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Chapter 2

Wriggling in Money Hell

It was just around the time when the Japanese media were making a
lot of fuss about sarakin-jigoku (loan-shark hell). Sarakin, or consumer
credit companies, are nancial institutions you can borrow money from
without putting up any collateral. But everything has its dark sidein
this case, high interest rates. A lot of ordinary working people, who
looked only on the bright side when taking out loans, found themselves
unable to make the repayments and were then hounded. Many took
their own lives or simply disappeared. Arson and murder-suicides were
not uncommon across the country. In October 1977, an association of
sarakin victims was formed. The Japanese media called this social phenomenon loan shark hell and played it up.
Quite a few employees of Teramura Doken got into trouble with loan
sharks. Nearly all our employees were experts in drinking, gambling,
and womanizing. Chronically short of the funds needed to pursue these
pleasures, they would eventually turn to loan sharks for money. But they
werent good at paying back what they owed, and the result was trouble.
The loan sharks didnt dare to come to the oce, but mean-looking
guys were apparently harassing my employees day and night. I always
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told my guys not to repay loan sharks anything: Tell them to come and
see me if theyve got a problem!
I dont know why exactly, but I had harbored a hatred of loan sharks
since I was a kid. They live o people at the lower levels of society and I
had seen many ghastly human dramas unfold in which they had played
a central role. I know that we live in a Darwinian world and loan sharks
have their own good reasons for becoming what they are and doing what
they do. All the same, I could never forgive them. Turning thirty, I still
felt the same way. No matter how desperate the nancial situation, I
couldnt imagine myself borrowing money from a loan shark. I would
rather turn to a yakuza, however nave that might sound. At any rate, I
was always on the lookout for a chance to give loan sharks a hard time.
Finally, the perfect opportunity presented itself.
My nephew was in trouble with a loan shark. About twenty and hooked
on stimulants, he borrowed heavily from dierent loan sharks to feed
his habit and didnt pay them back. He would hole up in his room with
the storm shutters closed, wrapped in a winter quilt even in the middle
of summer, muttering about how cold he was as he shivered all over.
The oor surrounding his bedding was covered in pepper. Apparently,
stimulant addicts believe that bugs are swarming over themthe pepper
was his attempt to keep them away.
I knew nothing about my nephews troubles until my sister called
me, saying a loan shark had phoned her about her sons debts. The loan
shark, sensing she was a mild-mannered soul, had taken advantage and
bullied her pitilessly over the phone, going as far as threatening to come
over to her house and replace the nameplate.
It was a threat peculiar to loan sharks. In this case, my nephew owed
just 50,000.
This was a time before legislation to control consumer credit, so loan
sharks could do anything they wanted. They used to threaten property
conscationor even deathand it often looked as if they would make
good on their threats. Listening to my sister, I decided this was the
chance I had been waiting for.
Get over to the loan shark on such-and-such street in Ukyo Ward!
I told four or ve of my young guys who happened to be in the oce.
Grab all the execs, including the president, and bring them here!
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Soon afterward, the president and the managing director of the sarakin company were dragged in. Both looked pale.
The person called Miyazaki youve been harassing is my nephew and
he works here, I said. He owes you 50,000, right? Im paying it back
for him.
Visibly disturbed, they looked at each other in panic. They probably
had no idea my nephew was in any way associated with Teramura,
because he used the Miyazaki surname.
Please dont even think about it! the president said. We had no idea
he was a Teramura Doken man. Were really sorry about all this. Lets
just forget the money.
No, nothings going to be forgotten. Youre going to get everything
youve got coming to you. Take this! I forced him to take 50,000 and
make out a receipt. By the way, I heard you were going to change the
nameplate on my nephews house. So get over there and do it, right
now!
No, please! We wouldnt dream of doing anything so foolish. Please
forgive us! How can we ever apologize?
Words mean nothing. Lets see your money!
How . . . how much?
3 million. Normally its 5 million, but Im feeling generous.
The managing director ew back to his oce and returned with the
cash. By now, the two were looking relieved, in the belief they would
soon be released. That was another mistake. As they had gone as far
as threatening to change the nameplate on my sisters house, there was
no way I was going to let them o so lightly. From the beginning, I was
determined to crush them out of existence.
By the way, youre a nancier, arent you? How about lending me
some money?
How much?
30 million will do.
Id do anything you want, but I just cant do that.
Oh yeah? Then youve got two choices: close down your business or
change my nephews nameplate. Whats it going to be?
Ill close down the business.
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The president groaned feebly. In fact, having run up against such an

