A

I sold my car in Carvana last night.

B

Well, that's cool.

A

No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong.

C

So what's the problem?

A

That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes as smoothly. I'm waiting for the catch. Maybe there's no catch. That's exactly what a catch would want me to think.

B

Wow.

C

You need to relax.

A

I need to knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this table wood? I think it's laminate. Okay. Yeah, that's good. That's close enough. Car selling without a catch. Sell your car today on Carvana.

C

Pick up fees may apply.

A

Make every get chill this Memorial Day get up to an extra thousand dollars off select top brand appliances like lg. Plus get free delivery at the Home Depot. Tackle pool towels and camp laundry with a large capacity washer. And host in style with the fridge serving craft ice, mini craft ice, cubed ice and crushed ice. Shop appliance Savings now through June 3rd at the Home Depot. Offer valid May 14th through June 3rd. US only. Free delivery on appliance purchases of $998 or more. See store online for details.

D

It's 1986 at an apartment in downtown Gifu, central Japan. And Mako Nishimura's phone is ringing. She picks it up. A friend on the line, a mutual a girl named Aya. She's in trouble. Five guys have her cornered in a street nearby. And she's pregnant. God only knows. The friend tells Nishimura what they'll do next. Nishimura is 19 years old, Bean pole thin, short enough to get id'd at the Isakaya. But she's no wallflower with it. Having graduated from truancy to juvenile detention, she's been getting deeper of late into the nihilist subculture of biker gangs, so called Bozozuku who tear around Japan's major cities racing and robbing while dressed in the white jumpsuits, as white as driven snow of wartime kamikaze pilots. But that's not all. In recent months, Nishimura has dived into way more serious crime. Hooking up with a sword scarred gangster to run call girls around Gifu, a city of some half million people near the industrial powerhouse of Nagoya. As well as dealing and taking vast quantities of methamphetamines. This has rubbed Nishimura up against far more organized criminals. Not least the Yakuza, Japan's feared and highly ritualized underworld. But all of this, especially the Yakuza, is a man's world. And there are few bozuzuku, far less yakuza, who are thrilled at a woman selling sex and drugs on their patch. Lucky then, that Nishimura, all five feet and small change of her, doesn't mind going toe to toe on Gifu's mean streets. Loves it, in fact, Queensberry rules, Sheensby rules. One whiff of a brawl and Nishimura goes for her opponent's undercarriage. First the legs, she tells me. You cut him down with a club or a plank of wood. Then she adds, you get to work on this particular evening in 86. It's a baseball bat Nishimura grabs for as she hangs up the phone, runs outside and moments later spots Aya stricken and surrounded by five goons. One of them kicks the pregnant girl in her belly. Nishimura loses the plot. She wades into the men, lunging and clocking them with the bat like a champion slugger. By the time cocks show, all five men are laid on the floor like bloody ten pins, Nishimura is already long gone. She gets picked up by the police, she reckons, and she'll be spending far more than a few months in a minimum security prison. She hops, therefore, on a train bound for Tokyo and hides out in the capital city's bustling Asakusa neighborhood. But not for long. A week later, one of Nishimura's friends, a member of a major yakuza syndicate, rats her out. Cops find her and bring her into custody. But a week after that, a mysterious individual foots the bill for Nishimura's hefty bail and she's set free. Around the same time, the guy who snitched on her, he skips town. That benefactor, though, a convicted murderer, gangster and boss of a local affiliate to the Sumiyoshi Kai, Japan's second biggest yakuza group. He's heard all about Nishimura's heroics to save her friend, and he banished the man who sold her out to the authorities. What's more, he's got a proposition for her. Even though you're a woman, the boss tells Nishimura soon afterwards, you should become a yakuza. It's an offer, to borrow a phrase, she can't refuse. And it will change the fortunes of Mako Nishimura and the Japanese underworld forever. This is the Underworld Podcast. Hello and welcome to the weekly audio visual podcast experience that pits two beer battered journalists against the world of organized crime, but chiefly their own sanity and personal relationships. I am Sean Williams in Buenos Aires, Argentina. And I am Joined by New York City based ad marketing guru Danny Gold, who's quickly becoming this show's Don Draper. What you guys call love was invented by men like Danny to sell ads to armoured car executives. Just think about that.

A

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if we can talk about that just yet. Even though I just. I mentioned it on the last episode. But yeah, it's. It's true. I'm fast becoming a renaissance man of. Of employment, of jobs, of corporate skills, whatever you want to call it, I'm there. And Quincy, I just started watching Mad Men for the first time, like a couple months ago.

D

Damn. I don't.

A

I don't love it. I like it. I don't love it. That Don Draper, though, not a nice guy. He's kind of a dick.

D

No, that's. That's a great review. Maybe we should do more of those for the Patreon. Coming up soon. Talking about for about five years, but anyway, I'd never done it yet. Jobs. What a thing. Anyway, have you thought about Danny being Don Draper? Yes, we have. We've got over that. So let's do some housekeeping. Bonuses up at the Patreon for subscribers whom we love. Who we love, whom we love. Patreon.com the Underworld podcast plus roundups, notes, ad free shows, merch. Underworldpod.com and get in touch with us. Theunderworldpodcastmail.com oh, I'm contractually obliged to mention the fact that we post prodigious amounts of content to every social media platform except Bluesky. So follow, like, subscribe there too. It's just way better, isn't it?

A

Yeah, it's kind of what we. What we've accepted we have to do. Sean's even doing TikTok dances, like six years too late, but he's building a following. And everything you think you know about a British guy and rhythm when it comes to dancing is actually true. And you'll see that if you. If you follow us on these things.

D

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The guys in the, like, the. The crime ridden barrio that I walked through my dog the other day really didn't appreciate me doing this, like, pointing to the sky going, this is the poorest neighborhood in Buenos Aires. Yeah, didn't go down very well, but you can enjoy that coming up soon. So to today's episode, some of you might remember I was in Japan last October reporting a long read for the Guardian about the woman who might possibly be the only female ever to have officially joined the Yakuza. Although as we'll learn in a little bit. That title is somewhat disputed.

