Pastor Tatsuya Shindo says the yakuza era is over. “That is my private opinion.” Or his hope, his wish, his longing. He used to be someone from the Japanese underworld, a gangster of the Sumiyoshi-kai gang, violent, addicted to drugs, in prison three times. He knows how organized crime leads one deeper and deeper into a hopelessness. “I was really in the dark,” he says. And because many ex-yakuza come to his church in the city of Kawaguchi, north of Tokyo, he is still experiencing how difficult it is to get away from Japan’s mafia. So it would be best if it no longer existed.
And the signs are not bad either. Or?
The yakuza belong to Japan like the geishas and the sumo wrestlers. But unlike these, they are not considered living monuments of Japanese cultural heritage. They represent the rough side of the island state, which is actually famous for its low crime rate and obedient people. They also represent a different time because their influence is waning. Tokyo police report that at the end of 2020 there were around 4,000 gang members in Japan’s capital, 300 fewer than the previous year. “This is the tenth year in a row with a decline.” And the pandemic is costing the yakuza protection money. The police confirm that some restaurants “have been refusing to pay gangster fees since the end of 2020 because of the corona crisis”.
Of course, you shouldn’t copy the yakuza for a long time. They even seem to reconcile with old enemies in the struggle for their existence. The newspaper wrote in mid-September Asahi, that the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s largest yakuza syndicate, members of the Yamaken-gumi want to resume; the gang split off six years ago to form a new gang, and a bloody gang war ensued. And the pastor Tatsuya Shindo does not let go of the subject either.
Today’s pastor Tatsuya Shindo was once a member of the infamous Japanese mafia.
(Photo: Thomas Hahn)
He’s sitting in his church, which doesn’t look like a church at all. It is a residential building with a chapel on the ground floor. Shindo, a wiry 50-year-old, wears a patterned shirt. Between the buttons you can see the tattoo from his yakuza time. Before the interview, he says a prayer. Then he tells.
It started when he was kicked out of school after a brawl in tenth grade. He found the decision unfair, but at the same time he liked the sinister nonchalance of the nouveau riche yakuza. They came to his mother’s snack bar regularly. They asked him if he wanted to play on their baseball team. He played along, but he didn’t want to just be in baseball. “I’ve been waiting to be asked. I thought they’d show you something nice.” Shindo was 18 when he joined the gang.
His first church: his mother’s snack bar
He sold drugs and counterfeit branded bags, collected protection money for his syndicate in Tokyo’s entertainment districts and was always ready for action in gang warfare. He proved himself, he rose in the hierarchy. “When I was involved with drugs, my day started with drugs and stopped with drugs.” Shindo must have been a dangerous man then, no comparison to the cheerful preacher he is today. “No yakuza without violence,” he says, “a yakuza must radiate: Remember, if I have to go to prison because of you, I’ll come back one day and kill you.”
At some point he realized that the drugs and the constant escape from the police were ruining him. “I wanted to draw a line.” But before he could start a new life, he ended up back in prison. Single cell in Akita. There he had time to read the Bible. “There was such a stanza, Ezekiel 33:11.” Of course he knows them by heart. “As surely as I live, says the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his being and live.” He was impressed.
That was in August 2001. He was 30 and saw a new purpose. In the Christian seminar “Jesus to Japan” he was trained to be a pastor. His first church was his mother’s snack bar.
Yakuza means “eight-nine-three” in Japanese. The word is the expression for a worthless hand in a card game and describes the pride of Nippon’s Mafiosi. Moving beyond social expectations and still being rich – that is the attraction of their criminal life. And in Japan this free spirit was at times quite socially acceptable. The criminologist and yakuza researcher Noboru Hirosue shows a black and white photo. It shows the legendary gang boss Kazuo Taoka with the actor Ken Takakura. “Back then, getting flowers from Mr. Taoka was a status symbol,” says Hirosue.
Taoka led the Yamaguchi-gumi from 1946 to 1981. Under him, the syndicate was initially a kind of vigilante group that kept order in the turmoil of the post-war period when the then unarmed police were powerless. It grew from Kobe to a national cartel with 10,000 members, 500 gangs, legal and illegal businesses, including show business and gambling.
Dirty job specialists
“The biggest difference between the Japanese yakuza and the Italian mafia is that the mafia is banned,” says Hirosue. Japan’s constitution does not allow a syndicate to be deprived of their freedom of association. And especially in post-war Japan, some found the discreet ruthlessness of the yakuza very practical.
They professionally did dirty jobs, collected debts, sold stolen goods and complimented rioting guests from bars. During the real estate boom of the 1980s, landowners used their services to evict local residents. It was only when the real estate boom stopped abruptly in 1990 that the state took the fight against yakuza more seriously. In 1992 the anti-Boryokudan law came into force. Boryokudan means violent group. The law was supposed to stop the yakuza from enriching the financial market.
To date there has been no ban on the yakuza gangs. But the state is trying to cut off its members’ access to civil society. This is why Tatsuya Shindo believes that the yakuza are finished. “You are no longer allowed to open accounts, rent apartments, anything.”
But where should the dropouts go? There is a place to sleep in Shindo’s church where ex-yakuza can stay for up to three months looking for a job. But the pastor can’t help everyone. And civil life is not easy for people who are used to crime. “There will be more gangsters who are not in gangs,” Shindo suspects. The researcher Hirosue sees it the same way. Many basically just switched crime and target audience. “Since 2010, the elderly have become more and more victims of fraud.” According to police data from 2020, 40 percent of the perpetrators have dropped out of the Yakuza.
Noboru Hirosue therefore doesn’t believe that the yakuza will go away. Many have learned nothing but dishonest work.