awkward customer, he had probably already decided to shut down and
then start up again under a dierent name. A man like that never learns
his lesson.
When?
Tomorrow. Ill close down tomorrow.
No, not tomorrow. Today!
I forced the president to prepare a cessation of business notice on the
spot and made him submit it to the relevant department at the Kyoto
Prefectural Oce. Meanwhile, I stormed over to his oce with my men
and tore it apart. It didnt take us long to clean the place out, leaving
nothing behind us. After all, demolition was our profession.
In the middle of wrecking the place, a call came through from the
yakuza who protected the loan shark. He happened to be a guy I was
acquainted with.
I want you to think again and drop this, he said over the phone. Hes
an associate of ours.
But you know what he said? That he was going to change our nameplate, when all we owed him was 50,000! How would you like that?
Would you let it drop?
Really? All right, I understand. Do what you want, then. But remember, him and his buddies are just regular types. No rough stu, OK?
So it all went without a hitch. After destroying his oce, I had some
parting words for the president: For that 50,000, youve paid out 3 million in settlement money, lost your oce, and got kicked out of business!
Sure youre in the right line of work? What was a gutless prick like you
thinking, trying to take us on? Dont try anything like that againever!
I made him write a letter of apology. The police could bully a guy
like him into doing anything they wanted. Non-yakuza types with guilty
consciences are pretty useless in such circumstances, so I needed insurance in the not-unlikely event that they tried to pin something on me. By
now, the president was so frightened that he didnt even look scared any
more. With a vacant stare, he just sat there and did as I told him. As for
the 3 million, I got through it in a few days of eating and drinking with
my young employees.

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Knowing my hostility to loan sharks, my men tipped me o every time

a new one moved into our neighborhood. Hey, boss, theres another one
opened up! they would excitedly report to me over the truck transceiver
whenever they spotted a sign. Looks like a big one!
They really liked to watch me nd all sorts of pretexts to crush them.
Two other loan sharks that came into our neighborhood suered
the same fate. One friend of mine had a bad time with a sarakin called
ACOM, so I twisted its arm to write o all my buddys debt. Every time I
picked on a loan shark, the yakuza behind it would complain, telling me
not to be so reckless.
What the hell do you think youre doing, acting as a bodyguard for
a loan shark? I would retort. Youre supposed to be a yakuza! Act like
a man!
This was the argument I always used on them. It was an expedient,
but I really meant it, too. Word got around in the loan shark world that
I was a sarakin buster who kept nanciers out of our neighborhood. It
felt really good.
Actually, though, it wasnt a time when I could aord to indulge myself
busting loan sharks. There were far more pressing tasks crying out for
attention. As my company was increasingly strapped for cash, the urgent
problem was how to raise more capital. Every day our accountant produced a list of the bills to be paid by the following day. It wasnt unusual
for the total to come to tens of millions of yen. We didnt have enough in
the bank or the ready cash to cover this, so I was forced to adopt stopgap
measures.
If a person we gave a promissory note used the same bank we didthe
branch didnt matterit would be cleared without going through a
clearing-house. In such cases, the note would not be dishonored, even if
the money were not paid into the account by the specied date. Taking
advantage of this, we made out promissory notes on the same bank; in
other words, we didnt pay. Of course, we had to pay sooner or later. But
for me, there was only tomorrow. There was no such thing as the near
future.
Next, we sought out negotiable instruments. Unlike ordinary commercial drafts, these are not used for any particular business transaction.

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Rather, they are drawn up between two companies of similar size (usually
small to medium-sized businesses) for cash-ow purposes, and often
involve delaying payment. In other words, its like a private nancing
arrangement. In most cases, the parties involved agree to settle the
account on a specied day, but it doesnt matter if the draft comes into
the hands of a third party.
What I did was to keep an eye out for negotiable instruments I could
use to our advantage. To be sure, there was deception involved, although
nothing as complicated as fraud. It was just a question of impersonating
someones voice.
Assuming the identity of the person who held our promissory note, I
would call the bank when the settlement date came due and have them
send the note back. Before I called the bank, though, I checked up on
the reputation of the other party, making sure he was always punctual
about honoring drafts and in good standing with the bank. In the case
of Furukawa Keiichi, whom I successfully impersonated three times, the
call went like this:
Hello. This is Furukawa of such-and-such. Id like to speak to
whoevers in charge. . . . Hi, this is Furukawa. I want to withdraw the
note I put in yesterday.
Yes, you can do that. But we cant do anything without your seal.
Ill get you my seal later. For now, just go ahead and withdraw the
note, OK?
This worked three times, enabling me to escape unscathed without
dishonoring the note. I used the same technique with other guys besides
Furukawa. The lists the accountant sent me had some names marked
to indicate that impersonation would work. Of course, I knew perfectly
well it was only a brief respite and that the account would have to be
settled sooner or later. It always felt like a new lease of life, though.
Sometimes I asked my bank to honor my drafts with worthless checks
issued by our subcontractors. The good relations I had with the bank went
back to my fathers day, so the person in charge used his own discretion
to draw up some scheme to make sure that my drafts were honored.
But getting around draft problems like this didnt solve anything.
Picking up jobs and turning them into cash was what we needed to break
the deadlock. The trouble was that there was less work than before.
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Because Teramura Doken wasnt averse to using roughhouse tactics, the

