Related Articles
The Last Yakuza: Life and Death In The Japanese Underworld is the first book that I was ever asked to write. The yakuza are Japan’s mafia. They’re not a monolithic group — it’s a blanket term for over 20 different criminal organizations that share some similarities, particularly a quasi-family structure where the members swear allegiance to a father-figure (the oyabun) and a misogynistic tribal culture in which severed fingers and painful tattoos show allegiances and commitment.
The request to write this book came from Makoto Saigo (not his real name) who was my driver and bodyguard during a very scary time in my life. He wanted his son to know that not all yakuza were thugs and that his father was an honorable man. I agreed to write it but under certain conditions which included making it more than just his story, but to make it a kind of post-war history of the yakuza, spun around his life. It seemed like it would be an easy thing — but nothing involving the yakuza is ever easy.
I had spent years writing the book only to realize that after Japan revoked the statute of limitations on certain crimes such as murder in 2010, a number of people who had spoken to me on the record could go to jail for what they had confided in me. I decided to rewrite the book and completely remove some sections. This chapter, For Whom The Chimes Toll, is a story I wanted to tell for years. Even discussing the events chronicled here is still a huge taboo in the underworld.Saigo made me promise that I would never write it while he was alive. The fact that you’re reading it here should tell you something.I chose this chapter because it not only introduces you to some exceptional figures, it will also tell you a lot about the yakuza code of honor and the real meaning ofbushi no nasake (武士の情け)aka “the mercy of a samurai.”
***
Some stories are best told from the end.
This story ends with the suicide of Kenzo Arai, A.K.A. “Ken-chan,” aged 56, a yakuza boss. Yakuza are Japan’s organized crime families. They make their money from extortion, blackmail, racketeering, real estate, and a mixture of legitimate and illegitimate businesses. They also have a penchant for elaborate tattoos and tribal warfare. Until recently, they existed out in the open, with business cards, publicly listed headquarters and fan magazines. Arai was theleader of the Inagawa-kaii Odawarai-gumi Shugetsu Family.The Inagawa-kai was the third largest yakuza group. They had approximately10,000 members before Arai ended his life with a bullet at his own home around 5:20 p.m. on Oct. 5, 1995.
Then they only had approximately 9,999 members.
In some ways, you could say that his fellow Inagawa-kai brother Makoto Saigo, also known as Tsunami,pulled that trigger and the Coach, the former professional baseball player who was Saigo’s boss and godfather,gave him the orders. You could say that,but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Tsunami certainly didn’t literally pull that trigger. And Arai wasn’t the only person to die that day.
Twenty minutes earlier, at 5 p.m., Arai had shot to death his underboss, Hideyuki Eiri, aged 54, at the gang office and then driven back to his palatial house. And an hour before Arai killed his underboss, at 4 p.m., he received a visit from another boss of the Inagawa-Kai.
But that’s not where this story really starts. It started on a hot night in September that year.
The Kidnapping
Kiyota, ethnically Korean, was a well-respected elder in the organization and his prematurely white hair gave him an aura of dignity and gravitas.
The kidnappers didn’t treat him with any respect. They showed up at this door posing as Delivery Men and once inside brutally beat him and dragged him outside into his garden. They not only abducted Kiyota, but also his maid, tying her up with rope and taking her along for the ride. To top it all off, they took several million yen in cash from a safe inside the house.
Kiyota was thrown in the back of a car and driven an hour from his home, blindfolded, and dropped in a room somewhere in an old house. There he was stripped naked and beaten severely, over and over. His kidnappers videotaped the torture and they sodomized him with a vibrator; they filmed it as well.
The kidnappers sent the tape and the ransom note to the number two in his organization, Uchibori Kazuo, and demanded 50 million yen. “Give us the money and you’ll get him back alive,” they wrote in their ransom note.
They also warned that if the ransom money was not paid or if there was any attempt to track down the kidnappers, that they would release the videotape to the world, humiliating Kiyota forever. In the ultra macho world of the yakuza, the humiliation was more of a threat than the bodily harm they might inflict on him.
It’s well known that Kiyota has been unable to speak for a few years. Some of those in the yakuza world whispered that it is because he screamed so much during his two days of confinement that it ruptured his vocal cords. That is a lie. Kiyota later developed throat cancer and after an operation was left barely able to speak. But even when he could speak, he was always a man of few words.
Throughout his torture and his beating, Kiyota stayed silent, refusing to beg for his life or scream out loud. Thus he was beaten severely again and again. The videotape was edited to show the few moments that he did groan or express pain.
The kidnappers were smart, or they thought they were smart. They knew that no yakuza would go to the police because that would be humiliating and it would also raise questions. Where did the ransom money come from? If the organization had 50 million yen to pay ransom money, had they paid taxes on it? There were 100 reasons to avoid going to the police and not a single good reason to ask for their help. The yakuza were essentially perfect victims — they were men with money who could not go to the police.
