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.

This book sounds very interesting. I must read it.