Morita wanted to know why Saigo’s soldiers had dragged him to the Suguwara-gumi office. After all, the bank wasn’t under their protection.

  Morita explained that he and his people were just trying to gain an audience with the branch manager. The bank was refusing to extend a loan to a local business run by a dowa, as Morita called him. Dowa is the polite term for burakumin. Morita claimed the bank had refused to extend the loan because their management was racist.

  Saigo wasn’t completely convinced by this. He sat back, smoking his cigarette.

  “Well, it’s a little more complicated than that,” Morita admitted. One of the loan officers at the bank was lending a lot of money to a friend of Morita’s, without asking for any collateral. This friend, who managed a love hotel, had a deal with the loan officer. Many banks require their finance department to make a quota of loans per month. So the loan officer and Morita’s friend had an arrangement whereby the officer lent the hotel manager money, thus making his monthly quota. The officer also got a kickback on the loans. Unfortunately for them both, the Daiwa Bank had fired the loan officer. When the love hotel manager was late paying back his loan, the bank seized his property.

  According to Morita, this wasn’t fair. The Burakumin Liberation League wanted to discuss the problem with the bank’s branch manager, Mr Motomura. Morita wanted to speak to Motomura to request an extension on the loan.

  Saigo could tell that Morita was actually trying to blackmail the bank, but was having trouble getting close enough to the branch manager to do so. Once Saigo made it clear to Morita that he understood his real intentions, and Morita finally acknowledged the truth, Saigo advised Morita against pursuing his strategy. If Morita kept trying to blackmail the bank using his present plan, he would go to jail. He was making too much of a ruckus, and his group could easily be arrested for forcible obstruction of business. The arrest would discredit them.

  So Saigo and Morita both attempted to come up with another solution. Saigo suggested writing a letter, but Morita pointed out that mailing Motomura a letter would leave a chain of evidence that could be used to accuse Morita’s group of extortion or attempted extortion. An off-the-record conversation would be the best way to handle the problem.

  Morita came up with an alternative plan that would require Saigo’s manpower. In return, Saigo would get half of the total profit. Saigo listened to the plan, and liked what he heard.

  That evening, Saigo, Mizoguchi, and Yamada got on the phone to gather 100 men. Most of them came from the Saigo-gumi, although Yamada recruited a good number of people from the South Korean Organization of Japan who would work for pay.

  As instructed, each person showed up with a one-yen coin and their cheap personal seal (inkan), which is used in Japan as a signature to sign documents. At 9.00 am, Saigo, dressed in his trademark black suit and navy-blue tie, showed up at the window of the Daiwa Bank. He told the teller that he wished to open an account, and placed one yen on the counter. The aluminum coin looked very small when placed under his huge index finger.

  The woman at the counter looked puzzled. Why would anyone want to go through the process of opening a bank account just to deposit one yen? She politely questioned him to make sure she understood.

  She had, in fact, understood correctly. Technically, anyone could open a bank account, as long as they had at least one yen. The woman nodded, and began to do the paperwork. As she asked him questions and for ID, two more men with one-yen coins came up to the tellers on both sides of her. Behind them, a line was forming.

  A few minutes later, her supervisor came over. He interrupted the conversation and asked her to hurry up a bit. There were 100 other guys outside, each with one yen, who wanted to open accounts. She looked outside, and there were indeed about 100 men dressed in black suits. Some of them had tattoos visible on their arms; many of them had facial scars.

  The supervisor looked at Saigo for a second, and asked him directly if they were his friends. Saigo looked over his shoulder and feigned surprise. “Oh, yes. Most of them are my men!”

  The supervisor apologized to Saigo, and explained to him that they were too understaffed to handle the 100 men waiting with one-yen coins to open accounts. Saigo told the supervisor that he hadn’t told his men to follow him, and he didn’t have the right to tell them not to. The supervisor should just be happy to have so many new customers.

