The Yakuza Killings
Last night I hung out with Trey, and learned a lot more about the shooting that took place at Denny’s on Tuesday which sent my school into a panic.
According to Trey’s “sources”, the incident had something to do with the Yakuza, an organized-crime syndicate that controls just about every ‘seedy’ business in Japan such as strip-clubs, casinos, and snack-bars. I’d never heard the name before, but I researched them today and what I found was rather fascinating.
They’ve been around for almost 400 years, ever since the Edo period when members of the lowest social groups such as peddlers and gamblers began to organize and slowly accumulate power and influence. Over the centuries they’ve grown to become not just the largest organized crime syndicate in Japan, but in the entire world, with an estimated membership of over 100,000.
Unlike the mafia we’re familiar with, the Yakuza are not quite so underground. They have considerable influence within the Japanese government itself, and often work in coordination with the police when it comes to handling certain matters.
But it seems they handle most of their matters internally, which is probably what went down at the Denny’s on Tuesday. According to Trey, four members of the Yakuza were sitting together when someone they all knew came in and pulled one of the gang members to another table to have a private conversation. It’s unclear as to whether this fifth person was Yakuza himself or not. But after a few minutes, he pulled out a gun and shot the Yakuza member in the chest and fled the scene.
The injured Yakuza was rushed to the hospital where he did succumb to his wounds and die. There was a manhunt under way for the shooter for three days, until he just turned up yesterday in Kujukuri—the town where I always go to the beach—shot dead in the back of a van. The official story from the police is that it was a suicide. Nobody believes the official story.
It’s possible that the shooter had been Yakuza himself and under instructions to kill a member who had done something wrong, and was later killed by the Yakuza to keep him quiet. It’s also possible he was a member of a smaller, rival gang and the Yakuza killed him out of revenge. But he apparently knew all of the Yakuza in the restaurant, so I think he was also a member. It’s possible that the killing was not planned and the Yakuza killed the shooter for stepping out of line.
But Trey explained that it almost certainly was orchestrated by someone, as guns are incredibly difficult to come by in Japan—they are massively illegal—and the only way a person is going to get their hands on one is if they have strong reason to believe they’re going to use it.
The extreme dearth of gun violence in Japan makes this a relatively extraordinary event. Such shootings only happen one or two times a year in all of Japan. The shooting at the Denny’s a block away from my school was not just local news but national news. It’s no wonder the phones were ringing off the hook on Tuesday—parents must have seen or heard about it within minutes of hours of the story breaking, and given that in the entire country this shooting just happened to take place a block away from the school their child goes to it’s no wonder they would freak out. But the kids weren’t in any danger.
As for the Denny’s it seems I’ll never get a chance to eat there (not that I was eager to before). Whereas if there’s a shooting at a place of business in America it usually shuts down for a day or two and then re-opens as quickly as possible, it’s such a rare thing in Japan that there will forever be a shroud of fear surrounding the idea of the Togane Denny’s and that business is officially done with.
It’s crazy to think that the eyes of the entire country of Japan have been on my little town all week. News cameras were undoubtedly not just pointing at the Denny’s on Tuesday but at the school nearby. My little ol’ school was in the national news! While I was there! What are the odds?
So that’s the story of what is now being called “the Yakuza killings”. Pretty cool.
In other news, hanging out with Trey proved even more enjoyable than I think either of us expected. We talked a lot of politics, went out for dinner at Coco’s (right across the street from the Denny’s, now no longer a dining option), and watched a couple of episodes of Mad Men afterwards. He told me about trips he occasionally takes that are organized by foreigners who gather groups of foreigners and Japanese people—including girls who are interested in foreigners—to spend the weekend doing things like snowboarding. He invited me along on the next trip, but unfortunately these things cost a pretty penny and I’ve got to save my money for the sailing trip in May. But from what he says, these kids of trips are my best bet for finding a long-term Japanese girlfriend.
In blogging news, my recent piece “The Fictional Obama” is the first thing I posted to Open Salon in months, but it was made an Editor’s Pick and put on the front page where it attracted a lot of readers and comments. Apparently I’ve still got a knack for political writing so maybe I’ll get back in the habit of doing it more often.
In school news, aside from Tuesday’s excitement it’s been a dreadfully slow week. The third-graders are still busy with end-of-year exams, and the first-graders had exams this week too. I had no lessons at all on Wednesday but Interac insisted I come in anyway, which meant I got to spend a solid eight hours in the teacher’s room doing little more than killing time. I was told the lessons for next week so I got to spend some time preparing for them, but unfortunately that doesn’t take as long as I’d like it to. Then today I was supposed to have four third-grade lessons back-to-back in the morning (followed by an empty afternoon) but Ms. S- decided at the last minute she’d rather give her students a test than have me do the game I’d prepared, which was bad news for both me and the students. At least I was able to do it in Mrs. T-’s class, thus making it the most enjoyable 45-minutes of the day by far.
There’s barely a month left in the school-year. I’m really going to miss teaching, but I’m definitely not going to miss these long-stretches of sitting in an office with nothing to do.
