Tokyo Vice

by Jake Adelstein

  This was at a time in my life when I was a regular at the Maid Station, ostensibly teaching English after hours to some employees. Maid Station was in the “image health” genre of adult entertainment. The girls dressed as maids, referred to the customers as “master,” and would bathe you, massage you, and blow you. Five of the girls were planning a holiday to Australia, and their solicitous manager, whom I had known when he drove a cab in Saitama, arranged for them to have private English lessons. I was the teacher.

  The club was located in Minami Ginza, in the heart of Sumiyoshi-kai territory, and I pondered the possible reasons why Kaneko had called. Was I misbehaving on his turf? Maybe he was going to blackmail me? But what for? I was a single guy, and in Saitama during the nineties, going for a “sexual massage” was as Japanese as sushi.

  I really didn’t know what to do, but my cop source assured me that Kaneko was not a threat and that it could actually be good for me as a reporter to know him, so I called Kaneko’s office from a public telephone.

  The guy who picked up was loud and surly. I identified myself, and there was a long pause while he seemed to be figuring out how to address me. I had to repeat my name seven times. Then the guy spoke to Kaneko. It went something like this: “Hey, there’s this fucking gaijin on the phone, and he says he’s a reporter. Do you know this asshole?”

  Kaneko roared at him, “Cover the mouthpiece of that phone, and treat the man with respect. I’ve been waiting for his call.”

  I’d expected Kaneko to come off as a raspy, threatening, unintelligible thug, but when he came on the line, his voice had an amazingly smooth finish. He sounded like Ernst Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever. He had what the Japanese call a cat-stroking voice, a kind of purr. “So you’re Jake,” he began. “I apologize for calling you at work. I didn’t know how else to reach you. And please forgive my underlings. They are rude, impolite, and uneducated. Please take no offense.”

  “Umm, none taken. What can I do for you?”

  “I have an unusual problem. It’s rather sensitive, and I was hoping that you might be able to help me solve it.”

  “Well, I’m not really in the habit of solving problems for yakuza.”

  “Of course not. I realize that I’m putting you into an awkward position. However, I would very much like to talk to you about this personal matter. I could make it worth your while …”

  “I’d be happy to talk to you. I just can’t accept anything from you.”

  “All right. When would you be available?”

  “How about after lunch tomorrow?”

  “Good. Thank you. Here is how to find me … If you get lost, just ask around. People know where I am.”

  • • •

  Since I have no sense of direction, I did get lost and had to ask the tout at a “pink salon”2* to point me the way to Kaneko’s office. The tout politely drew me a map. He then mentioned that I’d be welcome to come in and sample the salon’s pleasures. Normally foreigners weren’t allowed, but any friend of Kaneko’s was a friend of the establishment. Besides, he added wryly, business was slow in the afternoon.

  I declined. I had a job to do.

  Located just past a row of sex clubs, a Vietnamese restaurant, and a taxidermist, The Cat’s headquarters looked like a branch office of a small construction firm. There was a company name on the glass door that slid open at my touch. In the reception area, a scary-looking fellow was sitting on a sofa, thumbing through a pornographic magazine. He looked up, stood, and, saying not a word, knocked on the door to an office.

  Out stepped Naoya “The Cat” Kaneko. He was about five feet seven, probably in his late fifties. His eyes were narrow, he was a little thin on top, he had a goatee. Dark suit, white shirt, paisley tie, black loafers. Two gold rings on his right hand. He looked more like a politician than the second in command of the Sumiyoshi-kai organized crime group.

  We shook hands, and Kaneko motioned for me to sit on one of the three dark brown leather sofas. He sat down opposite me. The scary-looking guy stepped out of the room and came back with two cups of green tea served in lacquer saucers (meant to show respect).

  Kaneko sipped his tea, but I let mine sit.

  “You don’t want the tea?”

  “I’m not a big green tea fan,” I replied, waving my hand.