  When the supervisor still seemed upset over the new customers, Saigo accused him of discriminating against yakuza and burakumin.

  The supervisor told Saigo that, of course, their background was not an issue. He just wished they could come at a different time so that the bank’s other customers could get into the bank. Saigo said he might consider asking them to leave if the branch manager asked him directly.

  The supervisor apologized again, and told Saigo that the branch manager was a little busy at the moment, and did not usually come out to meet new customers. Saigo continued to accuse the bank of discriminating against him and burakumin. The supervisor did his best to be polite.

  By the end of the day, half of Saigo’s men had managed to open accounts. The branch manager, however, still refused to meet with Saigo.

  When he got back to the office that evening, he told Morita that things hadn’t gone as planned. Morita suggested they move to plan B.

  That night, Saigo gave instructions to his remaining fifty men. The next morning, before eight-thirty, they were to bring to the office a one-yen coin; their personal seal; a friend with one yen (with their personal seal), and a cat. If they didn’t have a cat, they were told to go borrow one or catch a stray.

  The next morning, Saigo was again the first to the teller’s window. This time, he brought a small paper bag with about 300 one-yen coins, and asked to make a deposit. He spread the coins across the counter. The teller asked how much Saigo was depositing, but Saigo wasn’t sure.

  With a polite sigh, the teller began to count. For the first few minutes, the only sound to be heard was the coins plinking into a bucket as she counted them one by one, but then the caterwauls began. There were 100 guys, each with a one-yen coin and a cat, waiting outside the bank to open an account. Some were tossing the cats back and forth to each other.

  The cats were not happy.

  There were other customers in the bank now. They looked out the window to see where the noise was coming from. Once they saw the mob of guys in black suits throwing cats, they left in droves.

  The supervisor ran up to Saigo, his face flushed. He asked Saigo what the hell he was doing, and accused him of animal abuse. Saigo calmly responded that cruelty to animals would be killing the cats and eating them — but that’s what the supervisor thought burakumin did anyway, right?

  The supervisor shook his head back and forth violently. He wasn’t saying anything bad about burakumin. He was saying that Saigo’s crew was torturing the cats. Saigo defended his crew. They were just bored, waiting for the supervisor to open their bank accounts. They were just playing with their cats to kill time.

  Strictly speaking, Saigo knew it was animal abuse. The cats hadn’t done anything wrong. When they had discussed the plan, Morita hadn’t seemed particularly concerned about the welfare of their feline accomplices, but Saigo thought differently. He gave explicit instructions to treat the cats as nicely as possible while still making a scene. Members who dropped a cat while tossing it back and forth were told they’d forfeit their salary for the day. Under no circumstances were the animals to be harmed. Saigo wasn’t a pet lover, but even he had a limit.

  He specifically told Hanzawa, the group’s most feared enforcer, “If you kill the cat, I’ll kill you.” Maybe that was why Hanzawa was the only one to show up with a German Shepherd. The dog kept barking at the felines, which added to the caterwauls and confusion. Fortunately, Hanzawa stopped it from eating the cats by judiciously pulling on the leash. The dog and Hanzawa seemed to get along. The cats didn’t like Hanzawa or the dog.

  Regardless, the fact stood that they were disturbing the other bank customers.

  So the supervisor called the police, and three officers were soon on the scene; but once they saw 100 yakuza lined up with cats, they weren’t sure how to handle it. The cops questioned the men about their intentions and the ownership of their animals. The men all had coins and seals, and they all stuck to their cover story: they were going to open an account, and they were taking their cats out for some fresh air.

  One cop came inside and spoke to the supervisor. Saigo could hear the conversation from where he stood. If Saigo’s group had threatened one of the tellers, or had done something violent, maybe the cops could have done something about it. But as it stood, the men weren’t violating any laws. The supervisor was livid. They were abusing the cats and disturbing the customers — but playing catch with cats wasn’t a crime. Doing something like twirling the cats by their ears or killing them would be a crime. If they were doing this to a cat that belonged to someone else, maybe that could be considered a crime, too. Some of them were just holding their cats. Others were even hugging them.

