Plastic pinkies help yakuza sever ties with underworld
mdn.mainichi.co.jp
OSAKA -- For yakuza posed with the question of how to wash their hands of the underworld for good an Osaka woman has got the answer fingered -- literally.
Reams of gangsters who've given up being crooks in favor of the straight and narrow are struggling to find legitimate work in a Japan where it's become common for new unemployment records to be set each month and employers have traditionally shown a reluctance to hire mobsters even in good times.
Though it's possible to hide some of the trademarks of their one-time profession -- "punch perms" are allowed to grow out, tattoos are covered up -- gangsters are at a loss when it comes to dealing with missing pinkies, a symbol of a yakuza who has severed the little finger of his left hand to atone for some misdeed.
But unlike many other job-seekers in this age of information technology who've found their way out of the dole queue by going digital, yakuza looking for work are choosing to go digit.
And that's where Yukako Fukushima comes in. The 31-year-old technician working at Osaka prosthetics manufacturer Arute is giving hopes -- and fingers -- to yakuza who've "washed their feet" of the underworld, as local parlance has it.
"How's the finger's hardness?" she asks a 37-year-old former wiseguy we'll call Taro who is sitting in Arute's office. While still in the mob, he cut off his left little finger in front of his boss to show the remorse he felt for bungling investments made on behalf of the gang.
He left the underworld five years ago and used a fake little finger to hide his past from a would-be boss. As he works in a manual job, he's already had Arute make him four fake fingers to cope with the way they are quickly ground down because he's constantly rubbing the fake digits against the stump of what had been his real one.
Arute uses silicon to make prosthetic body parts for the disabled or maimed. Fukushima became a prosthetic technician at 21, worked for a while in Hollywood and then learned special effects from an Australian living in Japan.
Though she didn't know it, a crucial time for her came with the 1992 enactment of the Anti-Organized Crime Law, which greatly curtailed the largely free reign Japanese society had given the yakuza.
In the wake of the law's passage and the onslaught of the economic downturn that struck the underworld as hard as any other sector of Japanese society, growing numbers of yakuza gave up their life of crime in favor of something more acceptable. Missing fingers, however, prevented many of them from finding legitimate work.
Their troubles were compounded by the steep, 150,000 yen price tag that accompanied fake fingers even though such an amount may once have been matched by a single night's bar bill.
Fukushima was aware of the plight facing many trying to escape the mob and offered her services to the Osaka Prefectural Police. They were reluctant to let her help at first, but after frequent visits to show her enthusiasm and her membership in a group offering to aid yakuza looking to go straight, Fukushima was soon helping out.
Fukushima has made over 50 prosthetic fingers for one-time gangsters and they show their appreciation for her by calling her ane, which literally means older sister but in Japan's underworld also carries connotations of respect. She gains further gratitude by working on her own time using materials paid for from her own pocket so the former yakuza can buy their new fingers at little more than cost.
In the decade since the start of the yakuza crackdown, about 660 men once officially designated as members of the underworld have found "real" jobs among the roughly 4,570 companies registered with police nationwide as being willing employers of mobsters looking for legitimacy.
But most of those jobs were found in the mid-'90s and last year only 21 one-time yakuza were gainfully employed after giving up their gangland ties. Just five of these men hailed from Osaka, long regarded as one of the major bases of yakuza. With the crime rate rising as quickly as unemployment and former gangsters more susceptible to the lure of wrongdoing, people like Fukushima are becoming increasingly vital.
Taro, the one-time mobster who's received four faux pinkies from Fukushima, is delighted with her work.
"I don't have to hide my finger in front of people, I've got a new job and my life has changed for the better," he says. "I can't thank Fukushima enough."
Fukushima is more than satisfied with what she's achieved.
"All I want," she tells the Mainichi, "is for guys who quit the yakuza to be happy. I love the sight of a guy whose prospects in life have become brighter |
