Saigo understood that his time had come. It was part of the life, but if he was going to have to lose a finger, he was going to make sure he gained something in return. He wasn’t like the other yakuza who thought nothing of chopping off their fingers — as though it was a fashion statement. Even among the top echelon of the yakuza, not everyone held the practice in esteem. For one thing, it easily identified the individual as a yakuza, and that wasn’t a plus as they began moving into more corporate-type activities. A missing finger was even more obvious than a tattoo. Still, for his generation, there was a time when that was the only solution.

  According to a police study circa 1992, roughly 40 percent of all yakuza had chopped off a finger or partially amputated one. Of those who had performed yubizume, 60 percent had done the deed while still a low-ranking yakuza member. When asked how they came to lose their finger, eight out of ten yakuza replied that it was “an expression of apology,” and the rest that it was to “show sincerity.” The most common reasons given for performing yubizume were 1) money troubles; 2) women troubles; 3) causing problems to the organization; 4) causing trouble to a brother; and 5) to remain in the organization or to leave it. The most uncommon reason was “to take responsibility for the mistakes of an underling”, which was about 5 percent of the total.

  The ritual was most often done in the home (40 percent) and other places such as the gang office, a soldier’s home, or in the woods.

  Saigo’s motivations were unusual, but he chose a common place: in his kitchen at home. He had everything he needed there to do the job right; but, as it turned out, amputating his own finger was not easily done.

  Most yakuza, when they’re being honest, will tell you that yubizume is not a solo job. One mid-level boss explained, “If you ask me, the 88 percent of the yakuza who said they did it all by themselves are lying out their ass. It’s not as easy as you’d think. Some yakuza even call a doctor to come do the deed for them; there is less infection, the cut is cleaner, and there’s not so much of a problem with nerve damage and phantom limbs later. Probably hurts less, too. So I hear.”

  Saigo didn’t call a doctor for help, or anyone, for that matter — at least, not at first. He decided to call Yuriko, on her cell phone. She was out shopping. He asked her to buy him a sashimi knife and to bring it home immediately. He had some serious crap to clean up.

  Yuriko asked whether he was going to kill someone or chop off a finger. He was honest with her, and she was happy that at least he wasn’t going to kill anyone. If he did that, he would definitely go to jail. She double-checked with him and he said he wouldn’t kill someone if he didn’t have to, and again asked her to bring home a sashimi knife.

  Saigo had to get prepared. Yuriko told him the rubber bands were in the kitchen. She knew the drill. Her previous boyfriend had been a yakuza as well, and a screw-up. He was down to eight fingers when she left him.

  She had one more question: “Don’t you think a saw would be better?” Saigo thought about it. No. Saws made huge messes — he’d get a jagged and sloppy cut.

  He hung up. He took out the rubber bands and sat at the kitchen table. He wrapped one around the base of his left little finger as tightly as he could, looping it repeatedly.

  At first, the finger got slightly black as it filled up with blood, the white of his fingernail becoming whiter, almost glowing. After a while, the pinkie became swollen, full of blood that couldn’t leave, and then it suddenly turned white. He smashed his right fist on the finger to check — no sensitivity at all. His little finger was effectively numb to the world.

  He knew a yakuza boss that actually had a surgeon do the procedure. He’d thought about that, but it seemed unmanly. And if word got out — well, then you would become a first-class joke in the yakuza world. You might as well slit your wrists if you were going to have a surgeon cut off your pinkie. Doctors talked.

  Actually, he was lucky. He’s seen guys who’d had to cut off their fingers right there on the spot, with no time to prep or buy the sharpest of knives. That always resulted in a bloody, painful mess.

  Yuriko came back with a bag of groceries and a sashimi knife. In another bag, she brought a white handkerchief, some rubbing alcohol, and a Kero Kero the Frog set of Band-Aids.

  Good god, he thought to himself. He wasn’t putting a fucking Band-Aid on his amputated finger. And if he did, it would definitely not be some cute smiling frog. But he didn’t say anything about it.

