Of course, even as Saigo was dragging him out, he didn’t make Hanzawa put away the gun. Because you never could be sure. When they got in the truck and were a few blocks away, Saigo took the gun away and slapped him silly. But Hanzawa just laughed. Saigo went back and apologized the next day.

  There were repercussions, but no acts of retaliation. In those days, meth-heads got one free pass. Saigo gave him a free pass as well. Hanzawa had almost started a gang war, but he had also instilled the fear of God, so to speak, in the Kinbara-gumi, and that wasn’t a bad thing. Besides, Saigo had other things to worry about at this time, like paying his dues.

  Shinogi is the alpha and omega of the yakuza life. Like many words in the yakuza world, it has multiple meanings that depend on the situation and context. Sometimes, shinogi refers to the income a yakuza makes from his various profit-making ventures. Historically, it refered to the edge of a blade. Outside of the yakuza, it can be defined as the means and methods of enduring or overcoming a problem. Sometimes, the noun is attached to the end of a word to indicate it is a stopgap measure to deal with a problem or a means of killing time. Ironically, it can also mean the food served to attendees at a funeral.

  The definition given by the National Police Agency describes it best: shinogi are the “fundraising activities of the yakuza.”

  A yakuza going through a tough time doesn’t complain about his business. He complains about his shinogi. If the shinogi isn’t good, the yakuza can’t pay his jounoukin (association dues). If he can’t pay his jounoukin, that’s the end of his yakuza career. When broken up, jounoukin translates to “the money you deposit above.” Everyone, except the man at the very top, has to pay.

  Saigo’s shinogi was rock-solid. He had close to fifty full-time members working for him, and fifty part-time associates. Money was coming in through multiple revenue streams, such as forcing corporations to buy or sell stocks, collecting debts from others, and making high-return loans. The Shelter had danbe, ran kanpa, and printed the newsletter, but they were always exploring additional types of shinogi as well, from subcontracting work on construction jobs, to forcing people to vacate premises or property. (This was known as jiage or “land-sharking”.)

  Saigo also collected money from all his members. Many made a living running illegal gambling businesses. Saigo didn’t touch those businesses himself, nor did he want to know the details. Using Saigo’s name was helpful to their business, and he was content with his indirect cut of the profits.

  Anything within the Saigo territory was subject to a “tax.” So if you were operating a shady business on the Saigo-gumi’s turf, you had to pay a form of protection money called bashodai, also known as shobadai. One of Japan’s most well-known red-light districts, Tanbo, was near the south exit of the Machida station. The district had sprung up at the end of the war, and featured a number of restaurants and bars that were also fronts for prostitution. In 1998, there were over eighty shady shops in the area. From these shops alone, Saigo brought in 12 million yen a month. His group also collected an additional 5,000 to 9,000 yen a day from streetwalkers.

  Even the public telephones in the area were taxed. A few weeks after setting up his office in Machida, Saigo summoned the local NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation) representative to his office. He complained about the poor maintenance of the pay phones in his area. The coin-release levers were rusted. There were still telephones that didn’t accept pre-paid cards (telephone cards) and only took change; he was unable to make international calls, and this was also unfair to his Korean members, who had to call home now and then. As the local yakuza boss, he felt a civilian duty to make sure that these essential public services were maintained — or so he claimed.

  The NTT representative nodded and took notes. A few days later, he came back to the office with an envelope full of telephone cards, worth almost 40,000 yen when combined. Sometimes, Saigo would cash the cards in. Other times, he’d just give them to his men. In the days before cell phones, public telephones and beepers were indispensable parts of the yakuza life.

  Saigo also worked hand in hand with local real estate agents, finding them good properties, introducing them to clients, and sometimes forcefully evicting tenants. For this, the agents paid him a good fee, sometimes up to 5 percent of the profits on a transaction.

  The Saigo-gumi also made a decent amount of money for keeping silent about shameful activities. In other words, they demanded hush money. Saigo had a network of hostesses, hosts, and other people working in the adult-entertainment industry who would feed him intel on bank presidents, company CEOs, wealthy doctors, and crooked politicians in the area. Sometimes, shady journalists would also drop him a tip. Extortion was a staple of his business, though never a consistent source of income. Blackmail was a complicated business. If you milked the victim for too long, they, or someone close to them, would eventually go to the police.

  Scandals always made money. The most common scandals involved bankers or company presidents abusing their authority and making bad business decisions that they wanted to conceal. Adultery and indiscreet affairs were good material for blackmail, too. Get the dirt, name a price, take the payment, and walk away. That was his strategy. He didn’t push his luck by trying to get paid over and over again. That’s how people got caught. He didn’t feel bad about shaking down the wealthy or the stupid. They were victims of their own greed. He was just the hammer of karma.

  One summer, Saigo took a local company president on a trip with him and his crew to an inn near Atami. The lovely geishas who worked at the inn served the party and got drunk with them. Saigo left to go to an Inagawa-kai executive meeting the next morning, so he headed back to Machida earlier. That night, the company president and one of the geishas slept together.