The number two in Kiyota’s organization, Kazuo Uchibori, had no choice but to pay up. Kiyota was not only hisoyabun, his own wife was kin of Kiyota.
Uchibori delivered the money to the designated spot. A few hours later Kiyota was released. He was angry and hurt and at a loss as to what he should do.
The matter required discretion and revenge.
He could only think of one person to speak with and that was his brother in the Inagawa-kai, Nobuyuki Kanazawa — also known as The Coach.
Kanazawa was known for his skills at gambling, and also keeping a stoic calm. The Coach promised that he would look into the manner, discretely and efficiently. He chose to call up his former bodyguard and now leader of the Saigo-gumi in Machida.
Makoto Saigo, born to an American-Japanese woman and a Japanese father, had earned the nickname the Tsunami because like the tropical storm, he often came without warning, was unpredictable, and left behind a whirlwind of destruction. The Tsunami showed up at the Coach’s home and was shown the videotape. There were a few scenes of Kiyota enduring terrible blows; they were hard to watch, as were the scenes intended to humiliate him. The Coach didn’t show him the whole video tape. That wasn’t necessary.
“What do you want me to do about it,Oyaji?” he asked.
“I want you to find the people who did it. From the bottom to the top.”
The Coach had a hunch that the kidnappers must be other yakuza, probably from a rival gang — or other members of the underworld, people on the periphery. There was even a possibility, although no one wanted to consider it seriously, that the kidnappers might be one of their own.
The homes of yakuza bosses weren’t published on the internet — but in the rosters of the gangs, they were written down. Yakuza bosses from rival gangs also sent each other New Year’s cards, as is part of Japanese tradition. A boss from the Sumiyoshi-kai, technically a rival yakuza gang,might send greetings to a boss in the Matsuba-ka, another yakuza group. Typically they would send them to the headquarters but not always. If you weren’t plugged into the world of the yakuza, you didn’t know those addresses.
The Coach had been making discrete enquiries. Kiyota wasn’t the only yakuza boss who had been kidnapped. A few months previously the chairman of the Chojiya-kai, Goro Yoshida, had been kidnapped along with his wife and grandchild when they were on a walk.
Yoshida was a celebrity in the yakuza world, famous for his skills as a master of ceremonies in yakuza rituals. He had a punch perm and thick gold-rimmed glasses, a wonderful voice, and a command of Shinto lore, real and imagined, that made him the most popular host for yakuza succession ceremonies, funerals, peace treaties, and related activities. It was as if the kidnappers had nabbed the yakuza version of Jimmy Kimmel.
The M.O. had been roughly the same, although the child and wife of Yoshida were not touched or harmed.
For Tsunami, it seemed that the Coach was giving him a mission in which he was doomed to fail. If he could have figured out a way not to take on the job, he would have done it. But he’d been asked to do it and that was the same as being ordered to do it. And maybe it wasn’t hopeless.
They had a clue to work with. An important clue.
The Chimes of Crime
Kiyota wasn’t stupid.
He kept his wits about him. When he was thrown in the trunk of a car, he listened carefully to the noises around him. The driver of the car was using an early car navigation system, with voice guidance on. Kiyota listened to every notification, every turn, the sounds outside. The car got off at the Hatano Interchange on the National Highway 246 and stopped ten minutes from the interchange. That meant that in all probability he was Hatano City in Kanagawa Prefecture. He was kept in the room for three days —it seemed to be a house. Every day at 5 p.m., he was served a meal. At 5 p.m., he heard the distinctive chimes of a school nearby. He was sure that he could recognize it if he heard it again.
Most Tokyo wards and towns across Japan have a chime that sounds at exactly 5 p.m. (or earlier, depending on where you live). As the seasons change, some regions adjust the song and time they play, but most keep the same one at 5 o’clock.
The bells remind kids to get home, but that’s not their main purpose. The sound systems are for emergency announcements, and the daily ringing lets the government and people in the area know everything is fine and dandy. They’re like siren tests in France, but here it’s a daily occurrence, rather than a weekly one, because of the high earthquake risks and other natural disasters. Due to how often the tests occur, it’s thought it’s better to have a nice tune playing than a siren sound, which might alarm people.
And so Tsunami and his crew of about ten other yakuza began to survey the area near the Hatano intersection. They taped the sound of every chime at every school and would bring back the recordings. Kiyota listened to them until he identified the sound of the chime. There was only one school in the area, perhaps the entire prefecture using that melody.
Tsunami estimated that the bell could only be heard in a two kilometer radius. Were there any yakuza living in the area? They began asking around. Going house to house. They found one suspect. He was a low-ranking member of the Inagawa-Kai Odawara-gumi Shugetsu Family. The Shugestu family had 50 members and territory in Tokyo and Kanagawa Prefecture.