A

Right. And some of you might remember that I was in Japan in November, I think of 2024, and then talked about the toilets and how much better of a society it is for I think at least the next three months in every episode and still feel that way.

D

Yeah, it's incredible how wistful I can get sitting on a non robot toilet these days. Just dreaming of a heated seat and something that talks to me while I'm doing my ablutions. Anyway, yes, that story, I think as we're publishing this, I think it came out a few days ago. And if you really love me, you're gonna head over to the Guardian website and click on it so they think I'm the next cat person and give me more bylines. I never actually did read cat person, did you?

A

I would have rather had an actual cat claw my. My eyes out. But I think we've moved past that era of journalism, which is. Or writing or maybe not. I don't know.

D

We're definitely not past that.

A

No, definitely not past that. It's only gotten worse.

D

Yeah. If you read that story, my story, not cat person, you're gonna see some incredible photos of today's protagonist, Mako Nishimura, taken by Shoko Takayasu when we hung out in Gifu and Nagoya for a few days during the trip. And Shoko and I were also Jo. Martina Baradel, Oxford University academic, author of the books yakuza blues and 21st century yakuza and longtime Japanese resident. Martina first discovered Ms. Shimura and I'm like hugely indebted to her for introducing me to her too. And if you want to hear about me getting accosted by a group of sexually aggressive Nagoya drag queens, listen on because I interviewed Martina for today's show and you'll hear some of her interviews sprinkled into this soon. So there's something for everyone today, even Japanese drag queens. But what makes Nishimura's story even more amazing is that it coincided with the fall of the yakuza. From a shadow economy of almost 200,000 members to the rump state it is today, stripped of its glamour and members and subordinate in many ways to these new informal so called Tokuryu gangs, sometimes foreign led, that are taking over Japan's underworld. And Nishimura's attempts in later life to help others like her leave the yakuza life, navigating all the stigma that comes from getting out of the gangs. So this is a proper roller coaster Ride through youth crime, drugs, bikers, yakuza, and even our old friends, the scammers of Southeast Asia. In fact, there is so much incredible info here that I'm splitting it into two parts. The rise and fall of Nishimura and Japan's Yakuza. So let's start at the beginning. Because unlike most true crime podcasts, we like to tell the stories the old fashioned way around the world. The way no AI can do. Beginning, Middle east and end. Take that, Sam Altman. Nako. Nako. There you go. I just stalled him like the first word. After saying that, that's the real humanity that you love to hear. Mako Nishimura is born in 1966 in the Tokyo suburb of Setagaya. Her real name is Kazuyo. She gives herself the name Mako, which means Devil's Child later on.

A

So I'm assuming that's how the sharks got their name too, which makes them sound awesome. Like that's a pretty cool name for a shark or anyone.

D

Yeah, a shark in Spanish is Tiburon, which is also a really cool name for reasons I don't fully understand yet, but it sounds cool. So maybe everyone loves sharks except for Aussie surfboarders with one seal.

A

Seals.

D

I don't know if the seals like them Seals. Yeah, seals aren't big fans.

A

Yeah, no, not at all.

D

Sorry, sorry. To seal fans out there, Tokyo in 1966 is a pretty cool place to be. The Beatles have just played their first show in the city and Setagaya is bathing in the afterglow at the 1964 Olympics which has given it a brand new stadium in Olympic Park. But it's not all triple jumps and mophead quartets. Tokyo is a post war mess of corruption and construction. According to one NHK documentary of the time, quote, no place for a human being to live. Only a robot with no sense could live in this rough, coarse, harsh and dusty city that doesn't have any blue skies. Drug addiction soars in this environment, as do the Yakuza, particularly the Yamaguchi Gumi, run by Kazuo Toyoka, Japan's Godfather, whom we profiled on this very podcast back in February. By the time Nishimura is born, Taoka's foot soldiers are making almost $150 million in today's money from Japan's docks alone. Remember, these guys came from Kobe, one of the biggest docklands in the country, and even establishes a movie company to peddle the Yakuza's self styled image as Robin Hood's. There's that phrase again. Fighting the rich and powerful to help the weak. Which is, as usual, nonsense. Nishimura's parents don't stick around in Tokyo for long. They move to Nagoya, a metropolis home even then to over 6 million people. A manufacturing heavyweight, home to companies like Toyota, Denso, Brother and ngk. Nishimura's mother is a housewife and her father a stern and serious civil servant who raises her and her two younger brothers with an iron fist. Nishimura calls their life quote Spartan in the 2024 autobiography she's written. If the kids get bad grades, their dad bawls them out. If their posture at the dining table isn't right, he clocks them on the shoulder with a bamboo stick. If they use their chopsticks wrong, they're slapped. It's more like a temple school than a home, she writes. By the way, side note, it's quite funny to watch Argentine people use chopsticks. Maybe for another episode. Nishimura is good at science, but he gets good grades. More, she thinks, to avoid her father's wrath than to actually excel. I saw a guy scooped them up, scooped the noodles up with both chopsticks, like a. Like a ladle. It was cool. Actually, it was quite funny to watch. Anyway, she's good at foot races, Nishimura, and ranks first in her school's fitness tests. But increasingly, she flat out refuses to do stuff she doesn't like. She's had enough of the spartan upbringing and she often runs away from home, sometimes heading to her grandmother's house where she hides under the bed and cries. And then, in the second year of Nishimura's junior high, she makes a new set of friends. Delinquents. Remember our show from back in 2022 about the so called sukuban or girl boss gangs that flourished in 1960s and 70s Japan? Nishimura becomes one of them. She lets out the hem of her skirt and dyes her hair blonde. She likes the way that her classmates are outraged at the new look. But when Nishimura's dad sees her new hair, he's furious and he clippers it. And the next day she goes to school with her head in a towel. It's around this time she learns to smoke cigarettes and more importantly, becomes a habitual runaway, sleeping in cars or under the eaves of temples. Before long, she graduates to stealing cars and staying away from home for days at a time because of her father's violence, but because also she thinks it's just cool. The high point for this comes at Nishimura's high school graduation ceremony where she's asked not to attend. Instead, her parents do reading out loud an essay entitled Having a Delinquent Daughter, which is pretty brutal stuff. Around the age of 16, Nishimura joins a Bosozuku group. If you don't know about these guys, you really should. Now, you may have well seen luridly dressed Japanese biker crews in the movie Akira or in blogs about fashion or subculture or whatever. Basically every version of Heist and the biker inex ilk has an essay somewhere. Or an American fashion student in Tokyo thinks they're the first person to notice this. But the truth of the Bosozuku is truly crazy. They formed out of the ashes of the Imperial Japanese army, specifically its infamous kamikaze pilots. Guys who signed up for suicide missions, flying aircraft directly into enemy ships and infantry columns, all in the name of the Emperor. Unsurprisingly, these radicals struggled to adapt to the mundanity of post war Japan, not least being occupied by the Americans. Nothing hits quite like a death cult. So they turn weirdly to the US and start forming motorcycle clubs.

