Latest news with #yakuza
The Review Geek
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Review Geek
Let's Go Karaoke! – Season 1 Episode 4 Recap & Review
Episode 4 Let's Go Karaoke! episode 4 starts going way back in time. When Kyouji Narita was born, his mother gave him the name Kyoji and asked his grandfather to submit his birth certificate. However, the man stained the paper with cigarette ashes and had to write the name again. As he was desperate to fix it, he ended up writing it the wrong way. Years later, in the 2000s, Kyouji worked at a karaoke bar. During the night shift, he knocked and entered a room with two yakuza, and one of them got angry at him. So, he threw his drink at Narita's face. Still, the boy only apologized and went to another room to deliver more food, completely unfazed. Soon, he got a call to come back to the same room and saw that they were all yakuza as well, and one of them had rashes. The gangster was allergic to alcohol, which got mixed into their chicken after Narita was bathed in it. After he explained that, the two yakuza groups clashed. While they fought, Narita was so dazed that he ended up suggesting they resolve their issues with a karaoke battle as a joke. Even though Kyouji didn't participate in the fight, his boss let him go after the incident. So, the yakuza boss, who was nice to Narita, hires him. Kyouji always knew the gears of his life would go berserk at some point, and that's how it started. Now, the anime takes us back to Satomi, seeing the aftermath of a car crash. The boy walks away, almost crying, and remembers Kyouji's competition. Then, he runs to the place they hold it every year in the hopes of finding him. However, when he gets there, he can't find him anywhere. He shouts at all the gangsters, and their boss answers Narita's already in hell. The boy can't believe what he's hearing and curses at them, saying they should be in hell too. Before he leaves, the boss demands that he go back and sing something, after barging into the place and being rude. Thus, Satomi chooses one and realizes that he doesn't hate Kyouji. He sings with the hand on his throat, but still does it with all his might. As the song goes, he remembers his moments with Kyouji, and all the yakuza members see his incredible skills. Meanwhile, his classmate Wada prepares for the school festival and thinks about how despicable Satomi is for running away. However, he doesn't know the boy is in an important battle right now. Even though Satomi advised Kyouji not to sing Crimson, the man would always put it on during their karaoke sessions. So, he's sure Narita would choose the same song for the competition. To honor him, he did the same. When the music ends, everyone claps and celebrates with the boy, praising him. The yakuza boss even cries after listening to his heartfelt presentation. However, a surprising person also applauds his efforts. It's Kyouji himself. The boy can't believe his eyes, and the man explained it was a joke and that the boss was in on it. Narita expected the man he had attacked the day before would go after him, so he was prepared for the car crash. He couldn't miss the karaoke competition, so he didn't stay on the scene and ran to the bar. After that, the boy cries, and everyone laughs. That's the last time Satomi sees Kyouji. Years later, Satomi goes to the same karaoke place where he taught Narita with his classmates to celebrate their graduation. They use the same room as well, and he finds Narita's card that he left there. Touched by the situation, the boy takes it home with him. As he's about to go on a flight to Tokyo to start college, he sees the card again and decides to keep it as a memento. Then, again, Narita sits by his side and surprises him. The boy thought he was dead, but the gangster was only avoiding him for a while and letting him enjoy his high school years. Now, he offers him a new card and says he's also going to Tokyo on a business trip. He reveals that he ended up being the worst singer and used the boy's strategy of telling the boss something they liked as if they hated it. So, now, he has the name 'Satomi' tattooed on his arm. To wrap up the episode, he invites the boy to karaoke one more time once they arrive in Tokyo. The Episode Review Let's Go Karaoke! concludes its main story in a nice note. It's an emotional episode as we learn more about Narita and finally see Satomi singing. Having him overcome his fears by participating in the yakuza competition is a great curveball that makes even more sense than being part of the choir festival. It also serves to show how he grew to care about Kyouji. Narita's not being dead was quite predictable, but it doesn't affect the scene. What's important is Satomi's feelings for him, not whether the man died or not. It shows a sweet and innocent side of the boy, despite his harsh and nonchalant façade. Seeing Satomi singing Crimson is the highlight of the show. Not only are his thoughts beautiful, but the colours representing him and the song are, too. The scene also makes it clear that his voice is changing, but he can still sing. You can hear the cracks in his voice as he tries to hide and fight them with his skill. It's a great presentation. Let's Go Karaoke! shines when it tries something new with its visual representation, but its dialogue and plot hardly have the same impact. So it's a great achievement that this episode combined the anime's strengths and developed Satomi into a better character. Let's hope the last episode does the same and gives viewers a fitting conclusion. Previous Episode Next Episode Expect A Full Season Write-Up When This Season Concludes!
