In May 1963, Inagawa summoned Ishii to his home in Atami to make him an offer. He asked Ishii to take over the formerly independent Yokosuka-ikka crime family. If Ishii accepted, the Yokosuka-ikka would become a part of the Inagawa-kai.

  Ishii was delighted at the offer, but his delight was dampened by problems happening within the Inagawa-kai that he couldn’t ignore. Inagawa was seriously considering banishing Kiichi Inoue from the group.

  Kiichi Inoue had been a huge force in the expansion of the Inagawa-kai, but he had become arrogant. He was holding gambling events in the greater Tokyo area under the Inagawa-kai name, without having the permission of the boss or kicking back any of the terasen (handling fees) from the events. Inagawa might have been able to overlook being short-changed, but Inoue was telling anyone who would listen that he had made the Inagawa-kai what it was — that the organization had got big only thanks to his efforts. This infuriated Inagawa.

  Ishii felt greatly loyal to Kiichi Inoue. After all, it had been Inoue who introduced him to the Inagawa-kai. He felt that without Inoue, he would never have been selected to take over the Yokosuka-ikka. Ishii understood that from Inagawa’s perspective, Inoue’s behavior was unacceptable, but thought Inoue deserved a second chance.

  On the other hand, Inagawa’s mind was basically made up. There didn’t seem to be anything Ishii could do to change it.

  In the middle of the night, while his servants and family were sleeping, Ishii used a short knife, a hammer, and a cutting board to sever the tip of his left pinkie. He carefully wrapped it in a brand-new white handkerchief. In this act of severing his finger, yubizume, he made a sacrifice to spare Kiichi Inoue from being banished.

  He had his driver take him to Inagawa’s house in the morning. When he arrived, Inagawa met him in the reception room of his spacious house, surprised to see Ishii come back so soon.

  Ishii placed the white handkerchief on the tablet between them, and spoke to Inagawa. “Oyabun, may I ask that you accept this in exchange for not banishing Inoue from the organization?”

  Inagawa opened the handkerchief to see Ishii’s severed finger. He glanced at Ishii’s left hand wrapped in a bandage. He took a deep breath, and loudly cursed for a bit.

  The severing of fingers as a gesture of apologizing existed long before the postwar yakuza, although it’s no longer a welcome act in the modern yakuza. In this day and age, yakuza try to hide in the shadows. A severed finger is a liability, not an asset.

  In the old days, even among severed fingers, there was a hierarchy. A finger given up for another person is sometimes called an ikiyubi, “a living finger.” It denotes self-sacrifice, and is highly respected.

  If that ikiyubi is rejected, and thus pointlessly chopped off, it is called a shiniyubi, meaning “a dead finger.” A severed finger is also called a shiniyubi if it was cut off to atone for one’s own mistakes.

  “Inoue is lucky to have a great friend like you,” Inagawa said, accepting Ishii’s offer and not letting his finger be viewed as “dead.”

  Inagawa was impressed. Few men had such loyalty to their blood brothers, especially when it was not immediately in their own interests. It was probably at this time that he began to consider Ishii as his successor.

  The Coach, a disciple of Ishii and, in the future, Saigo’s boss, would later become the eighth-generation leader of the Yokosuka-Ikka. When Coach chose his successor, he would also use the same criteria as Ishii in making the decision. People want to follow a leader who knows what loyalty means. The yakuza, for all their talk of honour and loyalty, are constantly fighting among themselves and stabbing each other in the back, sometimes in more than a metaphorical sense.

  A man with loyalty who was willing to sacrifice for his friends — that was a rare man in their world, maybe in any world.

  Ishii was the moral compass of the Yokosuka-Ikka, and the ideal.

  Near the end of the summer in 1963, Kiichi Inoue and three of his men were in Tokyo drinking at an expensive nightclub. There, Inoue made a breach of decorum that would result in his downfall. He was lucky it didn’t get him killed.

  As they sat, smoking imported cigarettes, and drinking whiskey and water, Hisayuki Machii walked in. Machii was the legendary leader of the Tosei-kai, one of the most powerful yakuza groups in Tokyo at the time. He had two nicknames: “The Tiger of Ginza” and “The Bull.” The Bull described him better, because of his flat nose and perpetual scowl. He had a deserved reputation for violence.