A

Yeah, I think that was always the legend with the Hell's Angels, right? That they were former World War II vets or pilots maybe. But I think it's actually not true. Like I think the outlaw archive guy, who might be the most knowledgeable person. I think he is the most knowledgeable person on the planet when it comes to this stuff, has pointed out that, that it's not the case. I think Sonny Barger says it and he was like, that's actually not true. I could be hallucinating all of this. So definitely check me on that if I am in the comments. But I also could be right. But I'm pretty sure I have like faint memories of him being like, that's actually not true. And I trust that guy probably more than anyone when it comes to that sort of stuff.

D

Yeah, yeah, he's. He's pretty amazing on this stuff. I mean, there's also like, obviously the bozozuku come out of the idea of kamikaze, but like, you know, how many kamikaze pilots were there?

A

That's a really, that's a really good point. How many kamikaze pilots? Actually, if you're a kamikaze pilot. Kamikaze pilot, and you're still here afterwards, you're not a good kamikaze pilot. You're a failed kamikaze pilot. Yeah, you're bad at being a kamikaze pilot. You probably shouldn't even call yourself you're just a pilot.

D

Exactly. You're a bad pilot.

A

Yeah, well, maybe a good pilot.

D

How many missions? None. Like, you only fly one, surely.

A

Right. Maybe they were the ones in training. And this is a good bit. This is like get a good, good five minutes on this right here.

D

We're gonna clip this up, take it to stand up. We need someone to like, give us banter in a crowd of some kind, and then we're gonna make millions. Yeah. Anyway, so the Bozozuku, these aren't like the Harley Davidson Appreciation Society. Right. These guys, the kamikaze of them at least, were conditioned to think of planes as giant bombs. And they pre transfer that to two wheels. They're hurtling around major cities, causing mayhem, having knife fights, and occasionally doing more serious crime. Many of them dressed in the very same white jumpsuits they'd expected to die in during the war. These outfits are called tokofuku, special attack clothing. And they're often accompanied not by helmets, cause why. But kamikaze headbands with stuff like Police be damned or Bring it on written on them. Only in Japanese characters. So obviously it looks cooler. The bikers call themselves Bozozuku, or speed tribes, which is apt not just because they ride like maniacs, but because they get into dealing speed, meth and other drugs, often becoming a kind of lower rung of organized crime below the Yakuza.

A

Yeah, I think they were kind of like farm teams for the Yakuza. You know, they would recruit out of them when they saw people with potential in the. In the, in the motorcycle clubs. Because I don't think they were all. I don't think they were all criminals. The. The Bozo Suko. Right. It was more like a subculture sort of thing. But I think when they had potential, Yakuza would reach out to them.

D

Yeah, yeah, they were kind of feeder groups, just like the bikies are in, like Australia. Right. In Southeast Asia that go around the place like ferrying drugs around those parts of the world. Even Today, by the 1980s, there are over 40,000 Bozozuku across Japan. Bear in mind that is more than all the Italian mafia families combined today. And that is a lot of nutcases on motorbikes. Here is a Bozozuku speaking to the writer Ikuya Sato for his book Kamikaze Biker Quote. So I considered the accent for a second there in my head.

A

Do it, do it.

D

It's time.

A

You've earned it.

D

No, I haven't got that much capital in the bank. So many bikes so many people. My heart sounds like ban ban bean doki doki. Like being stricken with polio. I cannot say it in words. I just cry.

A

Yow. You did it a little bit. You slipped into it right there.

D

I did. I lent in just enough that hopefully we'll get more pop. Funny story. That's actually the exact same quote gambling.com Got out of Danny Gould when he won $2 on the Yankees spread last week. And he even said that bit about polio being great. Can you believe it?

A

God, that Max Freed injury killed me, dude. Killed me.

D

I literally didn't know that Max Freed got injured.

A

He'll be back. I think he's maybe out a game or two. But he left in the middle of a game and.

D

Yeah, we'll get there.

A

Don't worry.

D

Ouchy. Okay. Anyway, this not Max Freed, but the bikers is the world that Mako Nishimura is sinking into. In her mid teens, bunking off from a fact job her dad has made her take to go ride pillion with bozozuku, steal cars and get wasted. She doesn't really like drinking alcohol or huffing glue with her fellow speed tribesters. She doesn't mind doing the odd joint. But what she really, really likes is meth. Tons of meth. Meth that's flooding Japan from the jungles of Southeast Asia and making millions of dollars for the yakuza chief. Among them the Sumiyoshikai from Tokyo and Kobe's Yamaguchi Gumi.