  They weren’t directly threatening the bank’s customers. Granted, the customers were disturbed by Saigo’s crew’s actions. If they kept it up, the bank could file charges of obstruction of business, but the crew would have to do it several times. Ultimately, there was nothing the police could do.

  The cop left, and the supervisor went upstairs to the second floor of the bank. A few minutes later, down came the branch manager, Motomura. He looked like he was in his mid-fifties, was slightly paunchy, and wore a gray pinstripe suit. His gray hair was slicked back, revealing a large forehead. He finished off his look with gold-rimmed glasses, which made him look very much like a typical Japanese banker.

  Motomura spoke to Saigo in a very calm, almost friendly tone. He invited Saigo to go upstairs to speak with him.

  That’s what should have happened from the start, Saigo said. He wanted their talk to be brief so his friends wouldn’t have to stand outside in the cold with their poor little cats.

  When they got up to the second-floor office, Motomura sat behind his desk, and Saigo sat across from him, his back straight. Motomura offered him a cigarette, and Saigo took it. They both lit up, tapping out the ashes in the crystal ashtray on Motomura’s leather-bound desk.

  Motomura was straightforward. He wasn’t going to give Saigo cash.

  That was fine. Saigo didn’t want cash. He was there for a loan.

  The Daiwa Bank required collateral. A loan without collateral would never be approved by their head office. But Saigo knew that hadn’t stopped one of the bank’s former loan officers from lending a lot of money to the love hotel manager. That individual had been fired, but the bank had never pressed criminal charges, saying it didn’t seem necessary.

  So why did Saigo need to provide collateral? He asked whether the bank was getting a kickback. Motomura denied it, and asked Saigo if he was trying to blackmail him.

  Saigo said he wasn’t, because the bank hadn’t done anything wrong. He was just pointing out that the bank had made loans without collateral, and he wanted to take out a loan, also without collateral.

  Motomura had been working for the Daiwa Bank for most of his career. He had been the manager of the Machida branch for seven years. The bank’s reputation mattered to him, as did the jobs of the people working for him. A scandal would get people fired — his branch might even be closed down. He didn’t want that.

  He asked Saigo if he cared about the welfare of his workers. Saigo did, so he understood where Motomura was coming from. Still, he requested 50 million yen.

  Motomura didn’t balk or blink. He just nodded and stroked his chin. He decided to give Saigo the funds from the “neighborhood countermeasure funds.” Many banks and businesses used to keep emergency funds for dealing with problems in the neighborhood, including noise pollution, parking, and general disturbances. These so-called neighborhood countermeasure funds were also often used to pay off the local yakuza.

  Motomura knew Saigo had no intention of repaying the loan, so he would only authorize the transaction under two conditions: One, Saigo would never make the incident public.* Two, he would never try to extort money from Daiwa Bank again, regardless of the branch.

  [* Daiwa Bank is no longer in existence, so talking about what happened won’t affect anyone now.]

  Saigo gave Motomura his word, and promised to shut down anyone else who put the bank in the same situation.

  “Good. Please understand that if you ever show up again at our office again, I will call the police and demand they defend us from you. If you can promise this will never happen, that you will never come back, we have a deal, and we are on good terms.”

  Saigo understood, and since he was a young yakuza, Motomura offered him important advice about dealing with the situation. He suggested that Saigo make two or three token payments on the loan. If he never paid any of it back, it would be easy to demonstrate that he had committed fraud — that he had never intended to pay back the loan.* If he paid back some of it, he could always argue that he had meant to pay back all of it, but that his business had gone bad.

  [* In legal terms, it’s called sai — the will to deceive. Police have to prove it exists to make a fraud case stick.]

