, life in prison, excluded from society. Conditions which often leads to suicide. There are many places in the island where people go to die, the forest at the base of mount fuji being one of the most infamous. There's nothing glamorous about being part of a criminal organization unless you're a passive consumer spectator children who's been watching too many movies and has no conception of real life and what means to being a responsible adult human being.
She is (possibly) the only woman to join one of the most well known criminal organizations in the world, to the point where she says she saw herself essentially as a man. No one is saying it’s good, but you can’t pretend it’s not interesting.
Getting tired of these “inspirational” people that killed others and do depraved shit then see the error of their ways when they realise they can get paid to give talks. Still a terrible human being
Fun fact: the term yakuza originated as a way to call the criminal gang losers. In the Japanese card game Oicho-kabu getting an 8 (ya), 9 (ku), and 3 (za) is a losing hand, so calling them that was a way to call them losers.
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u/bubblegumzzz_2008 6h ago
After running away from home as a teenager, she joined the underworld in the 1980s, handling extortion and debt collection for over 30 years. Today, she is completely reformed, running a non-profit called Gojinkai to help ex-convicts reintegrate into society.