A

Sean, I seem to remember when I first met you, you had a penchant for both huffing glue and meth. Which one did you actually prefer?

D

No, I mean, you. You can actually mix them together. That's the thing. And you can get a higher. That really sticks, if you know what I mean.

A

Yeah, it's a different kind of speedball, but it's, you know, it's fine.

D

Yeah. Do you get that, like, stick.

A

You get higher, but that's. That's actually. God damn it, you're so witty. Sometimes it just goes right over, you know? Can't even keep up.

D

Activate. I'm on another plane at the moment anyway. As many as might just be the massive, massive schnitzel that has for lunch. As many as a third of all yakuza are drafted from the Bozozuku during this time. Yeah, like you said, that is a hell of a lot of people. And the leader of Nishimura's biker gang, which is called the worst, is a young yakuza named Hitoshi. Tall and imposing, gym fit and he's never lost a fight, just like you. Here is Nishimura describing quote he had a large sword scar on the right side of his face and he looked intimidating and scary. However, for some reason he was kind to me and we became good friends. I think you're going to find out why they became good friends. Hitoshi doesn't seem to mind that Nishimura is a woman. Even though Japan's underworld is extremely male coded, to use a Gen Z phrase, it also reflects a wider Japanese society that has only just introduced gender equality laws a full decade after the uk, for example, and where women are expected to fulfill a traditional role as, quote, good wife, wise woman. Which I guess that's like the Japanese version of happy wife, happy life. But part of the reason Hitoshi doesn't mind is that Nishimura seems to revel in violence, going at rival gangsters with batons, knives, nunchucks, baseball bats, anything she can get her hands on. And Hitoshi likes to fight, writes Nishimura. Quote, once he got violent, no one could stop him. We would go on a rampage together. Here's Martina Baradel, Oxford University academic and author on Nishimura's early years and how it reflects on Japanese crime in the mid-1980s.

A

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C

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A

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C

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C

Nagoya is very famous for I mean, it is, let's say, a hot spot of Yakuza. There is a very big office of the Kodokai, which is now the most influential group within the Yamaguchi Gumi. And that it's a very big building and it's on the other side of the station. So most of. So we. We went on the. Let's say it's not sketchy. I wouldn't say sketchy, but let's say not the most beautiful part of Magoya. And on that side of the station there are a lot of activities that can be related to the Yakuza or controlled by the Yakuza. So that bar in particular that we went is a bar that I really like because it is, you know, if you go there, you can always observe a lot of interesting people. So there are lots of ex yakas. I think that's nice. We went. There was this guy who usually is dressed up as a woman. So I didn't recognize him immediately, but he was also a yakuza and he left a yakuza when the first anti Yakuza law came out in 1992. Because that law gave Elizabeth, you know, it. It regulated more strictly the Yakuza and at that time, so violence had to be curbed a little bit. And a lot of people who were in the Yakuza for the money and for the fun of, you know, the. For the violence as well, left the group in the first few years after that law. And he, he was one of them. And then he decided to explore this feminine part of. Of his personality. And so, you know, usually comes out dressed as a. As a woman. Yes, especially in the 80s and 90s, let's say, when Bosozoku were still big thing. Now Bosozoku are a thing of the past. They are. You can still see sometimes. Actually I saw a group of around 100 bosozoku a month ago I was in the countryside and so I was so surprised to see there because it's really a site from the past and it's really something from a little bit more from the countryside in Nagoya you can see like there are sometimes Postozoku, but never this pink gangs that used to be so Bosozoku at their height. At their peak, they had tens of thousands of members all across Japan, divided in of course, different groups. And they were the stepping stone to the Yakuza. So lots of people would join the Bosozoku because it was something in between. It was. You could be a little bit delinquent, but you could just be in the Bosozoku, just to ride around, cruise around, okay, make noise, which is the same deviant behavior, but it's not such a big. Any big crime. And. And then the yakuza, of course, had connections with the groups because a lot of people came from the same group. And so they would go and kind of scout for the people who had the best, you know, the. The skills to come and join the group. And also what she was saying about, you know, somebody who noticed her and then took her around to, you know, just to learn the ropes of yakuza, Nogi of the. The, you know, to learn how to do yakuza business. So I think at first it was just going to collect protection money and then also learning a little bit more about what she was doing, which was this derricher who saw these, let's say, well, sex work, you know, prostitution kind of services. So this is a very. A very, very common setting. It used to be a very, very common setting. So now it is not like that anymore. Because the Bosozoku are not, you know, a thing that young people are attracted to. So things changed. But they were a very, you know, fertile ground for entering the yakuza. But the other thing as well, you know, that she said about the ability to use violence, which was what, you know, she was learning, she was already kind of like trying to step into that world. But what really, I think, made the difference for her, especially as a woman, was her, you know, ability. The fact that she proved she was able to prove that she was also able to, you know, fight like a man. And this is very important because, of course, we are talking about awards where violence is. Is still a very important asset. And so I think as a woman, that was particularly important for her to be able to show that.

D

Unsurprisingly, this lands Nishimura on the wrong side of the law. And she does several short stretches in juvenile women's prison. But if anything, the experience teaches her to be tougher, colder, to get ahead. She lifts weights every day and studies karate. She learns from Hitoshi some of the finer points of organized crime, too. Graduating from robbing and stealing cars to extortion, corrupting cops, and learning she could get a lot more out of people if she wields the threat of violence rather than simply wading in for the hell of it. Some men mock Mishimura for being a woman, calling her, quote, a little man or telling her to shut up. That doesn't go down well. She cuts her hair short and wears Men's clothing though. And she starts getting tattoos. Lots and lots of tattoos. Sometimes she plays an artist to do them, other times, like Danny, she goes at it herself with a stick and poke. I mean, ask him about the Sopranos. One on his back looks like Peter Griffin. This homemade. It's incredible actually on many fronts that

A

is not your best work. I do not have any stick and poke tattoos. I do have one bamboo one but I got that in Thailand from like a monk, so it doesn't count, you know.

