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Reporting on the Yakuza is a deadly dangerous endeavour. Japan’s 80,000 strong criminal class don’t take kindly to nosey reporters and uncomfortable questions. Nevertheless the ABC’s North Asia correspondent Mark Willacy has managed to pry open a window on this highly secretive society to examine the Yakuza’s power and place in contemporary Japan.

The result - featuring interviews with former and current insiders - offers revealing insights into the furtive and fetid world of Japan’s version of the mafia.

Most chilling and disturbing of all is the Yakuza burgeoning new business – child pornography.
In Japan it’s illegal to make or sell this appalling material but possession goes unpunished. It’s a loophole the Yakuza have begun to exploit – adding to the traditional money-spinners like prostitution, drugs and angering some of their old guard

The Yakuza’s origins stem back four hundred years with traditions drawn from the Samurai but the days of the Yakuza being regarded as chivalrous - as an outfit that protected the weak against the strong - are long gone.

Today the Yakuza is a mighty and entrenched criminal network raking in as much as fifty billion dollars every year.

No-one it seems is beyond the reach of the Yakuza, not reporters, celebrities nor powerful politicians. Yuko Yoko’o the daughter of Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito believes her father was executed for rejecting mob overtures. “I remember my father saying they are really like snakes.” she recalls.

Mark Willacy’s report fixes in part on two former Yakuza mobsters-turned-monks.
Both claim to have found enlightenment and embraced Buddhism. One, a tough brutal enforcer Gijin Kobayashi, the other, one of the most feared of all Yakuza bosses the notorious Tadamasa Goto.

Another former Yakuza gangster and convicted killer Shinji Ishihara tells Willacy: “There are no rules when it comes to the Yakuza doing business. They’ll do anything to make money.”
That child pornography is now a highly lucrative Yakuza enterprise will surprise few.

Japan’s lax approach to this squalid and sordid business is tainting the country’s national image. Both Ann Veneman chief of UNICEF and Tom Schieffer former US Ambassador to Japan have been vehement in their criticism of Japan’s failure to crackdown on child pornography.

Waterfall/ Kobayashi under waterfall

Music

00:00

WILLACY: He’s a convicted Yakuza standover man –

00:16

Shoko Tendo showing off tattoos

she’s the daughter of a Japanese mob boss, a woman who knows drugs, death and violence.

00:22

SHOKO TENDO: “They would smash my head with an ashtray -

00:33

Shoko Tendo

or stomp on it with their feet. They would kick me until my nose broke.”

00:34

Ishihari at boxing

Music

00:39

WILLACY: He’s a former Yakuza godfather and a killer.

00:44

SHINJI ISHIHARA: I was cheated. I thought there was no point in talking.

00:49

Ishihari

So I killed him.”

00:55

Boxing match

Music

00:58

Yuko Yoko’o praying

WILLACY: And finally a grieving daughter, her father a prominent politician gunned down by a Yakuza gangster.

01:04

YUKO YOKO’O: “It’s wrong that his life was taken away,

01:12

Yuko Yoko’o

because he was doing the right thing.

01:17

TV News report

NEWS REPORT: “Kanagawa prefectural police have been searching for the remaining body parts since this morning.

WILLACY: This is what happens to those who cross the Yakuza, Japan’s version of the mob, the mafia.

01:24

NEWS REPORT: “Heads, lower body parts… both wrists bound by plastic bands…one right ankle, and two left ankles of adult men have been found.”

WILLACY: The news was macabre.

01:45

News building & Tokyo panoramic

Severed heads and at least two bodies carved up and dumped in Tokyo Bay. The only lead, the distinctive tattoos on some of the remains.

01:59

The case of the body parts in the bay has all the hallmarks of a Yakuza mob war. In Japan,  the Yakuza dominates organised crime. They’re a violent and a formidable force - and it’s big business. Comprising rival clans, these eighty thousand mobsters make spectacular profits, billions of dollars of every year.

02:15

Music

02:38

Tokyo night - cops & cop cars

WILLACY:  Tonight a rare glimpse into the secretive and sinister world of the Yakuza where gangsters have little fear of the feds and no wonder, it’s not illegal to be a member of the Yakuza and police have no powers to wiretap, plea bargain or offer witness protection.

02:43

Music

03:00

Kishi. Super:
Kohei Kishi
National Police Agency

KOHEI KISHI: [Chief of Organised Crime Division, National Police Agency] “These organisations use violence, including murder – and the sense of fear becomes the power.

03:04

Photos. Yakuza

Of course it happens during rival strife, and someone who doesn’t obey them could end up being killed.”