rest of the industry gave us the cold shoulder. Quite a few contractors
hated my guts. Adding to this was a general sense that yakuza-aliated
companies should be excluded, so we increasingly found ourselves
maneuvered out of dango meetings.
To make up for the loss of public-works projects, we took on more
obscure jobs. I didnt care. My mind was set just on keeping the company
alivethe company that my parents and the old Teramura-gumi people
had put their lives on the line for. Besides, to compensate for the risks
involved, these jobs were generally more lucrative. For example, we got a
job to demolish a factory near Kyoto Station. The project was mixed up
in a land speculation deal.
Its a tough job. Think you can manage it? All the other demolition companies will cry o. Youre the only one I can ask. The guy, an
acquaintance of mine, was the president of a real estate business. He had
put a lot of work our way, for which I was very grateful, so there was no
way I was going to say no.
He was trying to purchase a piece of land close to a busy shopping
area and put up a new building. The owner of the land, which was about
1,600 square meters, had agreed to sell, and the owner of an amusement
parlor, which occupied about 1,400 square meters of the property, had
agreed to leave. The problem was that the building had been mortgaged
for some 1 billion. This was well before the days of the bubble economy,
so it wouldnt pay for the real estate boss to buy the land with the mortgage attached. He was looking for a way around this.
Simply put, he wanted to dismantle the building without anyone
himself, the landowner, or the buildings ownerbeing penalized. The
mortgage on a building automatically ceases to exist once the building
vanishes. I asked who had set the mortgage and the real estate agent
mentioned the name of a city bank. I decided to make the building disappear. Nobody would get into trouble, except the bank.
The demolition work itself would be a piece of cake, but dismantling
it in a way that wouldnt make the bank suspicious was not going to be
so easy. They were sure to poke their noses in and ask questions once
the work began. In the worst case, the bank would le a lawsuit to halt
proceedings. To make this as unlikely as possible, we decided to start
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the job during the Golden Week holidays, when banks were closed. So
nothing could be checked, it was also arranged that the owner would go
away on holiday.
The work started as Golden Week began. A white curtain was
stretched around the building to hide the work site. Across the curtain
was written in big characters: Interior Renovation. Reopens June XX.
The job itself was carried out by Teramura Doken guys. The rst thing
they did was to wreck the interior completely. Four or ve days into the
work, a man from the bank visited the site.
Whats going on? he asked. It looks a real mess!
Were redoing the interior, the worker answered, exactly as
instructed. Its a big job, so its going to look very dierent when were
nished.
The bank ocial departed, looking unconvinced.
Once we had cleared away the interior, we waited for consecutive
bank holidays before demolishing the exterior and cleaning up the site,
leaving no trace of the building, not even a speck of dirt. When Golden
Week was over, a large vacant lot had suddenly appeared. I bet the bank
ocial froze in shock when he saw it.
I adopted unscrupulous tactics many times to raise funds. But the
cash was always soaked up by the banks, like water is absorbed by sand.
I was still being chased by drafts and checks. By then, I couldnt get away
from the problem of raising money even when I was asleep. It pervaded
my dreamsor rather, my nightmares. Typically, I would be rushing full
speed to the bank just before it shut at three oclock sharp, carrying a bag
of cash. Then, just ten meters from the entrance, the door of the bank
slowly closed. I had this kind of stupid dream very often in those days. In
the middle of the night, I would jump out of bed and nd myself drenched
in sweat. Nonetheless, glad it was only a dream, I would heave a sigh of
relief. My wife would be looking at me as if I came from another planet.
Speaking of draft deadlines, I saw many dramas unfold between two
and three oclock in the afternoon. One time, at about two, a rened gentleman past middle age that I didnt recognize came to my oce. There
was something strange about him. His eyes were unfocused and he was
shaking. With an unsteady hand, he produced his business card. I looked
at it and discovered he was the president of one of the Nishijin weaving
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companies. Only then did I realize we had been introduced previously at