  “How about coffee?”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Right.” He turned to the scary guy and barked, “Bring him some coffee.”

  He seemed relieved when the coffee came and I brought the cup to my lips.

  Now we began our formal introduction. Kaneko handed me his meishi (business card), which I took with both hands and bowed. I then handed him my card, which he in turn received with both hands and bowed (but not as deeply as I had).

  The rituals of meishi exchange are well known. This is what I was taught: You hand your card over with one hand to show that you are a lightweight, a nothing, and humble. You take the other man’s card with both hands, to show that he is more substantial and weighty than humble you. You lift his card up slightly to eye level, look over the card, and assess your mutual social positions to determine the proper mode of polite speech. You take his card and put it in your card holder if you are both standing. You never fold, spindle, or mutilate the other person’s card, which would be a grievous insult. I glanced at his title and the ornate lettering of the card before deftly putting it into my business card container. He likewise looked at the writing on my card, then slipped it into his business card container, which appeared to be made of solid platinum.

  We made small talk. He asked me how a foreigner had gotten hired by the Yomiuri Shinbun, and I summarized my life in Japan up until that point, including going to school at Sophia University. He listened and we chatted; all seemed unnervingly normal.

  “I wish I’d gone to college,” he said. “It would have been a different life for me. I could have gone. You’re lucky that you had the opportunity.”

  I acknowledged that and then cleared my throat and got to the point: why had he called me?

  “I heard that you’re trustworthy and that you’re good at what you do.”

  “Who did you hear this from?”

  “That would be telling. Let’s just say I’ve heard good things about you. There’s something I need to know, and I think you could find it out. I think you would keep it to yourself too. People say you’re like a Japanese, an honorable man.”

  “That’s news to me. You sure you have the right gaijin?”

  “I’m sure.”

  It’s not often a yakuza pays you a compliment. It was probably insincere, but I didn’t mind.

  So I returned the favor. “Well, I hear that for a yakuza you’re not a total scumbag. I hear that you’re a gentleman and more of a white-collar criminal than a thug. In your line of business, I guess that would mean you’re like Mother Teresa.”

  He chuckled at that and asked who I knew that knew him. I told him that that would be telling. It was a touché that made him smile.

  He offered me a cigarette, which I accepted, which he lit, and which I tried not to inhale. He, on the other hand, lit up and inhaled so deeply that the tobacco sparked, and then he pointed at my cup of tea, sitting untouched.

  “You want to ask me why I don’t like green tea?” I asked.

  Kaneko laughed. “No, but the story is about tea, actually. You see, a few detectives from the Saitama police force drop in here once or twice a week. I usually offer them a cup of tea, maybe some pastries. We chat; they leave. That’s the usual protocol. But lately, when I put tea out for them, they won’t touch it. They won’t touch anything. They make a point of refusing.”

  “That’s a problem?”

  “Let me finish. I asked them why they were refusing my small gesture of hospitality, and they said that the word on the police force is that I’m bribing a cop, that I have one of the detectives in my pocket. These guys tell me, ‘If we take anything from you—tea, candy, even a calendar—internal affairs
will be all over us.’ So they refuse.”

  “Why is that a problem for you?”

  “Because now everyone in the organization thinks that the police are just posing. They think that I’m now an informant for the police, that I’ve turned.”

  “Because they won’t drink your tea?”

  “Exactly. I think the cops really believe that I’m bribing one of them, but the people I work with don’t believe them. They think it’s a police ruse to make me look like I’m not an informant. If this keeps up, I’m going to be in serious trouble.”

  “What would serious trouble mean in your line of work?”

  “It would mean that my own crew and the people I have raised like my children are going to drag me out to the mountains of Chichibu in the middle of the night, shoot me in the head, and bury me in a shallow grave.”

  “Ouch. Could it get any worse?”

  “Oh, yes. They might make me dig my own grave, beat me to a pulp, and then bury me alive. But I don’t think that will happen. I’ve been around for a long time. I think I’ve earned enough respect to be buried only after I’m completely dead.”