03:23

Kobayashi - waterfall

WILLACY: Gijin Kobayashi immerses himself in a ritual of cleansing and spiritual renewal. In his past life, Kobayashi was a master of the dark art of inflicting violence. He was a Yakuza standover man. The mob is not just a criminal enterprise, it’s a way of life – menacing, brutal and corrupt.

03:41

GIJIN KOBAYASHI: “If you look up Yakuza in a dictionary, it says ‘rotting garbage’… ‘waste’… ‘the scum of society’.

04:16

Kobayashi interview

Certainly in the old days they protected the weak from the strong but it’s different now. Yakuza tell lies, they live as pimps by using women. They use cocaine, threaten people, and extort money. Honestly, I did that.”

04:26

Kobayashi walks in forest

WILLACY: For years Gijin Kobayashi was a gangster in the Sumiyoshi-kai, Japan’s second largest Yakuza group. In a mob specialising in extortion and intimidation, it was his job to persuade people to pay up.

GIJIN KOBAYASHI: “Once, I stomped on a man. I was pissed off. I grabbed his chest, jumped on him and punched him.

04:50

Kobayashi

I think he was in pain for three or four days.“

05:18

Kobayashi begging for alms

WILLACY: Now, after a lifetime with the Yakuza, years of cocaine-fuelled violence and a lengthy stretch in jail, Kobayashi has sought absolution.

05:28

GIJIN KOBAYASHI: “If possible, I’d appreciate it if you could offer me some alms.”

WILLACY: Instead of following the orders of his godfather, he now follows the path of Buddha, swapping blessings for banknotes.

WOMAN: “Please protect us.”

05:42

Kobayashi enters house

WILLACY: Gijin Kobayashi is taking us to meet his old boss, a man under close watch by the police.

06:06

Kobayashi with Morihiro

Morihiro Kayama is the Vice-Chairman of the Sumiyoshi-kai and controls a legion of Yakuza. A convicted killer, he sanctioned Kobayashi’s retirement from his mafia family.

06:17

MORIHIRO KAYAMA: “His mother went to see him in prison, and then asked me, “Kayama-san, please make my son quit his life of crime”. So I said “all right”. “

06:32

WILLACY: It’s clear that Morihiro Kayama is not a man to be messed with. He’s survived several assassination attempts and dished out his fair share of violence.

06:48

MORIHIRO KAYAMA: “You need to fight, or you’ll be beaten. I served my time for that too.”

07:00

Kobayashi walks in garden

Music

07:08

WILLACY: For Gijin Kobayashi, the mob is his old life. He’s taken a vow to renounce violence.

07:15

Underworld video

Kobayashi’s story parallels that of another mobster turned monk. This underworld video shows a sake drinking ritual of godfathers and geisha. It’s a gathering of the Yamaguchi-gumi, the biggest and baddest of the Yakuza branches and this man, the notorious Tadamasa Goto, led the most feared faction of them all.

KOHEI KISHI: “It’s a very vicious group which uses violence mercilessly against ordinary people.

07:23

Kishi

So the police have been reinforcing a crackdown on this group.”

08:00

Underworld video

WILLACY: But it wasn’t the cops who brought down Tadamasa Goto, it was the Yakuza itself. In an act of betrayal, Goto peddled information about the mob to the FBI in exchange for entry into the United States for a life-saving liver transplant.

08:07

Johotsuganui temple

A marked man, Tadamasa Goto has sought refuge at the Johotsuganui temple outside Tokyo.

08:26

Chief priest at  temple

Goto’s not talking but his long time friend, chief priest Jitoku Tsukagoshi, a man with a criminal past, claims the mob boss has shed his suit for the robes of a Buddhist monk.

08:45

JITOKU TSUKAGOSHI: “He did not become a monk to save his life. He did not make up his mind recently.

08:58

In the time that I have known him – for more than twenty years – he has been devoted to religion.

09:08

Tokyo -- night

He will never hurt anyone again.”

JAKE ADELSTEIN: “I’ve been told by police sources that his group has been suspected of

09:17

Adelstein

being involved in like seventeen murders in Tokyo in the last four, five or six years.”

09:27

Tokyo streets at night

WILLACY: For the past twenty years, Jake Adelstein has lived in Tokyo, reporting on crime and the Yakuza

09:31

Adelstein walks on street

for Japan’s biggest selling newspaper. The American was leaked the story of Tadamasa Goto’s liver transplant by an underworld source, but before Adelstein could get it into print, the mobster’s henchmen paid him a visit, delivering a simple message from their boss.

09:39

JAKE ADELSTEIN: “Either erase the story or we’ll erase you and your family. You know,

09:59

Adelstein. Super:
Jake Adelstein
Crime reporter

you’d better kill the story or we’ll kill you and then your family. I mean we’ll kill your family first so you’ll suffer more.”