Japan Times
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Times
Queer-coded yakuza story wins prestigious U.K. crime writing award
Akira Otani's "The Night of Baba Yaga,' translated into English by Sam Bett, received the prestigious Crime Writers' Association Dagger Award for crime fiction in translation in London on July 3. It's the first time a Japanese writer has won the translation award since it was established in 2006. The genre-bending novel takes place in Japan's 1970s yakuza underworld and centers on two women, Yoriko Shindo, a ruthless martial arts fighter, and 'the princess' Shoko, daughter of a mob boss, for whom Yoriko serves as a bodyguard. "In form and style and content, 'The Night of Baba Yaga' is unlike any book I've translated, but it's also eerily familiar, like a myth you overheard before you learned to talk,' Bett tells The Japan Times. Contributor Kris Kosaka writes in her review, '(The novel) radiates with both cinematic grandeur and a subtle, constant railing against normalization of any kind, the latter of which can be seen in another aspect of queerness that permeates the novel: its framing of what it means to be the 'other' in society.' 'The Night of Baba Yaga' was a commercial success in Japan and was shortlisted for the Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 2021. It's Otani's first novel to be translated into English, by Soho Press in the U.S. and Faber and Faber in the U.K. Translating the novel was not a safe, obvious venture from the start. "'The Night of Baba Yaga' has no obvious comparison title among what's been published from Japan,' Bett says. 'It's more like a 1970s exploitation film than any book that comes to mind. It's built differently, somehow both borrowing from action cinema and playing entirely by its own rules. 'After today, those of us working in publishing should all feel more encouraged to take risks on the books that we believe in.'
NHK
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- NHK
Japanese yakuza novel wins UK award for crime fiction in translation
A novel depicting yakuza gangster life by a Japanese author has won a prestigious British award for crime fiction. The Crime Writers' Association awarded its 2025 Dagger prize for crime fiction in translation to Otani Akira's "The Night of Baba Yaga" in London on Thursday. The novel was translated by Sam Bett. Created in 1955, the Daggers are considered one of the world's most prestigious awards for crime and thriller writing along with the Edgar Awards of the United States. The story is about the bond between a woman known for her fighting prowess and the only daughter of the head of a Japanese yakuza group. The woman is forced to become the daughter's bodyguard. It depicts how the two women come to trust each other against the backdrop of the criminal underworld. The fast-paced novel makes use of graphically violent scenes and language to depict the two women in pursuit of their hopes for their lives. The book was first published in Japan in 2020. Translated versions later hit the British, US, and South Korean markets. Some reviews described the novel as one that empowers women in a sophisticated way. Otani, 44, is from Tokyo and was originally a scenario writer for video games. She has written novels and essays on a variety of themes, including love and families. The Daggers' translated novel category was created in 2006. Japanese author Yuzuki Asako's Butter was also shortlisted for this year's prize. Otani is the first Japanese Dagger winner and the second Asian, following South Korean writer Yun Ko-eun who won in 2021.
The Guardian
27-06-2025
- The Guardian
Breaking good: the yakuza gangster who became a lawyer
Yoshitomo Morohashi is every inch the lawyer, from his three-piece suit and designer glasses to the sunflower lapel badge identifying him as a member of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations. Then, with little encouragement, he removes his shirt and turns away to reveal a tattoo of an ancient warrior, a samurai sword clenched between his teeth, covering his entire back. Morohashi's readiness to expose his body art is relatively recent: there was a time when he did everything possible to conceal it and the dark past it represented. His life story is an extreme example of poacher-turned-gamekeeper. For more than two decades, Morohashi lived a life of crime as a member of a yakuza organisation before he addressed his drug addiction, with a mental health crisis on a busy Tokyo street setting him on a path of professional and personal redemption. 'The thing is, I had a very happy, normal childhood,' Morohashi says in an interview at his office in Tokyo. 'I was a very good student and always came top of my class, but I found it hard to settle … I was disruptive and drove my teachers crazy.' Morohashi was just 14 when his father, a noodle maker, died, leaving his mother to raise their only child in Iwaki, a large town in Fukushima prefecture. 'I really struggled after my father's death, and I had no brothers or sisters to turn to,' he says. Morohashi's descent into delinquency drowned out his clear academic talent. After failing his university entrance exams, he was sent to Tokyo to attend a cram school and, his mother hoped, gain a degree and start a career. Two years later, he was accepted by Seikei University, but by then he had also found drugs, along with a circle of friends who shared his fondness for aburi – inhaling the smoke from heated methamphetamine. Time that should have been devoted to his studies was spent playing mahjong and hanging out with young men with links to Japan's network of organised crime syndicates. 