  Machii was proudly Korean during a time when Koreans were treated as second-class citizens in Japan. Meanwhile, other important Korean Japanese figures, such as the national idol and pro-wrestling champion Riki Dozan, made great efforts to keep their ancestry quiet. No one outside his Korean fans in Korea and close friends in Japan knew he wasn’t 100 percent Japanese.

  Machii’s group primarily was composed of Korean yakuza. He was on good terms with Japan’s ruling powers, and had staunch anti-communist views. He promised the ruling class he would keep the left-wing Japanese Korean residents associated with North Korea under control, and that he would keep an eye on the remaining Koreans. He was also being paid by the CIA to collect information about political activities in Japan and Korea, and to make sure that Japan did not turn into a communist country.

  Machii had connections so deep that Kiichi Inoue couldn’t have possibly known them all. As of February 1963, Machii had a formal relationship with the third-generation leader of the Yamaguchi-gumi, Kazuo Taoka. Inagawa himself oversaw the sakazuki. A well-known yakuza associate and fixer named Yoshio Kodama arranged the meeting. He was also a CIA informant, con-man, and possible war criminal — not to mention the founder of Japan’s largest political party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) back in 1955. He knew all the right people and all the wrong people. With his wealth and connections, he was more powerful than the prime minister himself.

  When Machii walked by Kiichi Inoue, all that Inoue saw was another familiar yakuza face. They’d met many times at numerous yakuza functions, but had never really talked. Inoue, wanting to be friendly, called out to Machii. His choice of honorific was terribly mistaken.

  “Hey, Machii-kun, how are you?”

  Machii stopped in his tracks and looked back at Inoue. He recognized who he was, and was not impressed.

  Machii turned to Inoue. “You. I don’t recall being so friendly with you that you can call me Machii ‘kun.’”

  Inoue’s reply to this was the Japanese equivalent of, “Fuck you, you arrogant prick.” Inoue’s crew jumped to their feet as soon as their boss spat out the words. Machii’s bodyguards stiffened. Inoue told his men to back down.

  Inoue apologized, sort of. “I had no idea you were such an important person, but we can talk that over sometime.” He and his men immediately split. Machii, thinking nothing of it, went to the VIP room in the back and got drunk.

  Inoue decided that he had been insulted. He had lost face. He reasoned that the Inagawa-kai was going to have to eliminate Machii sooner or later if they were going to expand into Tokyo. On his own, without bothering to consult anyone, he decided to move that plan forward.

  Inoue ordered his men to prepare to kill Machii when they had a chance. He reached out to Ishii for help, and Ishii sent his men up to Tokyo. Miyamoto was one of them. They were supposed to stake out Club Muse, one of Machii’s haunts. Their orders were to take him out, but to avoid getting entangled with other members of the group. At first, they all thought the leader of the Tosei-kai had provoked the fight, but quickly realized that the whole conflict was a matter of Kiichi Inoue’s personal pride.

  The Inagawa-kai wasn’t going to go to war just because Kiichi Inoue’s ego had been bruised.

  Within a week of the incident, Machii, Kodama, and Inagawa met at Kodama’s house to discuss the problem. They agreed that the Inagawa-kai had no problems with Machii and that Kiichi Inoue would need to be taken care of — not killed, but sentenced to a fate that was almost worse in the yakuza world. He would be banished.

  Inagawa summoned Ishii and told him the news. “There is nothing you can do for Kiichi Inoue now. Chop off another finger, and it’s a shiniyubi (dead) for sure. I’m sorry, but he has to go.”

  Ishii politely argued that for Kiichi Inoue, who had spent his entire life as a yakuza, being formally banished would be like being ordered to commit seppuku.

  Ishii suggested another solution. He promised that he would convince Kiichi Inoue to retire. Banishment would be a shameful way to end his yakuza life, but to retire on his own would leave Inoue with some dignity.

  Inagawa wasn’t convinced. What if he refused to retire?

  Ishii was prepared for that possibility. “I settle the matter then. I’ll forcibly ‘retire’ him myself.”

  Inagawa agreed to the terms. If Inoue wouldn’t retire and tried to break away from the group, there would be trouble. Banishing him might also cause trouble. Ishii’s solution seemed equitable, fair, and reasonable.