  I was about to laugh and looked for some indication that he was making a joke. Didn’t see one. The Cat must have been pretty desperate, calling me.

  “Well, who do you have in your pocket?” I had to ask.

  “No one. I don’t bribe cops. And I’m not a snitch. That’s not how I do business. The cops and I have always had a good working relationship, so I have no idea where this shit is coming from.” He was hunched over the table now, almost whispering to me. Our noses could have touched. It could have been my first Eskimo kiss with a yakuza.

  “So …”

  “I’d like to know why the Saitama police are so convinced I’m bribing them. I’d like to know the name of the cop I’m supposed to be bribing. If I knew that, I could handle the situation.”

  I had to think about this for a little while. It took me another cigarette to figure out what to say.

  “Well, Kaneko-san, I’m a reporter, not an informant for the yakuza. And to tell the truth, I really don’t like doing favors for the yakuza. I do know one person I can talk to. If I decide that there is information that I can pass on to you, I will. I won’t make any promises.”

  “That’s all I ask.”

  “As long as I’m here, can I ask you a question? Not a favor, a question.”

  “Go ahead. It’s the least I can do.”

  “How do you make money for the organization? The police release these figures that suggest seventy percent of your cash comes from selling speed. It sounds like bullshit to me. Maybe there are thousands of speed freaks in Saitama, but I sure as hell don’t see many of them.”

  “You’re correct. I won’t go into specifics, but I’ll tell you how this enterprise works if you’re interested.”

  “I am.”

  Kaneko then proceeded to outline his style of organized crime to me. The Sumiyoshi-kai in its heyday had been very active in jacking up land prices for a kickback from the Realtors or the banks. It had also made money by getting tenants out of apartment buildings or houses that would be worth more if sold on the open market, a practice known as jiage, or “land-sharking.” With tenant laws in Japan being so much in the favor of the tenant, its services were in demand. Or it would deliberately block the public auction of seized property by moving yakuza into the buildings or apartments. Sometimes it would do it on behalf of the original owner, so he could buy the property back at a low price. Sometimes it would buy the property itself and sell it to a front company. Waste disposal—illegal waste disposal—was a good source of revenue, and then there was protection money from the sex industry in Omiya.

  But the biggest cash cow was extortion. Kaneko put it this way: “You and I are in the same business. You collect information and sell it; so do we. You get paid to put scandalous information in the paper; we get paid to keep that information out of the paper. We’re both in the information industry.”

  What Kaneko meant was that the Sumiyoshi-kai would shake down businesses and businessmen that had embarrassing secrets. Or it would sometimes get wind of a company that was struggling financially and approach it with offers to help. It’d strip the company of all remaining assets and real estate, taking the company down after using it for other fraudulent enterprises. Mind you, the struggling company was often a willing participant in the proceedings. The Sumiyoshi-kai would use the company’s real estate to secure loans from midsize banks, which they never paid back. The company would go bankrupt, but it—and the company executive—would have gotten their cut. Finally, when the property was seized and put up for auction, the yakuza would interfere with the process, buy the land and buildings at a low price and sell them off or let a third party buy the property and take a cut of the transaction as a kickback.

  The Sumiyoshi-kai also ran several front companies: temporary staffing agencies, loan-sharking operations, even an insurance company. The insurance company was used to generate false claims to rip off real insurance companies. It had a collection agency that recovered bad debts for legitimate consumer-loan companies. It scalped tickets and ran pawnshops trafficking in stolen goods. Of course, it also had a talent agency, which supplied young women to porn producers. The women were paid well. No coercion was involved.

  It ran retail shops selling adult goods and teenage girls’ used underwear, which Japanese men are obsessed with. It handled transportation, trucking, shipping, and security for large events. It would get a contract as a construction company and subcontract all the work without doing a thing, except for pocketing the difference between what it paid the subcontractor and what it received.