The Tsunami reported back to the Coach.
“We have one guy, but I can’t say that he’s the culprit. He may be completely unrelated. What do you want me to do?”
The Coach told him, “Grab him. Bring him. Get the answers.”
Tsunami wasn’t sure this was wise.
“What if he has nothing to do with it?”
“Ask him and see what he does . If his face goes white as a sheet, you’ve got your man. You’re good at reading people. Talk to him.”
And so Tsunami went to the young man’s house, with several of his goons, and had them wait outside. It was an old house, not an apartment. It seemed more costly than your typical young punk could afford.
Tsunami knew how to do an interrogation. At this point in time, nobody knew what had happened outside of the kidnappers, Kiyota, the Coach, and Tsunami. That was important.
When Tsunami talked to the man, all the color faded from his face. Before Tsunami had even explained why he was there, the young thug became very nervous. Tsunami pressed him, “Why are you looking so pale?”
“Because I’m suspected of doing something unspeakable,” the guy replied.
“Yeah, but there’s no evidence. There’s nothing linking you to it. You know what I’m talking about right?”
The young man nodded. All those years of dealing with the cops had taught Tsunami a few things.
The police always keep out of the papers and the public domain certain details of a crime to help weed out false confessions. This is called秘密の暴露(himitsu no bakuro) — the secret that reveals the truth.
The young man in his denials revealed things about the crime that only the criminal would know — things that Tsunami hadn’t told him.
He called the Coach on the phone. He was given permission to apply pressure with extreme prejudice. They kidnapped the young man and took him to another abandoned house nearby and turned up the heat. He confessed.
“I kidnapped him. I wasn’t alone but I did it. I did it.”
When he reported his findings back to the Coach, the Coach wasn’t as happy as he’d imagined he’d be. There were some in the Inagawa-iai Yamakawa-Ikka who had already decided another former yakuza must be responsible. They’d handled it badly.
The Wrong Man?
On Sept. 18, 1995, 12 days after Kiyota was kidnapped, members of the Inagawa-kai grabbed a former yakuza boss, Takeshi Tsukase, aged 58, and attempted to beat the truth out of him. It was half-baked vigilante justice.
Tsukase had been a member of the Kyokuto-kai crime group years before, and one of his men had broken into the home of a Sumiyoshi-kai boss, stole the money, killed the boss, and made off with a very rare and expensive wrist-watch.
The young yakuza gave the watch to Tsukase, his godfather, as a present, and Tsukase had worn it in public. There were only four watches of that particular make in Japan and a Sumiyoshi-kai member saw the watch. After a violent confrontation, the whole story came out. The soldier of Tsukase was dealt with harshly and Tsukase resigned from the Kyokuto-kai in disgrace.
Members of the Inagawa-kai reasoned that since Tsukase had played a part in yakuza-on-yakuza crime before, that surely he must be responsible for this crime. It was like a yakuza remake of the filmKilling Them Softlybefore the film had ever been made.
They snatched him from his restaurant in Yokohama and tortured him. They cut off the middle, ring, and little fingers on his right hand at the first joint with a knife and beat him severely with a baseball bat.
He didn’t confess. At around 8:55 p.m. that day they dumped him, bleeding and unconscious, in the parking lot of the Daiichi Hospital in Kawasaki City. One of the gangsters yelled at the doors of the emergency room, “There’s someone dying in the parking lot” and fled.
Tsukase died shortly afterwards.
Tsunami was now telling the Coach that the Inagawa-kai had maybe killed the wrong guy. That was bad.
And to top it all off, the police had become aware of the kidnappings and were running their own investigations now. There wasn’t a lot of time to solve the case.
The Coach told him, “Saigo, don’t kill him. Ask him two things — who was the ringleader and who else was involved in the kidnapping. Then let him go.”
The young man told the Tsunami the truth. The person responsible for the kidnapping and possibly many others was the leader of the Shugetsu family. It was Kenzo Arai — a friend of the Coach. And there was another member of a different crime family involved, a mid-level boss from the Nibiki-Kai, named Aoki.
It turned out that the ex-yakuza, Tsukase, who had been killed had nothing to do with the kidnappings. The whole thing was becoming very messy.
The Coach called over to the offices of the Nibiki-Kai. He spoke to the man in charge. “One of your men, Aoki, has been involved in kidnapping a boss in our organization. That’s not acceptable. I want you to grab him and hold him for questioning. I’ll explain to you when I get there.”
The boss assured the Coach that’s exactly what they’d do. They didn’t want a war with the Inagawa-Kai. After the Coach arrived at the offices and interrogated the accomplice, he knew what he had to do. He was going to pay Kenzo Arai a visit.