  The next day, the woman’s husband, a local yakuza, showed up at the hotel and barged into their room. He threatened to kill the businessman. The distressed president called Saigo, who returned to the inn and agreed to mediate the situation.

  After an hour of discussion, Saigo explained the terms. The company president had to apologize, vow to never sleep with the man’s wife again, and pay 100 million yen in compensation. It was almost $1 million, and he had to take it or leave it. Saigo promised to keep the whole thing out of the media and to make sure there would be no further damages demanded. The panicked company boss agreed to pay on the spot, and Saigo made him bring the cash within hours. The money was paid, and the problem was solved.

  Of course, it was all a set-up. Saigo and the local yakuza had it worked out from the start. The “husband” got one-tenth of the money. Usually, the woman would be an employee at a hostess bar or other yakuza-run establishment, or sometimes she would actually be the girlfriend or mistress of one of the players in the con. She would get a generous cut as well. Saigo and his crew would keep the rest. The yakuza have been doing this kind of fraud for decades. In the U.S., it’s called “the badger game.” In Japan, it’s called tsutsumotase, which is written using the characters for “beautiful”, “person”, and “situation”. In actual usage, bijin (beautiful person) is almost always limited to women, beautiful women. Beautiful woman situation.

  Negotiating settlements was also a good source of income. For instance, before even going to a court, a person could instead go to the Saigo-gumi and ask them to negotiate settlements in civil disputes or reimbursement claims for damages. Civil cases in Japan can drag on for years and cost thousands of dollars. Even if the court ordered the loser to pay compensation, the court costs and legal fees are almost never included in the compensation. The yakuza could settle a civil dispute in days or weeks. Even though they kept half the money, it was still more efficient and profitable than hiring a lawyer — unless the yakuza later came back and blackmailed you for using their services.

  Politics also played a role in shinogi. During election seasons, local politicians would ask Saigo’s crew to gather up votes. Sometimes, in order to make vote-tampering easier, they’d check to see whether people on the politician’s supporters list were still alive. That involved sending a few guys down to city hall to check records. When conducting voter fraud, it’s always good to remember that dead men don’t vote.

  Having political connections helped keep the police off their back. In general, their relationship with the local cops was exceptional. Saigo understood that as long as his gang suppressed street crime and didn’t engage in it, all was good. Pissing off the cops was bad for shinogi.

  The regular monthly income for Saigo-gumi was roughly 10 million yen ($100,000). Saigo paid himself a salary of one-third of the group’s monthly revenue. Unfortunately, expenses were high. The association dues, even on the fourth tier, were sometimes over $10,000 a month. That didn’t even include the giri-gake he’d have to provide when he attended funerals, weddings, succession ceremonies, and other yakuza events — and these events were frequent. He would be invited to a funeral whether it was the death of someone from the Inagawa-kai or another gang, like the Yamaguchi-gumi. He had to show his face, and each month he’d end up kicking close to 20 million yen ($20,000) back to the organization at least.

  Some months, he felt that the association dues were unreasonably high, but he didn’t mind paying. Rather, he wasn’t going to complain. The Inagawa-kai brand made him money.

  Shinogi, he would often remind himself, also means endurance.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Pig box

  Oddly, it wasn’t Hanzawa who introduced Saigo to meth, but a woman he met at a hostess club. He’d never done it before, but he found that he liked the feeling quite a lot. It wasn’t surprising that he, too, became addicted to it by 1988.

  The history of meth in Japanese society is almost as old as the modern yakuza. It ranks as one of the three worst contributions Japanese science has given the world. The second worst is high-fructose corn syrup, and the third worst is the karaoke machine.

  Yes, America can ultimately trace its obesity and meth problems to Japan. The process of making high-fructose corn syrup was commercialized by a Japanese scientist employed by the Japanese government. It makes you wonder if this was how the Japanese planned their revenge on the U.S.: fatten them up with a sugar substitute, and then fight them when they are all too fat to even roll out of bed onto the battlefield.

  As for karaoke, if you’ve ever had to spend an evening singing “You are my sunshine” with a band of drunken salarymen, while a Japanese woman with too much make-up and a voice unnaturally high pours you low-grade whiskey and mixes it with water, you’d understand why karaoke makes the top three.

  Meth takes first place because the damage it has done to the world has been immense. Japanese organic chemist Nagahiroshi Nagai synthesized methamphetamine from ephedrine in 1893. Nagai had been researching traditional Japanese and Chinese medicine, which use the natural form of ephedrine, ma huang. The Chinese have long used ma huang to treat asthma and bronchitis because it opens up the windpipes.

  The new drug had some other side effects that were welcome. It woke people up, removed their feelings of fatigue, and made them work harder. However, it also made people unnaturally cheerful, chatty, and hyperactive. It could only create this superhuman state for a short time, but the user still needed sleep and rest. If they didn’t get it, they’d run themselves into the ground. The Japanese doctors only used it to treat asthma, depression, and narcolepsy.

  It was Nazi Germany that realized the value of the drug as a “super-serum.” They started to sell methamphetamines as an over-the-counter drug in 1938. The German army, realizing it enabled soldiers to work longer and more energetically, began to supply it to soldiers.