  The fake political organization it had set up not only got a tax break but was a better venue for shaking down companies. It would get companies to subscribe to the group’s newsletter at an exorbitant price, thus collecting hush money in a less obvious fashion.

  Kaneko’s exegesis on the yakuza economy was brilliant, concise, incisive. In one hour, he laid out the system before me better than anyone else has. When he was done, fulfilling his part of this bargain, I promised to see what I could reasonably find out. As I took my leave, he offered to have his driver take me to my next destination; I chose not to accept.

  That night I called my source and repeated everything Kaneko had said to me.

  “Very interesting,” he said. “I’ll personally look into this. My guess is that someone in his own organization is trying to take The Cat down. Ten to one it’s a power struggle.”

  “What does he mean by saying that he has a good working relationship with the cops?”

  “Ahh, that. Let me explain. Part of being a yakuza cop is being assigned to Anti–Organized Crime Division 1, which gathers information on the yakuza: How many offices do they have? How many members? Who’s in the organization and who’s not? For the yakuza cops, the fastest way to get the answers is to go to the yakuza and ask. The Cat is a crafty old guy, so he won’t come right out and tell you. He’ll just leave the materials lying around the office, and we’ll just offhandedly read them while he’s on the phone. Sometimes he’ll leave them in the garbage can so we can ‘steal’ them. He never hands them over.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Because it’s the way things work. He keeps the cops happy so we don’t have to find an excuse to raid the office to get the intel we need. It works out well.”

  “Why don’t you just tap his phones?”

  “This isn’t America, and we aren’t the FBI. We couldn’t get permission to run a wiretap. It just doesn’t happen.”

  “You don’t think he’s bribing somebody?”

  “If he was, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to get caught doing it. He’s the smartest yakuza in the organization. I’ll find out what’s going on and get back to you.”

  • • •

  Two days later, he called me with the goods. The rumor was being spread by one Yoshinori Saito, the number four guy
in the Sumiyoshi-kai. Saito had told one of the detectives in Section 1 that Kaneko was bribing a cop. Saito hadn’t named the cop, thus sending the police into a feeding frenzy while they tried to find the mole.

  That was on the cop side. On the yakuza side, Kaneko and Saito had long been at odds with each other. Lately, Saito had wanted to sell speed to the convoy of truck drivers who made their way through Saitama, but Kaneko didn’t want any part of it. Kaneko’s boss, Nakamura, had allegedly been a meth head in his youth, and Kaneko didn’t want his boss getting involved in a business that might tempt him to return to bad habits. Saito had deliberately spread the rumor, knowing that it would result, through a certain convoluted logic, in making the organization think The Cat was a police stoolie. Saito didn’t have the guts to challenge The Cat himself. He was going to let the organization take care of it.

  “So what do you think I should I do with this information?”

  “Tell it to Kaneko. As soon as possible.”

  Reluctantly I agreed to communicate the situation to Kaneko. I called his office and scheduled an appointment for that night.

  It was freezing cold, which didn’t help because I was already getting the shivers. Besides, yakuza offices are spooky enough in broad daylight. Before I could even knock on the door, Kaneko opened it and gestured me inside. He was wearing jeans and a dark green sweater. He looked like a yachting instructor.

  I sat down on the sofa, and this time I drank the tea. I told The Cat everything I knew.

  He nodded as I spoke, closing his eyes, fingers spread out on the table. “Thank you. I now understand. I owe you for this,” he said.

  “Maybe it’s not my place to say this,” I dared, foolishly, “but rather than having to deal with this crap, why don’t you just leave the organization?”

  The Cat opened his eyes and took a deep breath. “Look at me. If I dress like this, I look like any other businessman on the train on his day off. But if I roll up my sleeves”—which he then began to do—“that’s the end of the pretty picture.” From his wrists, extending up his arms as far as I could see, were gaudy, elaborate tattoos. You couldn’t see a vestige of bare skin.