  Ishii promised that, before Inoue retired, he would bring him to Inagawa and his brothers to apologize for his acts of impropriety and to say goodbye.

  Ishii went to see Inoue, and packed a gun in his belt in case he needed to adopt the alternative retirement plan.

  Inoue and Ishii met at a hotel in Ginza. Ishii came alone. Inoue sent his bodyguards out of the room, and told them to wait downstairs.

  Ishii explained the situation to him and the choices that Kiichi Inoue had left. At first, Inoue was angry and refused to listen. However, in the face of Ishii’s calm resolve, he gradually understood the position he was in, and calmed down. He asked Ishii to ensure that his men would be reabsorbed into the Inagawa-kai. He glanced at Ishii’s hand, and thanked him for the sacrifice Ishii had made on his behalf.

  Finally, he promised to apologize to Inagawa and to formally ask to retire. The last words he said to Ishii that day were reportedly, “I really don’t have a choice. If I don’t retire, it would mean you’d spend a long time in prison. You don’t deserve that.”

  He was alluding to his suspicion that, if he had refused the offer, Ishii would kill him on the spot. Ishii did not say a word. The silence was his affirmation.

  Kiichi Inoue retired without incident, becoming katagi, an ordinary person. For the yakuza, it was an awful fate — to be ordinary. Whether Kiichi Inoue was happy after retiring, no one knows. It was as though he vanished from the world.

  However, Inagawa, keeping to his word, absorbed Kiichi Inoue’s soldiers into the Inagawa-kai — the same umbrella organization that Saigo would join twenty-one years later.

  Ishii was supposed to be made the fourth-generation leader of the Yokosuka-ikka, a second-tier organization of the Inagawa-kai, but Ishii had a problem with the Japanese word for four: shi. Shi also means death. Like many gamblers, Ishii was very superstitious, so he refused the position of the fourth-generation leader.

  The organization agreed to make him the fifth-generation leader instead. So, in early November 1963, a succession ceremony for Ishii was held at the Yokosuka Kanko Hotel. On the same day as his succession ceremony, a fourth-generation leader was crowned. The seat was immediately turned over to Ishii, who became the fifth-generation leader of the Inagawa-kai Yokosuka-ikka.

  Hundreds of people attended the event.

  An old photo album shows yakuza outside the hotel, in a single-file line, crowding the streets as a black limousine rolled past. At the entrance, an army of black-suited yakuza stood watch while their seniors strolled in.

  At the reception desks, more men in dark suits dutifully noted the name of each man coming in and the amount of cash he brought with him to the ceremony. Cash was stacked in piles on the table. Giri was always expensive.

  Seijo Inagawa was present at the event. His hair was slicked back, and he looked tan and buff. He wore a black robe and a hakama (men’s kimono). For the ceremony, the Inagawa-kai posed as a political group to avoid crackdowns by the police, even temporarily changing its name to Kinsei-kai, but everyone knew it was the Inagawa-kai. Ishii was given a position as the organizational committee chairman, and Yoshio Kodama joined the new group as an advisor.

  The hotel was top of the line. It even had a color television in the lobby. The banquet hall was full of men. The only visible females were a small group of geisha who were serving food. It was a man’s world, after all.

  Every major organized crime group in Tokyo had a representative in attendance, except for the Yamaguchi-gumi. Relations with that group were not going well.

  In pictures from the ceremony, Ishii towered over everyone, tall and aloof. Inagawa stood close to Ishii, smiling, but still managing to look stern.

  The ceremony was simple, and finished quickly. Sake was drunk, cups were exchanged, the crowd clapped, and the new lineage of the Yokosuka-ikka was displayed on the wall in handwritten letters on fine Japanese paper.

  Ishii was listed as fifth-generation leader Tadahiro Ishii — not his real first name, but his yakuza first name. His hand-chosen yakuza name was more auspicious. The first character, yui, meant “only; simply; merely.” The second character, haku, meant “wide learning; esteem; fair.” The character is used in the word hakase (professor) and the word bakuto (gambler).

  For a man as superstitious as Ishii, it was important to do whatever he could to stay lucky — but luck only goes so far.