  Japan quickly followed, introducing it into troop rations. The government made major pharmaceutical companies ramp up meth production. It was primarily for troop usage, at first. But, just as in the United States, often what is developed for military use becomes commercial. By 1940, it was being sold over the counter to the Japanese general public under various names. Hiropon was the bestselling brand. The name allegedly came from the catchy slogan that it would make your fatigue (hiro) jump away (pon pon) like a rabbit. Even today, addicts are called ponchu, which is a combination of the word pon, from hiropon, and chudoku, a verb meaning to be addicted. No one really understood all the side effects, the addictive qualities, or the mental damage it caused after being used for an extended period of time.

  The scientific name for methamphetamines in Japanese is kakuseizai. Kakusha means “Buddha,” which originally meant “one who is awake.” Sei means to “wake up from one’s sleep; to become sober.” Zai indicates a prepared substance. So kakuseizai is literally “the drug that wakes you up and keeps you awake (like the Buddha).”

  The Japanese slang term for meth is shabu, coming from the verb shaburu, which means to suck on something. There are a few reasons that the word came to refer to the drug. There is the metaphorical idea that meth sucks the life out of you; that it eventually drains everything from you if you keep using it. The second reason shabu is an apt name for the drug is that many users experience an incredible thirst after they get high. Often, according to urban legend, addicts get a craving for sugary soft drinks such as ginger ale or cola. One veteran detective from the Tokyo police insists that the easiest way to tell if you’re interrogating a meth-user is to offer them a Coca-Cola — if they take it and gulp it down, you’re dealing with someone high on speed or a heavy user.

  Nothing had ever made him feel as good as shabu. He remembered sitting naked in his apartment one day, feeling like every nerve in his body was pulsing.

  There was sex, and there was sex on shabu. Many women in the water-trade (hostesses, prostitutes, massage girls) were addicted. It made the sex better, and it was easier to endure unpleasant customers in a meth-induced fugue. Some women dissolved the powder into liquid and used it with a lubricant before sex — it gave them and the customer an unbelievable high.

  Saigo never had much self-control, and he didn’t see doing meth as a problem because everyone was doing it. Plus he liked the courage and power it gave him. When he was on meth, he became the man without fear. But it didn’t take long for him to go overboard, and the side effects didn’t take long to manifest themselves.

  In February 1988, he began to feel as if he was being watched all the time; that someone was out to get him. He didn’t know who or why, but he needed to hide. The Saigo-gumi was temporarily taken over by Yamada because he wouldn’t come out.

  Saigo accused his wife of cheating on him with another man. When she denied it, he kicked over the table in their room and accused her of lying. “I want to leave you,” he told her. “Let’s call it off.”

  She tried to calm him down, “When you get off the drugs, you won’t feel that way.”

  “You lying bitch. I know what you’re up to. Get out.”

  She did, and she took their daughter with her. Now he was all alone. In his frustration and irrational state, he shot himself up with a nearly lethal dose. He didn’t sleep for seventy-two hours. He began hallucinating, and became convinced that he was surrounded by policemen and yakuza from rival organizations. He thought even his own soldiers were going to kill him.

  He gathered all the newspaper in the house and a roll of packing tape, and tried to cover every window. When he could still see light coming through the windows, he taped towels, pieces of cardboard, and anything else he could find over the newspapers until no one could look in and he couldn’t look out. He made one small peephole that he could open and close at will. When he looked through the hole, he saw the chrysanthemum symbol of the police on a hat, and a man wearing that hat.

  The Machida police were alerted by a neighbor, and came knocking on his door. He opened it, and there stood Detective Lucky. People called him Lucky because he only smoked Lucky Strike cigarettes. Lucky was from Okinawa. He was dark skinned and had a bright smile full of teeth. His relatively short haircut had a very slight pompadour that made him look like a Japanese Elvis, but anytime someone told him that, he’d say, “I hate Elvis and I hate karaoke — in that order.”

  Saigo half-opened his front door and glared at him. Lucky was the last person he wanted to see.

  Lucky asked him point blank if he was doing meth. He knew the answer. He ordered Saigo to give him the drugs and to go with him to the police station, where Lucky could arrest him.

  Saigo thought about it. He was going crazy on the stuff, and he needed to get off it. He didn’t think he could do it on his own. So he admitted he was on it.

  And Lucky took him in.

  He was held for the full twenty-three days allowed under the law. He went into withdrawal. It was a long, painful incarceration.

  His juvenile record had been expunged when he became an adult, so he had no criminal record. It was his first time to be charged with violations of the stimulants law. He vowed to never use meth again, and the judge gave him a suspended sentence.

  It didn’t take long for him to violate the terms of his release. In early May, Saigo once again boarded up his windows with cardboard and started screaming loudly in the night, waking up his neighbors. When he did venture out of the house and drove down the highway, he would imagine there were angry yakuza hiding in his trunk. He would sometimes stomp on the brakes after speeding up, just to ensure the collision would kill the gangsters hidden in the trunk of his car.