10:04

Jake Adelstein & Mochozuki Tokyo car sequence

WILLACY: Jake Adelstein was forced to move his family and get police protection. In Tokyo he’s constantly shadowed by a bodyguard.

“What sort of danger does he think you’re in?”

10:11

JAKE ADELSTEIN: “Everything you can think of – being kidnapped, killed – if you’re talking about danger, it’s all the things that danger encompasses”

10:24

Lift/ Aerial Pedestrians

Music

10:35

WILLACY: In Japan, celebrities, journalists and powerful politicians - they’re all mob targets.

10:45

Photo on wall of Itcho Ito

As Yuko Yoko’o knows to her tragic cost, no one is beyond the reach of the Yakuza.

YUKO YOKO’O: “The day before the incident

10:56

Yuko Yoko’o

my father was looking towards the ocean while he smoked, and said, “Yuko-chan, see you.” Those were his last words… “see you”.”

11:08

Family photos. Itcho Ito

WILLACY: Yuko Yoko’o’s father was the Mayor of Nagasaki and a man she says who wanted nothing to do with underworld criminals. He was gunned down on a city street by a Yakuza assassin.

11:22

Photo. Assassin

Itcho Ito’s killer did not give up his gang. He told police he had a personal grudge against the Mayor,

11:34

Itcho Ito’s family

but the Mayor’s family believes it was an organised hit.

YUKO YOKO’O: “Many people come to visit when you become mayor.

11:42

Yuko Yoko’o

Among these people, he hinted, were people linked to organised crime. He said, “You should never meet them alone…  I will never meet them by myself”.

11:52

Photos. Itcho Ito

I remember my father saying, “They are really like snakes.” I think he had very strong feelings against them.

12:11

Yuko Yoko’o

My mother and I discussed it and we believe it’s why his life was taken away.”

12:26

Set of Itami film

WILLACY: Juzo Itami an acclaimed movie director is another high profile Japanese to fall foul of the Yakuza.

12:35

Excerpt. “Mimbo No Onna”

Over the years, many Japanese films glorified and glamorised the Yakuza. Itami’s movie, “Mimbo No Onna” lampooned Goto’s gang portraying them as low life thugs.

JAKE ADELSTEIN: “It’s a fairly violent film. It’s also a comedy and it parodied the Goto-gumi. The gangsters that show up in that film are modelled after Goto-gumi and

12:43

Adelstein

Goto was not pleased with the film and a couple of his gang members took it upon themselves to hunt down the director at his home and then they slashed him up in the parking lot.

13:17

Set of Itami film

WILLACY: Juzo Itami survived the vicious attack but when he died some years, later reports that he’d committed suicide left many incredulous.

JAKE ADELSTEIN: “I think that there’s real reason to believe that he was preparing to make another movie about the Yakuza and that the Goto-gumi decided that he was too impudent and killed him,

13:30

Adelstein

probably by dragging him to the top of the roof and pointing a gun in his face and saying jump or be shot in the face.”

13:54

Tokyo nightlife

WILLACY: For decades the Yakuza’s tentacles have stretched from drug dealing, to prostitution, extortion and money laundering. But now these gangsters are delving into something even more squalid and sleazy, the highly lucrative business of child pornography.

14:03

Adelstein looking at computer image

JAKE ADELSTEIN: “Clearly this is paedophile junk food. It’s quick and a dirty way to make money.

14:24

Adelstein

When you’re looking at child pornography you’re not looking at something sexually titillating, you’re looking at a crime scene. I mean it’s a crime scene. It’s evidence that a crime has been committed and that people can derive sexual pleasure from that or profit from that is horrifying.”

14:32

Tokyo signs advertising young girls

WILLACY: The Yakuza exploit a fundamental flaw in Japanese law, it’s illegal to make or sell child pornography, but not to possess it.

14:47

Fujiwara at computer

Shihoko Fujiwara heads up Polaris Project Japan, an organisation dedicated to outlawing child pornography.

14:59

SHIHOKO FUJIWARA: “Those materials contained images of children, sometimes five years old, boys and girls doing disgusting acts because they are being told to do so. We are creating those materials by using our own children

15:09

Super: Shihoko Fujiwara
Polaris Project, Japan

and exploiting them to all over the world and that’s a shocking reality.”

15:30

Tokyo night police

WILLACY: For the first time, Japan’s Organised Crime Chief, Kohei Kishi, acknowledges the Yakuza is involved in this insidious business.

15:38

Man with tattoos

KOHEI KISHI: “It’s true that there are organised crime members who are arrested for violation of the anti-child pornography law, to some degree –

15:51

Kishi

but it’s not clear how deeply they are involved in the whole child pornography business.”