a Gion restauranthe was the head of a prominent Nishijin family that
went back centuries. As far as I remember, he was an intellectual with a
college education. When I had rst seen him in Gion, surrounded by his
business associates, he had an air of composure about him. The gure
standing before me now was a completely dierent man.
Once he had taken a seat across from me, he didnt even know how to
begin. He just looked at me with those unfocused eyes, trembling more
violently with each passing minute. I could easily tell what had brought
him to my oce. All his eorts to raise money had failed, so he had
come to see me, pinning his last scant hope on a person he had met just
once and whose business card he still had. But his pride and dignity as
a member of one of Kyotos prestigious families got in the way, and he
couldnt bring himself to ask for money. Sitting opposite, I also remained
silent. Since I wasnt in a position to lend him anything, I thought any
unnecessary words of mine would only hurt his feelings. The time passed
very slowly. Ten minutes went by, then twenty.
The hands he had placed so politely in his lap were quivering uncontrollably. After some thirty minutes, he muttered, Im sorry.
He staggered to his feet and limped o home. That old mans nished,
I thought as I watched his receding gure. A few days later, unable to
honor its drafts, his business went bankrupt.
In the run-up to clearinghouse deadlines, such things were not
uncommon. Every time I saw them happen, I told myself I would never
go the same way. But the more I told myself this, the more I found myself
involved in rough stu and wrongdoing.
It was cash above all that I needed to settle the draft accounts. The
quickest way for demolition men to get money is to sell o scrap metal.
Partly because many Korean residents of Japan were in this business,
settlements were all in cash and mostly paid in advance, so if you had any
scrap metal it meant you had access to ready money. What I did was sell
o the same metal twice. I did this on several occasions.
For example, one time I had 1,000 tons of scrap. This was enough to
lure scrap-metal collectors from all over the Kansai area. They held a
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ers now each oered me their highest possible price, as they all wanted
the job. I separately phoned the two top bidders and told both that we
had decided to sell to them. In other words, we were selling the same
scrap metal to two dierent dealers. As soon as I nished talking on the
phone, the cash was on the way, from both of them.
To one I had said, Well deliver Sunday.
To the other, Come and get it Monday.
But Ive got everything set for Sunday, said the one told to come on
Monday. Why not Sunday as usual?
Look, its our schedule, OK? I shot back. Nothing to do with you.
On Sunday, I went over to the scrapyard in a car driven by one of my
men, a former hot-rodder. There was a security guard who knew me well
posted there to keep a strict record of incoming and outgoing vehicles.
Take this money and have some fun at the racetrack, I told him.
When you get back, write down that no vehicles entered or left today.
Looking overjoyed, he took o. While he was away, we took the scrap
metal from the yard and delivered it to the Sunday metal collector.
Next day, the Monday dealer arrived at the yard humming a happy
tune, only to nd the scrap metal was gone. He rushed right over to my
oce.
My . . . my scrap metal isnt there! he shouted.
Not there? It rained yesterday. Maybe it got washed away.
Dont be stupid! Its iron!
We went back and forth like this for a while, like a couple of standup
comedians. The man knew I must have taken it, but he couldnt come out
and say as much. I churned out large quantities of scrap in the course of
a year, so I was a highly valued client.
He could only insist, over and over, It cant just get washed away! It
cant!
The Kyoto dealer loudly protested that there was no trace of his scrap
metal, but it was a man from Mie Prefecture who cried out that his gravel
pit had vanished. In 1978, Kyoto Prefectural Police brought charges
against me over this guys disappearing pit.
Teramura Kensan owned a pit near the border of Joyo and Ujitawaracho, Tsuzuki-gun, in Kyoto. This pit used to produce extremely
high-quality gravel. But because it was within a designated sand erosion
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control area, quarrying was prohibited. Needing the money, we went

ahead and restarted quarrying, fully aware it was illegal. The gravel
fetched quite high prices and helped our nancing.
We kept on quarrying but eventually reached the point where there
was no gravel left. As it was all too clear that the company would fail if
our income from this source dried up, there was no alternative but to
resort to mischief again. We decided to quarry gravel from the adjacent
pit, which belonged to a landowner from Mie, without getting his permission.
We didnt waste any time. Soon, we were in the pit, quarrying like
crazy. It became scarred and spent from our eorts. One day, I was
standing with the good-natured old guy I had hired locally to head the
quarry oce.
Oh no! The pit owner! he shouted in panic at the sight of a baldheaded gure walking slowly up the path. The owner had come on his
annual inspection tour.
A cigarette hanging from his mouth, his pace slowed as he approached
his pit looking this way and that. From his puzzled expression, he was
wondering whether he had come to the wrong place. He drew closer to
us. Dumbstruck, he gazed at the vast expanse of red clay before him.
The cigarette fell from his mouth as it dawned on him that his pit had
disappeared. Suddenly, he began yelling.
My . . . my pit! Its gone!
Under the circumstances, his shock was only natural. Still shouting,
he looked at the oce manager and me. He probably just wanted some
help.
Got a problem with us? I asked threateningly. You some kind of
yakuza, trying to cause trouble? Whats this about a pit?
Desperately pointing in the far distance, he shouted, Im sure it was
between that tree and this one! He repeated this over and over.
OK, OK! If youre so sure, why not get a land surveyor to come and
check it out? I said. In the end, the man agreed to this and went home.
As soon as he was gone, I told my men to cut down the marker trees.
On the day the surveyor was due to come, the bald-headed owner
arrived to a fresh shock. Now there arent any trees! he yelled, on nding them gone.
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Hey man, you still trying to pick a ght? I asked. What trees?
Here, and . . . there, he said. He waved his nger this way and that,
but he had nothing to point at. His lips quivered.
Ive lived here thirty years and I cant remember anything like that,
murmured my oce manager, a kindly-looking soul if ever there was
one, saying exactly what I had told him to beforehand. This threw the
poor man into total confusion.
It cant be! he kept saying.
All right, so how much did you pay for this pit anyway? I asked,
seizing the opportunity to prepare the ground for my proposal.
It was before the war. he replied. In todays money, about 2 million.
OK, look, why dont I just take it o your hands? 2 million doesnt
seem much. Why dont we double that4 million? Ive probably got the
cash here with me.
But . . . but theres nothing there, he muttered.
Finally, he agreed to sell. Actually, he didnt hesitate as much as I
thought he might, probably because he had other pits elsewhere. Still, he
didnt seem entirely convinced about things. As he walked away, his bald
head could be seen shaking from side to side.
Soon afterward, the governor of Kyoto issued a directive to halt any
further work in the area. We ignored it and went on quarrying. Then
another directive was issued. The oce manager became very concerned
on my behalf, but I told him not to worry and to keep quarrying.
Im the one thatll get busted, I said. If the police question you, just
say you were forced into it. They wont bother you.
My disregard for the two gubernatorial directives stiened the resolve
of the police, who even used a helicopter to collect evidence of our
activities. But in the end they couldnt pin anything serious on me. In
May 1979, the case was transferred to the prosecutors oce without
my being placed under physical restraint, and the company and I were
ned 100,000 apiece. Newspapers played up the case with headlines
such as Prefectural Desist Order Ignored. The two years of quarrying
earned me about 100 million. When it was dumped into my brothers
company, though, it soon disappeared.