'I had been swept up in that kind of lifestyle … basically drugs and antisocial behaviour,' he says. His knowledge of narcotics – and his imposing physique – made Morohashi, now a university dropout, a natural recruit for the Inagawa-kai, Japan's third-biggest yakuza group, which employed him as a dealer and debt collector. 'I never shot or stabbed anyone, but I did rough people up with a baseball bat if they didn't repay their loans … but I never targeted the head,' he says. 'The yakuza became my family. I had lost my father, and I finally felt like I belonged. They accepted me. I knew they did awful things to people, but I pretended that it had nothing to do with me.' However, his drug addiction worsened, culminating in 2005 in a public meltdown, stripped to the waist, on the famous 'scramble' crossing in Shibuya – a humiliation that would change the course of his life. He was committed to a psychiatric hospital for six months and expelled from his gang. 'I had embarrassed them,' he explains. His mother, with whom he had not spoken for seven years, rushed to his side, 'even though I knew she was in pain over my drug addiction and yakuza membership'. After being discharged, Morohashi was arrested on drug charges and sentenced to 18 months in prison, suspended for three years. His mother aside, two other people would have a profound effect on Morohashi: the judge at his trial who said he believed in him when he said he wanted to become a lawyer, and Mitsuyo Ōhira, a woman with a similarly chaotic past who wrote about her transformation from yakuza wife to respected lawyer in her 2000 autobiography Dakara, anata mo ikinuite (That's why you too can survive). 'My mother gave me a copy of the book, and I immediately understood how [Ōhira] felt,' says Morohashi, the book now taking pride of place in his office. 'I knew I had made a mess of my life and wanted to be like her.' Over the next seven years, Morohashi rediscovered his scholastic instincts, becoming a qualified estate agent before passing exams to become a judicial scrivener. He then enrolled at law school in Osaka and passed the bar exam – which has a pass rate of 45% – in 2013. 'My identity as a former yakuza weakened,' the 48-year-old says. 'Sometimes I would catch sight of my tattoo in the shower and could barely believe what I had been.' On Ōhira's advice, he did not talk about his old life to his contemporaries at law school or to colleagues at the offices in Osaka and Tokyo where he cut his legal teeth working mainly on criminal cases. Morohashi finally revealed his past in a 2022 YouTube interview, convinced it would make it easier for him to help other men and women whose lives had been turned upside down by their yakuza membership. Today, two years after he opened his own office and released an autobiography – Motoyakuza bengōshi (The Ex-Yakuza Lawyer) – the defence attorney counts gang members among his clients, all united by a desire to escape the yakuza's clutches and rejoin mainstream Japanese society. 'They realise that it's important to take responsibility by serving their time, apologise, and then rebuild their lives. I know that too because of my time in the yakuza.' Demand for Morohashi's services is likely to grow. Japan's fast-ageing society, coupled with the introduction of stricter anti-yakuza laws mean membership is at an all-time low. Even those who leave are forbidden from opening a bank account for five years, making it almost impossible to rent a flat or find a job. A depleted yakuza is now ceding ground to tokuryū – ad hoc groups whose members often don't know each other and which have been accused of crimes ranging from robberies and frauds to assaults and murders. 'I tell the men I represent that they are not leaving the yakuza for the good of society – they are doing it for themselves and their families. When they think of it that way it can work out for them,' he says. 'That's the most important part of what I do as a lawyer, convincing people that they can make things right, no matter what they have done. Giving people hope is what keeps me going.' Now married with a young daughter, Morohashi has reconciled with his mother. 'That's the thing I'm most proud of … I finally made my mum happy.'
South China Morning Post
10-06-2025
- South China Morning Post
Concern in Japan as police investigation uncovers possible yakuza-triad alliance
A police investigation into alleged organised crime activity in Japan has uncovered what experts say could be signs of cooperation between a domestic yakuza faction and Hong Kong's 14K triad, one of Asia's most powerful criminal networks. The concern centres around a video found on a mobile phone seized during an arrest in September last year, which shows individuals sharing glasses of sake – a traditional ritual that experts say can symbolise an oath of loyalty or alliance. According to Jiji Press, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department said the footage depicted members of the yakuza taking part in the ritual with individuals believed to be part of Hong Kong's 14K triad. The meeting was said to have taken place at a hotel in Yamanashi prefecture in March 2024. Police said the footage was discovered six months later during an unrelated investigation into the illegal resale of mobile phones. However, five of the Japanese men involved in the March hotel meeting were subsequently arrested on a separate charge: failing to declare their alleged affiliations with banned organised crime groups when checking in – an offence under legislation introduced to restrict gang movements and activities. Among those arrested was Kajiro Shirai, 51, who officers identified as a member of the Chinese Dragon gang – a group largely composed of descendants of Japanese nationals who were left in China after World War II and later repatriated. Also detained was Kazuyuki Tajima, 53, who police described as a senior member of the Sumiyoshi-kai, one of Japan's largest yakuza syndicates.