D

Ah, technically. I want to know more about that. They're sticking in Pokemon Episode. Okay, we need to know more if you want to see Nishimura's tats. Not Danny's tats, unfortunately. Head to that Guardian article. Shoko's pictures are pretty spectacular. Some of them are designed Kenichi Shinota. I don't know. I'll let the people decide. Some of them are designs worn by Kenichi Shinoda. Those tats, who is the sixth boss of the Yamaguchi Gumi. But it's not all just the tats that Nishimura loves about the Yakuza. She loves pretty much everything from the suits to the stories they tell about themselves and the movies produced by their biggest bosses. Especially the ones Kazuo Towaka had made in the 60s.

A

The suits really are incredible. I mean, I would love to find a Yakuza type tailored, but I don't know. I don't think I have the figure, Sean. I don't think either one of us do to rock a Yakuza style suit.

D

I. I don't often agree with you. 100 but that is, that's true.

A

You've been.

D

You've been definitely the case. Yeah. I mean that's like Basically the first 200 results on suit on like ebay, Right. A guy is dressed up in sort of like skin. Like skin tight, beautiful.

A

Not skin tight. They're like, they're not like super skin. You know what I'm saying? They're not like, like, like what is it when they have like the capri pants type suit? It's like, it's thin, it's like slim. But it's just like. I don't know, man.

D

They look well, right?

A

Yeah, they look fantastic.

D

Yeah. No, I definitely can't do that. You can't. You can't do that. If you're anything under 6 foot and I am not.

A

What are you talking about? They're all like five foot six. They just like look cool.

D

Oh yeah. Well, they were taking loads of drugs and like subsisting solely on coffee.

A

They got those hairstyles.

D

Yeah, Rules. Imagine. Great luck.

A

Incredible.

D

Anyway, yes. These guys, they're your kind of swashbuckling, honorable gentlemen criminals. You're kind of like Steve McQueen of the Yakuza world, right? They're impeccably dressed, well mannered, protecting the weak from the powerful, giving to the poor. I mean, you know the drill, right? Of course. It is all nonsense. The samurai history, the noble causes, the Robin Hood personae. To learn more, go back to our first whopping two parter on the Yakuza. All the way back in 2021, which dives into the Middle Ages feudalism and how the Yakuza really kicked off. But none of that, of course, is on Nishimura's mind. And as she heads deeper into the underworld, she finds herself working more and more with the heavier, more organized criminals than the head cases she'd been riding with at the Bosozoku. Nishimura leaves home for good, and she lives at a yakuza owned bar in downtown Gifu. Most people are like her, gangsters, addicted to meth. She's stealing some of the drug herself, but her biggest earner is girls. Nishimura opens a call girl service, hiring girls she met behind bars, sharing the cash. They get 60, 40. She says she's selling up to five a day, making thousands of dollars. But she's spending tons of it too. Not just on protection from a local yakuza syndicate, but on meth. And she's often so high she messes up her bookkeeping. Now we're up to 1986 and the scene from the Cold Open. Nishimura grabs her baseball bat, defends her pregnant friend Aya, and goes on the run. In Tokyo, she's ratted out, arrested, but bailed out by a Gifu yakuza boss. His name is Ryoichi Sugino, and he's serious business boss of a gifu affiliate of the Sumiyoshi Kai, Japan's second biggest yakuza syndicate and a convicted murderer. He's impressed with her. And even though Nishimura is a woman, he makes her an offer. Take Sakazuki, he tells her. Become one of us. To show how vital the Sakazuki ceremony is for the Yakuza, here is famed criminologist Hiroaki Iwai. An auspicious day is chosen and all members of the organization will attend, with Toromochinin or Akusanin or guarantors in English present as intermediaries. Rice, whole fish and piles of salt are placed in the Shinto Shrine alcove, in front of which the oyabun and kobun, that is boss and underling, sit facing each other. The toromochin arrange the fish ceremonially and fill the drinking cups with sake, adding fish scales and salt. They then turn solemnly to the kobun and warn him of his future duties. Having drunk from the oobun's cup and he from yours, you now owe loyalty to the ika or family and devotion to your oyabun. Even should your wife and children starve, even at the cost of your life, your duty is now to the Ica, an oyabun or they say from now on, you have no other occupation until the day you die. The oyabun is your only parent. Follow him through fire and flood.

A

I think the TV show Tokyo of Ice really shows this pretty well. It's based on a book by our friend Jake Adelson, who somehow we haven't mentioned yet so far in this episode, who is one of the foremost authorities on the Yakuza, despite being a tall white guy from St. Louis and who rules. Great guy, met him in Japan. But yeah, that show is really. I can't believe they cancel it after two seasons. It's really phenomenal. And if any of this. Good, yeah, any of this interests you guys, you should watch that show because I mean, it's modern day, right? Modern day Yakuza. Not the, the 80s, 70s, 80s 90s stuff. But it's so incredibly well done that I don't know what HBO was thinking when they didn't renew it. It's phenomenal, phenomenal show.

D

Yes.

A

And based off his book, which is a phenomenal, phenomenal book.

D

It's like seminal crime book. And Jake's got a more recent book called the Last Yakuza, which I'm going to quote a bit in part two of this show. So he's going to pop up somewhere. But yeah, get reading those books. They're just unreal. They're great. Like I love them anyway. People call Sugino the little gangster because of his size, but there is nothing small about this guy's status. People fear him. Nishimura respects him, but also he has this kind of avuncular father like manner that she likes. Perhaps it's got something to do with her own violent father. But Nishimura says yes, and in doing so she makes history. Now women have taken important roles in the Yakuza 4. Here's Martina Barado again. And this stuff is like super, super fascinating.