  He took out the knife from its box and held it up to the light, eyeing it. She’d gotten a good knife. It had a black neo-ivory handle, and a blade that looked like folded steel. There was a pattern on the cutting edge made of delicate swirls. It had almost no curve.

  Yuriko stood next to the refrigerator, keeping her distance. In the back room, he could hear the sound of Maruyama snoring.

  He motioned to Yuriko with his jaw. She brought over the cutting board, and dropped it on the table with a big thud.

  She pursed her lips. She didn’t want him to use that cutting board, she said. Ideally, she’d prepare dinner on it. Salads and stuff.

  Saigo knew better. She’d never chopped a vegetable in her entire life, nor made a salad. But she argued she might start, and then she wouldn’t have a clean cutting board. Saigo said he’d wash it when he was done, but Yuriko knew that was a lie. He’d only have one hand for a few days. How was he going to wash a cutting board?

  They stared at each other. She could sense that Saigo wanted her to leave. She gave him a gentle squeeze on his shoulder, went into his office, closed the door behind her, and left him alone. He knew he could call her if he needed anything.

  There he was at the kitchen table — a knife in one hand, and his other hand splayed out on the white cutting board. Four of his fingers were flesh colored. His pinkie was now as white as the cutting board. It almost blended in. That was probably the root of the mistake.

  He stood the knife up almost vertically, the blade edge facing towards his finger, and pulled it down hard. But he hadn’t been careful enough, and cut right into the second joint.

  He had meant to only sever the tip. He’d cut two joints down. There was nothing to do but keep cutting. However, to his surprise, the finger was enormously sinewy. And the blood made traction difficult.

  “Yuriko!”

  She came running, saw the mess, and put her hands over her mouth, sucking in air. The knife wouldn’t cut anymore. He needed her help, but she wasn’t sure what he wanted her to do.

  He thought about it. He told her to take the doorstop and pound on the knife.

  She ran to the entrance and brought back a heavy brick. Saigo gritted his teeth as she brought it down hard on the top of the knife — and nothing happened.

  She did it again, and this time missed the knife and hit the tip of his middle finger.

  He swore up a storm. At this point, Maruyama woke up and opened his door. He was in green pajamas. He took in the scene, and his mouth opened wide.

  Saigo didn’t have the time for Maruyama to gape. He needed a hand. He walked over to the table and stared at Saigo’s finger, pinned under the knife. Saigo explained that he couldn’t cut his finger off. Maruyama stroked his goatee. Then he motioned for Saigo to turn his hand over.

  Saigo pulled out the knife and did as much, his palm now facing up. Maruyama took the knife, positioned it over the joint, and held it in place. He motioned Yuriko to hand him the brick. Knife in place and brick in hand, he brought it down on the back of the blade with controlled impact, and with a rubbery snap the finger severed.

  Saigo instinctively pulled his hand away. He stared at the little bloody nub of flesh sitting there, and went over to the sink to wash his hand. He told Maruyama to take care of his finger — and, seriously, not to lose it.

  Maruyama told him to trust him — he could handle it — but his voice sounded a little strange. Almost nasally. Was he crying? Fuck. Saigo didn’t need that.

  Saigo looked at Maruyama, and saw that he had stuffed the severed finger joint up his nose. He smiled. “See? Safe and sound. It’s right under my nose.”

  In spite of himself, Saigo laughed. He thought it wasn’t the time to be making jokes, but Maruyama felt the exact opposite. If he thought about what had just happened, he’d go crazy. “Dude, we just chopped off your pinkie.”

  Saigo gawked. We?

  Okay, Maruyama admitted. Saigo had done at least 90 percent of the work, but it wouldn’t have been severed if he hadn’t been there to help finish the job. It was that less than 10 percent that was important. “Aikawarazu tsume ga amai ne,” Maruyama said.

  The saying is understood to mean, “To overconfidently do something half-assed and fail to fully complete it,” but it literally means “Poorly compacted.” The word tsume means “to pack in, to shorten,” and the word for chopping off your finger in yakuza slang is “yubi (finger) tsume”. The joke may translate poorly, but it was quite witty at the time.