  Returning to the first floor, Saigo motioned Motomura to follow him, and they walked outside to where Saigo’s men were lined up. In a loud voice, Saigo told his men that, apparently, it was not a good idea to wield cats next to the Daiwa Bank. So, although he hated to ask, he hoped they and their cats could go to another bank and deposit their money elsewhere.

  The men responded in unison. “Hai!” Several came up to Motomura and said, with a bow, that they were sorry for the inconvenience. Some of them released their cats on the spot, and the animals ran away as fast as they could. The other men, still quietly holding their cats in their arms, bowed once and walked away.

  Saigo went back inside the bank. He sat down with the supervisor, and began filling out the necessary paperwork. The loan was deposited into Saigo’s Daiwa Bank account one week later. He had already deposited 301 yen in one-yen coins, and was pleased to see his balance suddenly balloon to 50,000,301 yen.

  Saigo gave 20 million yen to Morita. He paid 20,000 yen to each man who had lined up outside the bank for those two days. He kept the rest of the money for himself, and eventually made exactly two payments of 100,000 yen each on the loan.

  Saigo was not completely convinced the bank wouldn’t take back the money, so he liquidated the account and put it in the Saigo-gumi safe, which was located at the back of his office. It was always good to have cash on hand.

  Part of the handsome profit went into the down payment for his new compound that he bought in Machida. The compound included both his home and the Saigo-gumi office, connected to each other on a large plot of land, surrounded by an iron fence. Security cameras were placed in strategic locations along the walls, at the door, and near the garage. The locals sometimes called it Fort Saigo.

  He decided that there was more than enough space to have his parents move in with him. He promised his mother and father that their living quarters would be separate from the yakuza offices and the dormitory for the new young yakuza under his supervision. They took the offer, and moved in with him.

  At the beginning of March, he was in his office, counting money, when Mizoguchi told him that he had a guest, Motomura. Saigo was surprised and perplexed. The bank had never called to ask for the loan to be repaid. He wasn’t sure why Motomura was there, but he couldn’t very well turn the man away.

  Motomura was in slacks and a sports coat. He wore black-rimmed glasses now, and his gray hair was cut short. After exchanging formalities, Motomura told Saigo that he had come by to tell him that he would no longer be working at the bank. The successor was aware of their arrangement, and he just thought he should let Saigo know.

  Saigo assured Motomura that he would not call on Daiwa Bank again, and asked him whether he was being transferred.

  “I was essentially fired,” Motomura said. He had spoken to the head office about what had happened at his branch, and while they understood, they were not forgiving. Motomura was allowed to retire and to keep the majority of his pension. He supposed he’d seek work at another bank.

  Saigo felt something akin to regret, maybe even guilt. He hadn’t reckoned on Motomura getting fired. Saigo opened the safe and took out 5 million yen. He stuffed it in an envelope and handed it to Mr Motomura with both hands, bowing so deeply that his head touched his desk.

  “I can’t take this,” said Mr Motomura.

  Saigo walked around his desk and put his giant hand on Motomura’s shoulder. He then stuffed the envelope in the inner pocket of the man’s sports coat.

  “Motomura, it’s never a good idea to refuse a gift from a yakuza. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. But please understand that if you ever show up at our office again, I will call the police, and demand that they defend us from you. If you can promise this will never happen, that you will never come back, we have a deal and we are on good terms.”

  Motomura was silent for a second and then laughed. Saigo patted him on the shoulder and then bowed to him once more. He asked Motomura to take the money and to use it to start a new life — and, for God’s sake, to never tell anyone how he got the money. That would ruin Saigo’s ruthless image.

  Motomura took the money and left. Saigo never saw him again, and both of them kept their promises.

  Saigo learned a valuable lesson from his alliance with Morita: it was possible to take a million times more out of a bank than you ever deposited there. For a smart yakuza, the right financial institution was just a large ATM. You didn’t need an account number or a passcode to take out the money — you just needed the right information. After all, the underworld was really just another variant of the information industry.