He nodded, “And if you did, I wouldn’t be able to do anything for you. So I think we understand each other. I’ll take care of it.”

  I knew he was a man of his word. I felt a little easier.

  He told me, “In your business and my business, there’s always trouble. You may be a pain in the ass, but you’re fair. When you wrote things that pissed everyone off, I brought their attention to that. But I won’t be able to vouch for you with the regime change coming. Things aren’t going to be the same.”

  He advised me to widen my fields of interests. I may take that advice.

  We chatted about who was up and who was down in the yakuza world. And about what he would do if he was no longer with the organization.

  He laughed, “I’m not in great health. Maybe I’ll look for a good hospice with some gorgeous nurses. You should come visit me. Maybe I’ll introduce you to one of them.”

  I’ll probably take him up on both of those offers.

  There aren’t many like him left in the business — a voice of reason and diplomacy.

  Like a stale cigarette himself, he’s being stubbed out in the dingy ashtray of the Japanese underworld. Yes, it’s a melodramatic metaphor, but one that seems most apt to me after twenty years of covering the yakuza. Whether he is put out or burns out, either way he’s a year or two from becoming a pile of ashes himself. If I’m honest, in a strange way, when he dies, I’ll miss him.

  Hopefully, there will be somewhere he can be buried when that happens.

  These days, even the funeral parlors are refusing to deal with yakuza clients, even the deceased ones.

  Afterword

  I’m sorry to say that, in 2015, Saigo was given an offer he couldn’t refuse, or didn’t want to refuse. He was offered readmittance to the yakuza in a high-ranking position in the Yokosuka-ikka, the faction above him in the Inagawa-kai. It must have been tempting. He wasn’t straight-up with me about the offer, but I knew that it was going on. Uchibori needed someone to keep the ailing faction in check and to run the group — and Saigo was a solid leader when given the chance.

  I understand that it’s hard to go straight. The re-employment rate for yakuza is less than 2 percent, according to Japan’s foremost authority on the sociology of the yakuza, Noboru Hirosue, also known as “Professor Yakuza.”

  While Saigo was working for me, I encouraged him to learn new skills, but even though he could type like crazy on a cell phone, learning to type on a keyboard with only nine fingers was beyond him. And society didn’t make it easy for him to rejoin. I helped him get slightly tech-savvy, which was good. His self-chosen email was inudesu (I am a dog), which is a pun on how informants are referred to in the underworld — as dogs. You can’t say he didn’t have a great sense of humor.

  I kept him on as a driver until the summer of 2015, when he finally decided to go back to the Inagawa-kai. As a farewell present, I gave him the Mercedes-Benz I had purchased. He hadn’t rejoined the yakuza at that stage; otherwise, I would have violated the laws myself. Ouch.

  I didn’t miss the car. Yakuza used to love those cars. They guzzle gas like crazy, but he argued furiously that no one would take him seriously if we were driving around in a Subaru. I couldn’t really argue with that.

  We had a bitter dispute about his decision to rejoin the yakuza, but we made our peace on October 17, 2015. He sent me a short email that was the beginning of our détente:

  Take care of yourself and live vigorously … I am glad to hear that you are well despite all that has happened. Let’s meet again when the time comes.

  It is getting colder, but please take good care of yourself and work hard.

  Pardon me.

  However, while he remained a friend and a source, with him back in the organization, the protocols for our contact changed quite a bit. I was politely warned by a cop who we both know that closely associating with Saigo now would probably get me named as a yakuza associate — which would mean that, just like an actual yakuza, I might lose my bank account, my phone, and even my apartment.

  It was safer to let the world believe we were now bitter enemies, or not communicating at all.

  He died in his home, alone, of a heart attack, during the pandemic. He rose to the rank of director-general before passing away, and that seemed to mean a lot to him. It was Detective Lucky who broke the news to me, although Saigo’s long silence before then hadn’t boded well.

  I had promised to do a ritual to help Saigo move onto the next incarnation if he was trapped in the lower realms of existence. There are advantages to being a Buddhist priest yourself, and The Buddha certainly wasn’t around to do it.

  I don’t know if the prayers or the ceremony helped, but I hoped it did. I feel like everybody deserves a second chance, and sometimes maybe even a third one.

  Acknowledgments

  This book took almost eight years to write, and I was delighted that it was first published by Marchialy in France in 2016. Cyril and Clemence have been wonderful editors, translators, and friends. I probably will continue to publish first in France for as long as their publishing company lives.

  I’d like to thank the original editor of the manuscript, Julianne Chiaet, an accomplished writer and wonderful editor, who camped out in my house to get the book finished. I would also like to thank Amy Plambeck, who did the polishing and copyediting for the English edition. Lauren Hardie contributed marvelous copyediting here and there, although she may have forgotten she even did it.

  I am also very grateful to Henry Rosenbloom, my publisher in the U.S. and in Australia and New Zealand, who painstakingly edited the English manuscript. And deep thanks to William Clark, my ever-patient literary agent, and Stephen “Steve” Breimer, who is an excellent lawyer and advocate.

  And I would like to thank the yakuza who entrusted me to tell their story and who shared their lives with me. I am grateful — but don’t try to shake me down. I’m grateful, but I’m not stupid. Good luck to us all.

 

 

  Jake Adelstein;, The Last Yakuza

 

 

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