C

Yeah. So women have played Important roles in the yakuza, although usually it's unofficial roles. So for the yakuza, being a man, maleness, masculinity is a very important part of identity. And so this has always excluded women from being part of the group. Of course, being a very, let's say, sexist or traditional society or very. They accept the role of women in the sense of wives and people who take care of other people. So the role of anisan, the wife of the boss, has been recognized. They were never members of the group. So to be a member, you need to do the sakazuki, you need to do the ritual, and then you need to follow the rules and everything. Of course, women cannot do that usually, but the role was still important in the sense that they would help the husband in managing this new family. So the family, the yakuza family, not only the blood family, but women were still, you know, relegated to the role of taking care of other men. So they would help younger men. They would help people who would go to prison. Like members who, you know, if they went to prison, they would bring something, they. They would find the lawyer. They could help around with some of the tasks. But this is, you know, the kind of role of the mother of. Of the family. So this is traditional role. There have been cases in which, because of extraordinary circumstances, some women had to do something a little bit more. So the first case is this, of Matsude Yoshiko, who was the wife of a boss. We are talking about the immediate post war. So 46, 47. And the boss was killed. And so she stepped up and she led the group, which was a small group, but she led the group. She continued the work of the husband for one year. So it was very limited in time. And it was kind of like she was just covering until they found the new boss. But still, that was one of the first instances in which a woman was able to lead a group which was already, you know, as I said, it was a small group. We're not talking about one of these big national groups, but again, so we are talking about a period of turmoil, a period in which also a lot of men were still coming back from the colonies from the war, so it was necessary for her to do this. And then the other very big example is Taoka Fumiko, who was the boss of Taoka Kazuo, the third boss of the Yamaguchi Gumi. So the biggest. What became the biggest yakuza group in the post war and still is the most prominent yakuza group in today's Landscape of Japanese underworld and Toukofu Nico so the husband, he was shot at. A member of a rival group shot him. And he had a couple of years in which he was not. He recovered, but then he was not really completely healthy. And then he died in 1981. And at that time there was a little bit of a problem from leadership because the person was supposed to follow Taoka Kazuo was in prison. He died in prison. So they had a little bit of trouble in finding the next leader. And in that case, the group was already very big. It already had thousands of members. It was already present in the hall of the Japanese archipelago. And in that case, they made Toca Fumiko the face of the group. We are talking about the 80s, so an era in which the Yakuza was very open to the public. NHK would go and interview the Yakuza and Yakuza groups when there was something happening. So it's not the situation that we have now where the Yakuza is very more secretive. They were much more visible groups and semi legitimate groups. So in that case, they decided to have a group of high ranking officials who were trying to, you know, keep the group together and make the managing the group, make all the important decisions. And Toca Fumico was also involved in this group. But then she was also. They also decided that she would be the public face. So when they decided for the next leader, the NHK went to Toca Fumiko's house, talked to the boss's house and interviewed her. She was the one that gave, explained why they decided for this other boss and so on and so forth. So in that case, she didn't really take any operative decisions. It was more like Touka Kazuo is really a boss, which is, you know, a legend, let's say in the yakuza world. He was really from 25 members. He was able to build a group that had influence all over Japan and had tens of thousands of members. So we're really talking about somebody who was an extraordinary, extraordinary influence in the world of the Yakuza. And in this case, it is acceptable that wife can was also seen as part of this power. But again, it's never a real power. It's always a power that comes from the fame of your husband, the power of your husband. So it's never a direct. A direct thing.

D

But despite all this, neither Yoshiku nor Fumiku had performed Sakazuki, the sake sharing ritual I just remarked on that marks a gangster's official initiation into the Yakuza, similar to how an Italian or American mobster becomes a made man in the Mafia. Interestingly, Nishimura isn't allegedly the only woman to have carried out the ritual. There is a woman in Osaka who is said to have become an underboss beneath Kazuo Touka. But she quit the mob soon after, and she now runs a restaurant in Japan's Second City, refusing to speak to the media. And actually, Martina doesn't even think Nishimura's story is a feminist one at all. Here she is again. Send Help is now streaming on Hulu

A

and Hulu on Disney. We're somewhere in the Gulf of Thailand getting us out of here. She be your focus. I'm your boss. You work for me.

C

Not in the office anymore.

A

It's bold, relentless, and endlessly rewatchable. Discover why critics give it 93% on rotten tomatoes.

D

You're so fired. Oh, am I?

C

No.

A

Help is coming. Send help. Rated R. Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney plus the Memorial Day and Los y compra los vasicos pare logar pormenos ahoro centadolares en la parria gas de cuatro que madores char Royal Performance Series.

B

The jurors sat in a dark room, hands resting on a Ouija board. They weren't guessing. They were asking the victim who killed them. Sounds unbelievable, right? But it happened. And that's just one of thousands of stories waiting for you on Morning cup of Murder. Hi, I'm Karina Bemisderfer, and every single day on Morning cup of Murder, I bring you a real chilling true crime story connected to that exact day in history. From Killer Cannibal Brothers to the Boy Scout who was obsessed with the occult and the strange story of the bloody hammer in the frozen cabin, these aren't the cases you've heard a hundred times. They're the ones that make you stop and think, how have I never heard this before? With over 2,500 episodes and a brand new story each and every single day, Morning cup of Murder becomes part of your routine fast. If you like your coffee hot but your bones are chilled, then sit back and start your day with a morning cup of murder. Go listen to Morning cup of Murder wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay safe.

C

Yes, so, and then we have a couple of cases of women who joined the Yakuza as normal, full fledged members. So these would be the cases of Nishimura Mako and Oda Irinami, who is a little bit older than Mako, but the Difference, basically, is that they were able to take this takazuki to do the ritual and to become members as everybody else. At least that's what they say. That's what Marco says. And I think she was adamant when you also interviewed her. She was very eager to let you know, everybody treated me like a man. I was never treated like a woman. Which seems a little bit counterintuitive because you see her even now who's, you know, she's a little bit older, but, you know, she's a very beautiful woman. And if you saw pictures of when she was in her 20s, she was a very beautiful young woman. So, you know, you can think how, you know, it must have been so difficult to be in a room. Like, she was sleeping, eating, just spending all her time with men, and she's never, you know, and she's never had any romantic relationship with them. She says that nobody hit on her or was trying. You know, they were just treating her just as one of the guys. So I think, you know, it must be. To an external person, it is a little bit difficult to believe that.