  The yakuza could see the writing on the wall in 1961 when Tokyo was chosen to host the 1964 Summer Olympics. In a cabinet decision made in February that year, prime minister Hayato Ikeda set forth Japan’s first violent crimes prevention prospectus.

  Unfortunately, it did little to deter the growing violence among Japan’s powerful yakuza groups. The following year marked the beginning of violent and deadly gang conflicts across Japan.

  In 1963, Japan saw violent skirmishes in Hiroshima, Yamaguchi-gumi battles in Kobe, and shootings in Tokyo. December 1963 was marked by two pivotal yakuza-related events.

  On December 8, a member of the Sumiyoshi-kai stabbed pro-wrestler Riki Dozan in a Ginza nightclub. The assailant ran away, but didn’t get very far before being caught and brutally beaten by members of the Tosei-kai, the predominantly Korean Japanese yakuza group. Dozan died in the hospital a few days later. It was bad publicity for the yakuza. It was like the mafia had killed Japan’s Babe Ruth.

  On December 21, at the Tsuruya Hotel in Atami, members of the Inagawa-kai, Sumiyoshi-kai, Kokusui-kai, Tosei-kai, and every other major yakuza group in Japan gathered to form the Kanto-kai. It was a federation of right-wing nationalist yakuza that spanned almost all of eastern Japan, and it was all assembled by the LDP founder Yoshio Kodama himself. Of course, Kodama and his political allies attended the reception. The federation was seemingly tied together under a shared anti-communist, pro-capitalist, right-wing ideology. The yakuza gained additional goodwill by offering to supply troops to safeguard the arrival of President Eisenhower.

  Shortly after, all their efforts were pissed away. The Kanto-kai did something very stupid: they blatantly interfered with Japanese politics, dictating terms to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. They issued a warning to the LDP, blasting them for wasting their energy on internal politics. “LDP members: Immediately stop your infighting.” They also praised Ichiro Kono’s faction of the LDP. It was not a coincidence that Kono and Kodama were close friends. The warning was sent to 200 individual Diet members in the lower and upper house combined. It listed seven yakuza groups within the Kanto-kai, so the LDP members knew who they were dealing with.

  Former newspaper editor Masunosuke Ikeda was livid. He was a senior member of the House of Representatives, which is the lower house of the National Diet, who hailed from the rural Yamagata prefecture. Masunosuke made sure that the document was taken up in the LDP committee on Measures to Preserve Law and Order. It was the first time the yakuza had banded together to openly give orders to the ruling party. The police and prosecutors were told to force the Kanto-kai to dissolve and to do something about the yakuza.

  In January 1964, the National Police Agency drew up the Violent Crimes Countermeasures Plan and began the First Top-Down Yakuza Crackdown. The Tokyo Police set up the Special Organized Crime Crackdown Headquarters, whose ultimate goal was to bring down the top yakuza players by arresting them, cutting off their funds, and diminishing their ranks. In February, they kicked off the war by arresting any yakuza they could, on any case they could make.

  In March, the National Police Agency designated ten organizations, including the Inagawa-kai, as national organized crime groups. The agency ordered police across the nation to crack down on them whenever possible. The gambling laws were revised as well, so it was possible to arrest yakuza for gambling without catching them in the act. Within a year, more than 1,000 yakuza were arrested nationwide on gambling charges alone.

  The Inagawa-kai, being primarily a group of gamblers, took a lot of that heat. Over 400 members were arrested on gambling charges during their 1964 fiscal year. Ishii was not exempt. He was arrested twice. The second time, he was arrested alongside Inagawa himself, who was sentenced to three years in prison.

  The arrest stemmed from a legendary night of gambling at a party in the resort town Hakone on March 29, 1964. The Inagawa-kai threw a party to celebrate the retirement of a Sumiyoshi-kai leader. Top bosses of major yakuza groups gathered together and gambled lavishly. In one night, more than 550 million yen was spent. The hosts collected about 40 million yen in handling fees.* The amount of money changing hands in the one night was mind-boggling. The incident later became the inspiration for the 1968 yakuza film Socho Tobaku.

  [* At the time, 550 million yen was worth $1.5 million. Adjusted for modern-day inflation (2022) 550 million yen is worth $14 million.]