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Heres another episode. It concerns a junk dealer in Osaka I cheated.

As far as I remember, this happened around 1980. Desperate for funds,
I came up with an idea.
Hey, Tanaka, I told one of my men. Tomorrow, go to Ujigawa railway
bridge at three in the morning and paste our company logo on it. Make
sure you use the biggest sign weve got. I want it to really stand out.
OK, my employee said, looking puzzled.
Next, I called a scrap dealership in Osaka and talked with the boss. A
long-time acquaintance since my fathers day, he was a Korean resident
of Japan who had worked his way up from scratch.
Hi, chief! Weve got the job of taking down Ujigawa railway bridge
on the Keihan Uji Line. There should be about 1,000 tons of metal. Kyoto
scrap merchants are swarming all over me. We go back a long way, so I
thought Id ask for your advice on what I should do.
Hey, sounds like a big job. Let us do it! Well give you a good price.
Really? Well, yeah, I guess weve been buddies since my old mans
time. OK, its a deal! Getting right down to business: Id like you to look
over the bridge with me. Do you mind coming really early tomorrow, say
four in the morning? The thing is, Ive got to go to Nagoya later on.
No problem. Ill be there.
In a sink-or-swim situation, a person will come up with anything to
stay aoat. I was having a hard time working out how to pay o 10 million a couple of days later when I came up with the railway bridge idea.
In fact, it was a blatant lie that we had taken on such a job, because
the bridge wasnt going to be dismantled at all. All the preparations for
the fraud had to be made when the trains werent running. This was only
possible very early in the morning, so we had to pull everything o under
cover of darkness. What we wanted was to grab the cash advance. I felt
sorry for the scrap merchant president, but there was no other way. I
would give him another job to make up for the money that I was going
to cheat from him. For the time being, though, getting hold of cash came
before anything.
Ujigawa railway bridge is commonly known as the moon-viewing
bridge. Back in the Heian period, aristocrats and gentlemen of leisure
used to enjoy the beauty of the full moon from a boat at the spot on the

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river where the bridge crosses. This was also where Toyotomi Hideyoshi,*
used to hold moon-viewing parties. Taking advantage of the moonlight
to see what they were doing, Teramura workers pasted a company seal
on the bridge.
When I arrived there before dawn, I could easily make out the seal. It
was huge. Shortly afterward, the scrap merchant arrived in an expensive
car. He looked at the bridge from a distance, then came up and touched it.
Excellent quality! he purred. Theres well over 800 tons here. Thanks
for such a great job. How about 12 million?
Weve known each other long enough. 10 million will do.
The price reduction didnt make any dierence to the fact that it was
fraud. It never once crossed the guys mind that he was being duped,
believing as he did in our long relationship.
Hey, thanks for the discount! he said. Ill deliver the money to your
place in a couple of hours.
Indeed, two hours later, he drove up in his fancy foreign car to deliver
the cash personally. I stuck it all in the bank to pull myself through the
crisis. But it was only a matter of time before he found out he had been
tricked. Sure enough, about two weeks later, he called me.
What the hells going on with the Ujigawa railway bridge job? he
raged. The trains are still running! A client of mine goes to work on
the Keihan Line and he told me the trains use the bridge every day. Hes
never heard of any plan to demolish it. What the hells going on?
To tell the truth, the jobs been canceled.
Canceled? Its a bridge! It cant get called o just like that! Well, OK,
if it was, then theres nothing we can do about it. But in that case, I want
the money back.
Weve already spent it. Look, I promise Ill take good care of you next
time. Can you just wait a while?
Wait! What kind of crap is this? No scrap metal, and now I cant get
my money back!
Hold on a minute! Dont you trust me? In the past, Ive always delivered, havent I? If you cant trust me, do as you like.
*Toyotomi (1536-1598), a warlord whose stronghold was Osaka, completed the military
reunication of Japan in 1591.

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Its not trust were talking about! Im coming over to sort this out!
He said this perfectly aware that Teramura Kensan was a roughhouse
company whose employees were prone to violence. The reason he didnt
budge an inch was a combination of his Kansai businessmans logic and
pride in his ethnicity. The former taught him never to be made a fool of
by money; the latter, that nobody puts one over a Korean and gets away
with it.
He meant what he saidhe did come over to see me. His face was
white with anger.
Think Im idiot? he shouted.
Heading over to our parking lot, he boarded a mechanical digger.
As my employees looked on dumbfounded, he yelled. If I dont get my
money back, all these bulldozers are o to Osaka to get scrapped!
Sometime later the old man fell ill and died. I never did pay him back.
We chased after jobs recklessly. Of course, we werent always rash. Most
of the time, we got work in an honest fashion. But that wasnt enough to
raise the funds we needed, so we had to resort to strong-arm tactics from
time to time, like when we demolished a bowling alley in Fushimi.
It was located near my company and I came out of the dango meeting
a loser. An out-of-town contractor had walked o with the job. I couldnt
accept the idea, so I conspired to sabotage the dango system once again.
As soon as the contractor had put up a fence around the site, I sent
my men over at night to pull it down. After this happened two nights
in a row, the demolisher posted a guard. Then I told some of my young
employees to go over there pretending to be drunk and stir up trouble.
Teramura Doken people were experts at this sort of thing. They turned
up at the site carrying two-liter sake bottles over their shoulders and
insisted they were going bowling. What are you doing, knocking the
place down without telling us? they demanded. Thats no way to treat
your customers!
Ten days of this was enough for the contractor. Of course, he knew it
was the work of Teramura Doken, but in the end he pulled out and we
were able to take over. It wasnt so much sabotaging dango as robbing a
rival of a job. I repeated this kind of unconscionable behavior again and
again.
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Once I tried to get a job by faking a car accident involving a vehicle