A

Yeah, that kind of ties into the whole, like, you know, the drinking and smoking subculture in the Yakuza. Right. Because obviously, I mean, that's a lot of people. Organized crime, gangsters, gang members, drink a lot, smoke a lot. But with, with the, with the Yakuza, it's kind of like. It's almost like they force themselves to do it excessively.

D

Right.

A

I mean, they're the only organized crime group I know where they all end up needing liver transplants. It's just a known thing that, that they all suffer. What do they get, like, jaundice?

D

Right.

A

Or they all, they all have. Have liver issues because of their massive amounts of drinking and smoking. Maybe it's also because they. I think they tend to live longer than most other organized criminals and stuff like that. But it's a big part of being a Yakuza.

D

Yeah. Because you, you, you. You're technically having a second family whose, like, entire shtick is that they run, like, clubs and hostess bars and whatnot. So you're always there and you're always supposed to be drinking and smoking. Right? Right.

A

But that's not, I mean, that's not, I think, too different from a lot of other.

D

I guess that's the surprise.

A

Criminal groups. Yes. I mean, other criminal groups are on strip clubs or, you know, they drink, they smoke, they go out a lot. But with, with, with the Yakuza, I really feel like it's such an ingrained Thing where they've got to force themselves to keep going and keep going and keep going. Because I can't think of any organized crime group where they. I mean, it's a known thing, right? I'm not making this up.

D

Yakuza are known for needing the plot of. Of Jake's book, right?

A

And Jake himself, I think, Scoop Jake himself had liver issues because he had to keep up with them and was always drinking and smoking with them. He talks about that too in both his books, I think.

D

Yeah, it kind of like drifts into kind of Phillips K. Dick territory. Some of the joke drinking stories in that book. You're like, Jesus Christ, man, you're going to be dead soon. But yeah, like this is a part of it, right? And we're going to slip into a lot more of this kind of stuff as we go along this story. I mean, Nishimura, at this age that we're talking about, is barely old enough to drink in the United States. But she has just become an official Sakazuki D UP member of the Sugino Gumi, the Gifu branch of the Sumiyoshi Kai. And Ryoichi Sugino is, in yakuza terminology, her oyaban, which means boss. But it's kind of more paternal than that. Sugino is now a father figure, the father she arguably never had. And she must exercise absolute fealty to him now. As a popular saying goes, if Sugino tells Nishimura a crow is white, she has to agree, quote everything that was yakuza like she told me I would do at first. Nishimura lives out of the Sugino Gumi HQ in downtown Gifu, which is also her boss's home. This is at a time, remember when yakuza are fully institutionalized. Part of the furniture, they've got offices where their official logos over the door, gang magazines and even Employees of the Month. They're not hidden away in any way. And they've managed to keep up the self serving Robin Hood mythology with the Japanese public to the extent that most Japanese think they're an antidote to the kind of chaotic immigrant led organized crime that has long taken over the streets of the us, Europe and other parts of the so called Western world. So when Nishimura's mother Hiroko discovers that her wayward daughter had graduated from juvenile detention to biker gang to yakuza, it's not that difficult for her to locate Ryoichi Sugino at his home and beg the boss to take care of his daughter. But she's too late. Nishimura has a second family now, and she lives the first two years of her life as a yakuza in this kind of probation period, staying at HQ with fellow yakuza and carrying out a list of chores that might include shopping, cooking or walking Sugino's two Akita dogs, one of whom has supposedly killed four fellow canines and is therefore named Perfectly Dog Killer Maru. Jesus. Gangster colleagues are fond of Nishimura's potato salad, which I loved as a little detail, and she manages to walk the dogs without a hitch. Life@Sugina HQ, honestly, just sounds more like a college frat than a major organized criminal group. But it's not Nishimura's cooking that impresses Sugino the most. The yakuza don't function like the Italian or US Mafias, where members kick criminal profits up a rigid hierarchy. Japan syndicates are more like franchises. Nobody's getting paid a salary. Instead they perform sakazuki so they can use the syndicate's threat of violence to back their own freelance enterprise, paying a monthly tribute to the boss. Just like McDonald's but with less harmful chemicals.

A

I mean, that does sound like the mafia though. No, like they do their own. Their own hustle is than to kick something profit up to the boss who then keeps kicking it up the line. Like how. How would you say? It's different.

D

It's like it's less of a pyramid. Like there's. There's less sort of under bosses. There's just a swirl of Sakazuki up guys just taking a cut of each thing that they do and passing it straight to hq. More efficient. And you get to your office.

A

Yeah, it's a Japanese man. Even management, like they're just more efficient.

D

Flat structure, you know, it's like preceding the dot com bubble as she's been doing for years. At this point, Nishimura is selling meth and of course she's taking it. But her biggest asset to the Sugino clan is still selling sex. She ramps up her cool girl service, selling women from Gifu in the surrounding area to pimps on an island 50 miles south called Watakano, which is one of Japan's biggest red light districts. In fact, most Japanese know the place simply as Prostitute island. And it's packed full of brothels and go go bars frequented by ferry taking salarymen. We're going to go into this business in a bit more detail in the next episode. For now though, we are into the late 1980s and things are beginning to change in a big way for the Yakuza at large. They've been making bank for decades off the back of Japan's economic miracle, expanding into other parts of Asia, Europe, even the us Buying real estate, golf clubs, company shares, extorting multinationals and shipping vast quantities of drugs, weapons and women all over the world. Then Japan's economic bubble bursts. The value of the yen plummets, pricing Yakuza out of global markets, and they retreat. The Yamaichi war spills onto city streets, horrifying a Japanese public used to their gangsters sticking to the shadows. We covered the Yamaichi War, by the way, in a. A Patreon episode, I think, at the start of the year. So you can listen to that if you're a subscriber. And at the same time, a series of corruption scandals exposes just how pally the Yakuza are with cops, politicians and big business. Famous yakuza like Kazuo Touka and Yoshio Kodama. Listen to the original show for more on him. Incredible character in the history of global organized crime are dead and the public aren't so keen on their successors. Basically the entire mask is beginning to slip. Even the stories the Yakuza have told about themselves for decades are beginning to fall apart. Hagiographic movies like the ones Nishimura had fallen in love with are replaced by ones which now focus on how brutal and venal they are. Here's Martina Baradel for more.