At around 4 p.m. on Oct. 5, the Coach, accompanied by Tsunami and 10 other yakuza, drove up to the office of the Shugetsu Family in Odawara City and surrounded the building. They parked several black Mercedes-Benz, the preferred vehicle of the elite Japanese gangsters, in front and behind and the alleys around the office. The Coach knocked on the door and went in to have a talk with his blood-brother in the organization.
In the office of Arai, the Coach sat down with Arai and his number two in the organization. Hideyuki Eiri. Eiri, “a straight arrow,” had no idea what his boss had been up to these many months.
“Ken-chan you’re in trouble,,” the Coach said slowly and addressing him with familiarity, his deep voice resonating in the room like a Buddhist monk chanting the Heart Sutra. “The game is up. We all know what you did. We know. Soon the police will know. You kidnapped not only other yakuza, you kidnapped your own people. There’s no life left for you, Ken-chan. Not in this organization. Not in the outside world. Even if the cops get you first, you know that when you get out of jail, you’re not going to make it in the straight world. It’s all over.”
Arai didn’t deny anything. He simply nodded his head.
“Consider this the mercy of a samurai,” Kanazawa told him, “Clean up your mess. Don’t cause trouble to anyone else. You know what needs to be done. You understand,right?”
“I got it. Do me a favor and spare the young one and Aoki. He was just following orders.”
“I’ll think about it,” Kanazawa promised him. And with that he left.
After the Coach had left, Eiri and Arai got into a furious argument.
Eiri, who had no part in the kidnappings, was outraged. There were certain things that were forbidden in the Inagawa-kai. There was a code of ethics, often written on the walls of the office on a scroll.
Yakuza weren’t supposed to steal, rob, committ sexual assault, or sell or use drugs. Kidnapping? That was out of the question. That was robbery. That was for thugs.
Eiri was relentless, “What were you thinking? How can you even call yourself a yakuza? Kidnapping —that’s against the code we have. It’s against everything we are. And your own people?”
At 5 p.m., Arai at a loss for words, furious with his underling and perhaps disgusted with himself, took a gun out of his desk and shot Eiri in the chest and then in the temple to finish him off.
Arai summoned his driver and left the headquarters immediately after Eiri was dead. When he arrived at home, he told his underlings that he would be leaving the house soon and told them all to wait outside at the front gate.
He made one more phone call to the Coach.
“I just want you to know that none of this was done out of a personal grudge. It was all about the money. That’s all it was ever about.”
The Coach told him, “Understood.”
Arai didn’t apologize but he asked for a favor. “I’m the person responsible. I take responsibility and I’m going to pay for it with my life. Let the others live.”
The Coach promised him that he would honor that request.
“Good,” said Arai. “Maybe I’ll see you in the next world.”
And then he hung up and shot himself in the head with a revolver. When the police arrived minutes later, he was dead, the gun was by his side.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Fourth Investigative Division, which handles organized crime, didn’t know what to make of the case at first. However, when they began digging the facts started coming to light.
In February of 1996, the Kanagawa Prefectural police arrested eight people for nabbing Kiyota Jiro, on charges of kidnapping and robbery. The police investigation uncovered several other kidnappings, including one that had been faked by a member of the Nibiki-kai, to allay suspicion of his involvement in the kidnappings.
Kenzo Arai was posthumously charged with murder, illegal possession of a firearm, and multiple violations of the guns and swords control act. The prosecutors declined to indict a dead man but filing the charges was a nice way to close the file.
In the years that followed, Kiyota Jiro rose up to become the fifth generation leader of the Inagawa-kai, retiring to his present-day ceremonial post as the Supreme Leader of the group. Kazuo Uchibori is the current leader of the Inagawa-kai.
There have been many scandals in the world of the yakuza but this was one that people still fear to mention. Even to this day, the sequence of events is taboo to discuss, and in late 2021, akaibunsho (怪文書), a Japanese word for a scandalous secret document, revealing some details of what happened began to circulate via fax and the internet. Even now the contents of that mysterious document are haunting those who were involved.
The killers of Tsukase have never been caught and probably never will be. He was collateral damage in a dark and terrible crime. When he was killed there was a statute of limitations on murder. There’s not anymore. But it’s doubtful his case will ever be reopened.
The life of a yakuza is a perilous thing. Tsunami summed it all up the best.
“I read somewhere that when a bell tolls in the west, it means that someone has died. That’s not what the chimes at 5 p.m. mean here in Japan, but since 1995, whenever I hear the melody, I can’t help but think —someone, somewhere, is going to die. And if I’m not lucky, it might be me.”
Adapted with permission of the publisher from The Last Yakuza: Life and Death in the Japanese Underworld, written by Jake Adelstein. Published by Scribe Publications in October 2023. Available wherever books are sold.