belonging to Okura Shuzo, a brewery known for Gekkeikan brand sake.
Okura Shuzo was the largest sake brewery in Fushimi and played by
the rules, using only construction companies associated with general
contractors.
No matter how hard we tried to curry favor, they refused even to see
us. It was really vexing, and I was always looking for a way in.
Knowing this, one of my men said to me, How about if I deliberately
bump into one of their vehicles? It might lead to something.
Partly because I had come up with nothing better, I told him to give
it a shot.
The following day, he rammed a light truck into a Gekkeikan sake
delivery van. The moment I heard about the accident, I tightened the
screws on the Gekkeikan people.
Are you trying to kill my employees? I said over the phone. How are
you going to settle this?
Everything will be left to the police, a senior guy in the general
aairs department replied smoothly. After all, he added, with insolent
politeness, we are Gekkeikan of Fushimi.
That pissed me o.
Oh yeah? Well, were Teramura of Fushimi! I said. Well take you
on if thats what you want! Im coming right over! Lets settle this once
and for all!
I was just about to storm over to the brewery when Fushimis chief of
police came rushing over to my oce. News travels fastGekkeikan had
wasted no time informing the cops. Because I often had run-ins with the
police, we were well acquainted. This time, I played the innocent.
You must be the president of Gekkeikan. Come over to apologize?
Dont be ridiculous! You know perfectly well that Ive come from
Fushimi Police Station.
Whats a big shot from Fushimi Police Station doing here? Come
with a ticket* for assault or something?
Not very nice to blackmail Gekkeikan, is it?
*Arrest warrant.

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Blackmail? When did I ask for money? Enough of the bullshit! Why
did you even bother coming? Why not just send over the cop in charge of
gangbusting? Whats going on between you and Gekkeikan anyway?
Outraged by my remarks, the police chief walked out.
We continued to work on Okura Shuzo, but they steadfastly refused to
oer us any jobs. They proved very capable of looking after themselves,
as you would expect from one of the regions top brewers.
After seeing me fail to get any work from them, the employee who
faked the car accident said, Its not gonna work, huh? How about if I
bump into a dierent sake brewer?
My employees, it seemed, were created in the image of their boss.
Forget it, I replied.
It strikes me that a mans life inevitably depends on luck. Also, the wind
blows in the direction youre going, whether youre heading for success
or disaster. Going uphill, it helps push you to the top; going downhill, it
sends you tumbling to the bottom.
The wind blew hardest as I headed downhill. Promissory notes went
bad on me one after another, and we were set back tens of millions of yen
as our subcontractors and clients went bankrupt. Raising money by the
million proved draining.
At times like this, rather than remaining on the defensive by paying
o debts, its better to go on the attack by concentrating on debt collection. One day, I decided to chase up a client who owed me money, by
going to his house. After psyching myself up, I walked up to the front
entrance. It was completely silent inside and there was no suggestion
that anybody was in.
Is the president there? I shouted, but received no reply.
It didnt even seem like he was pretending to be out. I was just about
to leave when an old woman crept into view.
My son isnt here, she said in a shaky voice.
Whens he back? I asked.
The old woman looked down at the oor and abruptly burst into tears.
Whats the matter, lady?
My sons run away. Ive got no idea if hes alive or dead.