C

The 80s were really the heyday for the Yakuza. If you think about on the economic side, of course, then probably people who are now in the Yakuza would see the heyday in a different period, which is more to do with the organization and the power of the organization. But on the economic side, I think there is. We can all agree that the 80s were, you know, big moments for Japan, for the economy in general, leading up to the bubble that then put the Japanese economy in a slant for the next on. Still, still going on. But the Yakuza were really able to exploit the economic system. So after the war, the Yakos already had connections with politics before the war, the Second World War, so they were already connected with that. As I said, their ideology is a very conservative, right wing ideology. So it was just natural for them to connect with. With people on that side of the political spectrum. After the war, Japanese police was very weak. So a lot of yakuza groups, let's say, supported the Japanese police in putting order, especially in black markets in some of the areas where the Allied forces didn't want to go or they couldn't control. So they were. Again, another big feature of the Yakuza is that they've never worked against the state, They've always worked for the state or on the same side of the state. So we have these. So we have also the beginning of this myth of the Yakuza as protector of Japanese populations, as protectors of the order. And these two things, the connection with the right wing and this image as public people who defend groups that defend the Japanese public are something that allowed the Yakuza to maintain connections with the politics. The Yakuza was especially 7, 60s, 70s, 80s. They were never really, of course they were. The police knew they were a criminal crew. But as I said, they were semi institutionalized. So it was a group with whom you could do some sort of business, a group with whom you could talk. And so they had the connection, the connections to power and the connections to the economy as well. So in the 80s they were able to also enter the financial system. And of course, and a lot of the legal sector. Let's say that these. In the 80s, the Yakuza were also becoming more and more aggressive. So there are a lot of cases in which the Yakuza were dealing, you know, were doing their business, but with Yakuza like behaviors. And a lot of cases started to come out in which the lyakuza were violent or they intervened in some. They intervened in yakuza like fashion. And so the population started to kind of get tired of this. There were also a lot of. A few scandals, very big scandals that involved the Yakuza as well. So that the public opinion on the Yakuza shifted in the 80s because they were becoming more and more predatory and more and more violent. So that. And the other thing that we have in the 80s is also the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Yakuza, because they were so right wing, they were always, you know, Japanese government was always kind of very close to Russia, very close to China. So they were always very careful about Chinese influences coming into the state. And the Yakuza, when we have, you know, in the 60s and 70s, especially when we had, when there were demonstrations of these student groups or worker groups, the Yakuza were always trying to, let's say, on the side of the police. So they were always very anti communist and trying to limit the influence of these left wing groups. But we don't have that anymore. So at the beginning of the 90s, we have a situation in which the yakus is not needed because the police now is strong you do not need this extra legal enforcer of order. So the state doesn't need the Yakos anymore. The political influence of communism is finished. So you do not need their ideological strength either. And we have a situation in which the Yakuza have been compromised because of their violent interventions, both in the economy and in politics. And so it is just again, we have an alignment of different conditions that made the Japanese state say, okay, we need to regulate. So the approach was this. Like they decided to have this approach that, you know, let's designate the group. We say, okay, I'm a Gucci gumi with headquarter in Kobe in this street, and so on and so forth. The boss is. Is this one, and so on. And, you know, to have a list of all the groups and then regulates their activities. So, okay, you can have an office, but you cannot have it next to the school. You cannot have it next to a hospital, next to university. You cannot. Of course, they limited a lot of the banking transactions that people with a Yakuza could have. They were able to. The police started to also issue, for example, cease and desist order. If there are violent incidents, the police can ask the group to stop. So a situation in which the Yakuza can exist, but it's very heavily regulated in their public space. Of course, illegal activities cannot be regulated by the police.

D

That 1990 anti Yakuza Lor Martina just mentioned. This is absolutely huge for the gangs. Almost overnight, it kills some of their ability to play in the world of big boy finance, making the Yakuza life far less glamorous for anyone looking to follow Nishimura's path. The syndicate's numbers dropped from almost 200,000 in the mid-60s to under half that by the mid-1990s. Mako Nishimura continues working for the Sugeno Gumi, particularly getting more and more stuck into the meth trade. But she's now almost 30 years old, a veteran of the underworld, and she's got an even bigger problem on her hands. She's just fallen in love. And to hear the rest of the story, you're gonna have to wait a couple of weeks. And trust me, it is even crazier. Thanks for listening, guys. Remember to follow us wherever you get your podcasts and social media clips. And don't, I cannot stress this highly enough, do not Instagram your crimes.

A

That was fantastic, man. Just really well done. I'm excited to read the article. And I can't believe your cliffhanger for an episode of this podcast was the phrase, she's just fallen. She's got an even bigger problem on her hands. She's just fallen in love. I mean, that is just.

D

There you go.

A

You're. You're the best, dude. You're the best at what you do. Can't. Can't talk. This guy.

D

There we go. No praise. Oh, my God. So good. All right, we're gonna end there because it's not gonna get better than this. So let's just cut it.

A

Yeah. Some follow the noise.

D

Bloomberg follows the money.

A

Because behind every headline is. Is a bottom line, whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now@bloomberg.com.