  It was a wonderfully morbid and appropriate pun. Even Yuriko laughed at this one. They were all laughing now. Maruyama laughed so hard at his own joke that he blew the finger out of his nose and then caught it quickly in one hand.

  He showed it to Saigo and gave him a thumbs-up with it. They couldn’t stop laughing at the whole situation. Eventually, Maruyama held out the finger.

  Saigo reluctantly took it back and wrapped it in the white handkerchief. He was starting to feel some pain. The two of them got in his car and headed towards Shinjuku. They were going to meet Charlie and Tetsu at the Furinkaikan Coffee Shop in Kabukicho. It was neutral territory.

  Saigo had a plan. He was going to pay the debts and come back with five times what he was going to pay in cash there. He was going to give the two of them the finger, both literally and metaphorically. Sometimes, he thought, the Japanese saying is true: losing is victory.

  The coffee shop was in yakuza central: Kabukicho. The place was nearly empty that afternoon.

  At the table in the back were Charlie and Tetsu. Saigo had summoned them there. Saigo walked up to Tetsu and pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, and then unwrapped his bloody finger and held it up for Tetsu to see, straight up.

  Saigo gave him the finger. He didn’t need to say, “Fuck you.” Sign language was working for him quite well. That should settle their debts. He had cash in his bag and a finger for Tetsu’s troubles.

  Tetsu was shocked. He didn’t know what to do with it. The proper ritual would have been to hand Tetsu the finger, wrapped in a white cloth, bowing and murmuring apologies. But Saigo was in a bad mood, and was feeling more pain. “Why don’t you put it in your coffee?” he suggested. “It’ll add some flavor.”

  So Saigo just dropped the finger in the man’s coffee cup, where it quickly floated to the surface, turning red. Tetsu turned very pale. Charlie didn’t say anything.

  Tetsu tried to take the finger out of his coffee with a spoon, as his coffee with cream started turning a darker shade of brown, thanks to the faint amount of blood oozing from the finger.

  Saigo mocked him. Tetsu was a yakuza. The least he could do was touch the piece of flesh with his own hands. “Take the finger.”

  Saigo hadn’t been to the doctor yet, so there was now blood oozing from the joint where he’d severed his finger.

  He pointed at the floating finger, and joked about how it sort of looked like a wiener. Tetsu looked like he was going to throw up. He tried to pull out the finger, but the coffee was so hot, he burnt his own fingers and dropped the finger as soon as he pulled it out. The finger rolled off the table onto the floor. The waiter, unperturbed, scooped it up deftly, wrapped it in a napkin that was on the table, and pushed it towards Tetsu.

  The two of them were now completely silent.

  “Take the damn finger,” growled Saigo. From out of his bag, he took an envelope of cash and tossed it in the lap of Tetsu. “And the money.”

  Now he had control of the conversation. Saigo’s subordinate had owed Tetsu money, and now he was paying it back. But because Tetsu had made a scene about it, Saigo had felt he had to cut off his finger, too. Tetsu looked at Charlie, who immediately excused himself to the restroom.

  Tetsu apologized extensively. He hadn’t meant to make so much trouble — but words were cheap. Saigo wanted him to show his sincerity in the form of 7 million yen. That was twice the amount that Saigo had just thrown in his lap. Tetsu wasn’t counting the money, though.

  “It’ll take me until next week.”

  “Bullshit,” Saigo said. “You’ll bring it to my office tomorrow.” He ordered the money in cash, and told him to bring it sooner, if he had any decency. Saigo knew that, when closing a deal, especially one that was pretty much extortion, you never wanted to give the person time to think it over. Give someone too much time, and they might talk to the cops. They might have second thoughts.

  Tetsu started protesting feebly, but Saigo pounded the table with one hand and pointed his amputated finger at Tetsu. He took the wet napkin with his finger inside it, and stuffed it into Tetsu’s inner coat pocket.

  Tetsu had until the next night, at the latest. And he was never allowed to lend money to Saigo’s people again.