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Toppamono

She threw herself down weeping. The situation was more desperate
than I had thought and I wanted nothing further to do with it. But I
could hardly leave the old woman in this state.
Of course hes alive, I said. Bankruptcy never killed anyone. Theres
no need to worry.
Naturally, I was just trying to reassure her. In fact, quite a few people
die when bankruptcies occur. Some take their own lives, others are
murdered, and many simply disappear. Bankruptcy exposes the raw
side of the business worldthe world of money, in other words. It is the
only world that has really meant anything to postwar Japanese. When a
company goes bust, lives are on the line, and every kind of human drama
plays out. Thats the reality.
Is it really true what you say? she asked me anxiously. But scarylooking people keep coming by, saying they wont let him get away if hes
trying to escape and hell get what he deserves. Im so worried!
Everything will work out ne, I said. Hell turn up on your doorstep
soon. Youll see. Here, get yourself something nice to eat. Cheer up!
I left 20,000 with her. This is what happens when youre on a downward pathyou go out intending to collect your debts and instead end
up leaving money with the debtor.
Actually, when I was in the money, I had helped out quite a few people
who were in the same business, and some outlaw types, too. I only started
calling in these loans when I realized I had to do something urgently to
get out of my own nancial troubles. But excessive though I was in my
business dealings, when it came to collecting debts I was pretty hopeless.
Calling on a company and seeing the president in great distress, I would
suddenly nd myself unable to ask for my money back.
Let him be, I told myself. Go and collect from those that can aord
it.
I was too soft, and I knew it.
To make up for this, I was capable of being ruthless toward outlaws.
That doesnt mean I was successful all the time, though. On one occasion, to collect a debt of several million yen from some people aliated
with a Kansai-based yakuza syndicate, I sent along Kato Tetsujiro. As I
mentioned in an earlier chapter, he had been my fathers henchman. I
made the decision on the basis that he was the right man for the job. A
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well-known gure around Kyoto, Kato was a massively built guy, with
quite a few missing ngers. Wearing dark glasses even at night, he looked
pretty awesome.
All set to go? I asked.
Yeah, no problem, he replied, as if everything was in good hands. It
wasnt long before he was back.
Manabu-san, it was no good.
How come?
I got kennomi from them. The moment I opened their door, before I
could speak, they yelled, Piss o! We didnt send for a masseur. I didnt
know what to say. They got the better of me.
Kennomi is yakuza slang for a preemptive strike on an opponent.
Everything was OK until Kato was unexpectedly forestalled and couldnt
come back with a scathing reply. It was the kind of blunder that a man like
Kato could make. Ferocious in appearance, at heart he was a nice guy.
This type of thing happens when youre on the way down.
By the latter half of 1978, it was becoming increasingly dicult to settle
our drafts by the due date. Normally, the account must be settled by 3
p.m. on the deadline day or the bills are dishonored. But there are ways
and means around this. Not everything is done according to hard-andfast rules. If the settlement is to be made with a bank on friendly terms
with you, it will wait until half past nine the following morning. This is
known as asazuri, a delay until morning.
I became increasingly dependent on the practice. It meant going
around raising money from late night to early morning. I often accosted
friends or business associates enjoying themselves at teahouses or highclass nightclubs and kind of snatched them away to hold them for ransom.
I repeated this so often that the patrons of a high-class establishment
would panic when I walked through the door. They would drink distractedlyno matter how much I tried to convince them I was only there for
funafraid that I might hit them for a loan at any moment.
If I failed to raise money at night, I would run about in the morning. In
most cases, I ended up going to see the man I called Uncle Yamane. This
was Yamane Choji, who my father used to call his younger brother. He
was a gambling boss based in the Shichijo district. As I mentioned in the
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Toppamono

chapter on my childhood, he used to earn his living by buying and selling

stolen goods. Not only that, in the aftermath of World War II he also got
his men to attack rice storehouses in farming areas of neighboring Shiga
Prefecture. By now, however, he had sensibly washed his hands of such
dangerous trades and moved into the battaya wholesale business, selling
o the inventory of bankrupt businesses. This meant he always had some
cash on hand.
Uncle Yamanes policy on lending money was extremely simple. If you
paid him back, he would lend to you again; if you didnt, he wouldntand
in some cases he would put you through hell to get his money back.
There was no messing around.
When I visited his house in Shichijo around quarter to nine in the
morning, his wife would come out to greet me. Although a tiny woman,
she was one tough lady. As I mentioned earlier, she had been known to
rush over to our house when I was a kid to lend a hand in yakuza battles,
carrying a Japanese sword.
Ive honored the draft I issued to Uncle Yamane in exchange for the
money I borrowed the other day, I told her. Now I need to borrow some
more. How about 5 million?
You honored the draft? she would reply, easily convinced.
I was lying, of course. If I had the money to make good on the draft,
I wouldnt have gone there to borrow any more. This woman, so strict
about cash, was hopeless when it came to drafts. She didnt know the
rst thing about them. On top of that, she was only half awake and not
yet functioning properly.
Im still sleepy. Come and see me in the afternoon.
I cant. Ive got to go to Osaka this afternoon. Cant you do it now?
OK. Just wait there. Ill get the money.
Still in her nightclothes and wearing a sleepy expression, she came
back with the cash. I snatched it from her and made o to the bank
before the morning grace period expired. I cheated Uncle Yamane and
his wife that way frequently. Of course, I had never failed to pay them
back in the end, although they got angry with me countless times. But
Uncle Yamanes bond with my father had been deeper than a blood
relationship. As I was the son of his sworn brother, he was prepared to
make sacrices to help me.
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In January 1979, as I was walking this nancial tightrope, the Mitsubishi