16:03

Ishihara surrounded by young woman at boxing

WILLACY: Yet old time gangsters claim modern mobsters who trade in child pornography betray a code of honour.

16:25

SHINJI ISHIHARA: “If highly ranked Yakuza did this and were arrested they’d be disgraced.

16:34

Ishihara at boxing ring

There are no rules when it comes to the Yakuza doing business. They’ll do anything to make money.”

16:40

WILLACY: Even though Shinji Ishihara expresses distaste for cashing in on child pornography, he once commanded a pack of Yakuza thugs, making millions for the Yamaguchi-gumi.

16:46

SHINJI ISHIHARA: “We threatened people… assaulted them. We injured another Yakuza who later died.

16:58

We did fraud in real estate, and skimmed a percentage off the profits of sex clubs and bars.”

17:07

WILLACY: After thirty years in prison, Ishihara still has an eye for the knock out punch. Tonight he’s come to this nightclub in a seedy district of Tokyo to rev up his fighter, Taka.

SHINJI ISHIHARA: “You fight as if to kill your opponent.”

TRAINER OF TAKA: “He will kill”.

17:21

Ishihara watches boxing  bout

WILLACY: Ishihara certainly knows how to kill, he did hard time for taking out a rival.

17:39

SHINJI ISHIHARA: “He was ripping me off when we were gambling. I was cheated.

17:45

I stabbed him with a Japanese sword and killed him.”

17:55

WILLACY: Ishihara started out like these young men. In Japanese society they’re branded juvenile delinquents.

18:01

Boxing bout

Music

18:08

WILLACY: As entertainment, it’s brutal and profitable. It’s no secret that many of these popular events are run by the Yakuza. Shinji Ishihara is adamant this one is not, and rejects the suggestion that these brutal bouts equip young men with the training and the tools to thrive in the Yakuza world. They’re here tonight as ultimate fighters, part of Shinji Ishihara’s plan to keep them occupied and out of the clutches of the Yakuza. But escape is hard, especially for those born into it.

18:17

Shoko Tendo walks Tokyo night

For women who inhabit the Yakuza world, loyalty and obedience are paramount. Shoko Tendo has feared for her life on numerous occasions. She grew up the daughter of a violent mob boss whose henchmen were bound by a bloody oath.

19:03

SHOKO TENDO: “When I saw the finger… it was cut off

19:23

Shoko Tendo

and when I saw the person handing it to my father, I thought this is my father, but not my father.”

19:33

Movie Excerpt. Finger amputation

WILLACY: Yubitsume is a Yakuza ritual where a gang member amputates his finger in penance for a sin against his godfather.

19:49

Shoko Tendo sketching

As a child, Shoko Tendo would mimic this gruesome custom.

20:07

SHOKO TENDO: “When no one in the family was watching I would bite off the pinkie fingers of my dolls. The dolls without fingers were my family.”

20:13

Shoko Tendo’s tattoos

Music

20:28

WILLACY: Now in her 40’s, Shoko Tendo has adorned her body with tattoos. It’s a longstanding Yakuza tradition. The figure featured is from Yakuza folklore, an infamous prostitute who found enlightenment. As a teenager, Shoko Tendo began sniffing paint thinner. Later she snorted cocaine. Along the way, she suffered dreadfully at the hands of her gangster boyfriends.

20:31

SHOKO TENDO: “Whenever they were in a bad mood they hit me - and the way they hit me was not the way you treat a woman.

21:00

Shoko Tendo

They made me take drugs from morning until night, many times – then we would have sex.”

21:17

Shoko Tendo sketching

WILLACY: On one occasion Shoko Tendo was so badly beaten she nearly died, eventually she needed facial reconstruction surgery. She’s living proof that in the Yakuza world, no one is off limits – not family and not women.

21:29

Day of the Dead celebrations

Music

21:47

WILLACY:  In Nagasaki, it’s Bon, or the Day of the Dead when Buddhists believe the souls of their departed ancestors return. As the family of Nagasaki’s late mayor lament the loss of a husband, father and grandfather, they’re left to ponder how in 21st century Japan the Yakuza remain such a dominant and deadly force.

22:00

Yuko Yuko’o

YUKO YUKO’O: “We still don’t want to admit that the society we live in now is a world that violently takes the life of a person who was honest and hard working. Public figures should never be threatened with violence. And I think society should not forgive these crimes, and the crimes should be punished.”

22:35

Music

23:14

Reporter:  Mark Willacy

Research : Yayoi Eguchi

                 Yumi Asada

Camera:    Jun Matsuzono

                 Keisuke Kimura

Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen

Producer:  Ian Altschwager

23:23