  Maruyama drove Saigo to the closest hospital. He told the doctor that he’d slammed the door on his hand while driving down the freeway, and his finger had flown off and was lost on the expressway. Of course, the doctor didn’t believe him.

  Since there was no finger to reattach, the doctor severed the nerves as best he could, and sewed up the wound. He didn’t use much anesthetic. When Saigo got home that night, one of Tetsu’s emissaries was waiting for him with the money — 7 million yen in cash.

  He would have counted the money himself, but his hand hurt too much. He had Maruyama do it.

  Once the money was counted, Maruyama and Saigo sat down to smoke. Saigo didn’t feel like talking much. He was really feeling the pain now.

  Maruyama was optimistic.

  “Saigo-san, it’s not so bad. You came out of this with 3.5 million yen.”

  “Yeah,” Saigo said, “but I lost a finger.”

  “Yeah, but now that you only have nine fingers, you can park in the handicapped zone.”

  It was true. After having applied his one-digit solution, he never had trouble getting a parking space. Technically, he should have applied for a handicapped person’s benefit card, but showing the parking attendant his hand usually did the trick.

  Over the years, before chopping off his own finger, there had been a couple of screw-ups who’d offered their fingers up to him as penance. Saigo used to keep the jars on display in the house, but the cops started to use them against him. So he started to bury them in his backyard, but he could never remember their exact locations.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Refrigerator Man and the honest yakuza

  In January 2006, Purple came to Saigo with a problem. A member of his gang, Jo Yabe, was addicted to meth and wouldn’t get clean. He had taken Purple’s prized Cadillac for a joyride without a license. If Purple told his oyabun, he’d have to kick Yabe out. So he was wondering if Saigo could possibly beat some sense into the guy for him.

  If Purple beat Yabe up himself, the organization would question why he did it — and then he’d get into trouble for not having told his oyabun about Yabe’s meth problem. However, if Saigo beat up Yabe, people would think he’d just lost his temper over some trivial thing, and wouldn’t even question it.

  Plus, Purple knew that Saigo had been a meth addict himself. And he’d been given a second chance. His brother was asking him, and he didn’t feel like he could refuse. So he ordered Maruyama to bring some men with him and to fetch Yabe.

  Yabe was still asleep, even though it was four in the afternoon. They dragged him out of bed, took back the Cadillac, and shoved Yabe in the trunk.

  When they got to the office, they took Yabe upstairs to Saigo’s main office. He was forced to sit in the seiza position on the tatami-mat floor while Saigo interrogated him. Saigo asked him again and again if he was on meth, and Yabe denied it. Maruyama slapped him across the face.

  Saigo’s thought was, first, that he had to get the addict to admit he had a problem. If he wouldn’t admit it, Saigo would hit him until he did. Saigo’s men pinned Yabe down and rolled up his sleeves. He had the needle marks of an addict.

  He gave Yabe an ultimatum: give up the drugs, or be kicked out of the organization. And if they caught him doing meth again, they’d really hurt him.

  Yabe confessed to everything.

  Saigo made a great show of calling Purple on the phone in front of Yabe. Purple pretended to demand Yabe be expelled from the organization. Saigo argued against it. Finally, the phone conversation ended. Saigo turned back to Yabe.

  “You’re going to promise to get off the shit,” Saigo said. “And you have to get a beating for this. Otherwise, you won’t learn.” Saigo gave him a choice: Saigo could beat him up, or the Inagawa-kai could beat him up.

  Yabe chose Saigo.

  Saigo thought about punching him out, but Yabe was still sitting in the seiza position on the floor, so it was easier to kick him. He kicked him twice, once in the face, and once in the chest. He had a wooden sword lying close by, and he thought about whacking Yabe with it a few times, but decided that smacking him with it once was more than enough. It made a hell of a sound as it swooshed through the air, but Saigo pulled back a few millimeters before it hit. The blow resulted in a smacking sound, but made no real damage.

  They made Yabe show them where he had hidden his drugs, and flushed all the meth down the toilet. They found his syringe, cut it up with scissors, and flushed it down the toilet, too. They found drugs hidden in the Cadillac, and they flushed those down the toilet as well.