Bank hunting gun robbery took place. A man by the name of Umekawa
Akemi broke into Mitsubishi Banks Kitabatake Branch in Sumiyoshi
Ward, Osaka, and shot four people dead, including a policeman and the
branch manager. I had no sympathy whatsoever for the criminal, who
had stripped the female bank clerks naked during the course of the hold
up, but I was violently stirred by his act of breaking into a bank as a last
resort to struggle free of his debt hell. I myself was tempted to blow up
banks or clearing houses on a number of occasions. You cant imagine
what its like to be stuck for funds until you actually nd yourself in that
predicament. Its certainly enough to drive a person over the edge.
For example, I knew an older guy who was running a company in a
similar situation to mine. Every day he was hard pressed trying to settle
his bills. One day, a few minutes before three oclock, carrying the cash he
had managed to rake together, he was pedaling his bicycle at full speed to
get to the bank before it closed when a truck hit him. Bleeding profusely
from a head wound, it seemed he must have suered a life-threatening
injury. But with the driver of the truck about to rush him to hospital, he
suddenly leapt to his feet, got back on his bike, and wobbled o.
Out of my way! he said. Ive got to get to the bank!
Once he made it there and handed over the money, he fainted. He was
hospitalized for three months with a depressed skull fracture.
Ive got no idea why I went to the bank, he told me. They wouldnt
have let my drafts be dishonored if theyd known Id been in an accident.
But all I could think about was that my company would fail if I didnt
get there. I guess running around raising money all the time must have
driven me crazy.
Marx writes in Das Kapital: These objects, gold and silver, just as
they come out of the bowels of the earth, are forthwith the direct incarnation of all human labor. Hence the magic of money.
What makes such magic possible is the way that the behavior of each
individual in the social production process is expressed in the form of
products presented as commodities.
Hence, Marx continues, the riddle presented by money is but the
riddle presented by commodities; only it now strikes us in its most glaring form.
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This is the secret hidden deep inside the world of money. Although
money was intended to serve people, it seems to mean more to them
than their labors because it presents itself as a commodity. This results
in money being worshipped, which leads to money hell. This was a
simple truth I learned from writhing in that torment myself, but it wasnt
enough to enable me to escape it. A bookish understanding of Marxist
economics was no help at all.
My last resort when it came to raising money was to pilfer from
gambling dens. At such establishments, the house will lend money to
losers. Of course, this is just to keep you in the game, and you cant take
it home. You either continue playing until you have no money left, or if
you win you repay the loan on the spot. What I did was palm some of
this money. Naturally, this was strictly forbidden. Getting caught would
be bad news.
First, I would go to a gambling den with 1 million. I needed to show
the bookmaker how keen I was, so when I took my seat I would announce
in a loud voice, Right, tonights my night!
Then I would break the 1 million into ten equal bundles and bet
100,000 each time. When I reached the point where I had lost 700,000
of the original 1 million, I would say to the young guy running the game,
Hey, kid, advance me 1 million.
A fresh wad of 10,000 bills would come ying my way. I would stick
this between my legs and keep betting with the 300,000. When I ran
through that, I would have another 1 million tossed over. Gradually, I
would steal from the house.
Actually, this is pretty hard to do. If you are caught squeezing money
into your pockets, you will be dragged out into the corridor to face some
serious questions.
To escape notice, I lched the money little by little with the help of a
safari jacket I wore, stung the money into the inside pockets. Ill say it
myself: it was a pretty deplorable thing to do. Once I had lled my pockets with maybe 4 million or 5 million, I would say to the bookmaker,
Im dead; Im outta here, and make it to the bank before the morning
grace period was up.
I would leave a check with the gambling den as security for the money
I owed. The debt had to be paid back in a week, but with no interest. This
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made gambling dens ideal places for raising money. But it was impossible
for such crude cheating to go undetected. First they just whispered in my
ear that I seemed to be hard up. Eventually, though, word spread that I
was stealing from the house and I was not allowed into any of Kyotos
gambling dens.
Consequently, in 1978 and 1979, I mostly went over to Osaka to
steal. Pilfering bit by bit takes time, and the gambling goes on until the
next day, so come the morning I used to speed back to Kyoto along the
Meishin Expressway. The trac, though, always built up near Oyamazaki
Interchange, where a Suntory distillery is located. If I were caught in
a jam there, I would never make it in time, so I used to pull over and
park my car at an expressway bus stop, hop down the stairs from the
expressway, and grab a cab to the bank. As I pulled the cash from the
inside of my jacket, the guy behind the bank counter would get a scared
look on his face. He probably thought I had just committed a robbery or
something.
Japans political world had been rocked by the Lockheed scandal in 1976.
The economy, which had nally appeared to recover from the rst oil
shock of 1973, was hit by a second one in January 1979, exposing its
fragility. Thereafter, a reorganization of the nations internal structure
started up under the banner of internationalization.
It was against this backdrop that such new words and phrases as
dasai, wan pataan, and tenchusatsu were frequently heard in 1979. Such
words aptly expressed what I was doing at that time. I was writhing in
money hell in the most uncool (dasai) way, repeating the same old trick
(wan pataan, or one pattern), and about to be nished o by a fatal
blow from heaven (tenchusatsu).

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Toppamono: Outlaw. Radical. Suspect. My Life In Japans Underworld

by Miyazaki Manabu
Kotan Publishing, Inc.
www.kotan.org
Original translation: Murakami Takahiro, Kashiwada Kazuto
Additional translation: Kanamaru Atsushi, Jonathan Lloyd-Owen
Editors: Jonathan Lloyd-Owen, Steve Walsh
Copyright Miyazaki Manabu 1996
English translation Kotan Publishing 2005
Distributed by Tuttle Publishing
ISBN 0-9701716-2-5

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