2. Boy Commando

When I turned a third-grader in 1955, my parents hired tutors for me. They were the second and third sons of the Amagase's in the neighborhood. The Amagase's was a reputable family in Fushimi. The head of the family was an ex-navy commander who had been the captain of a warship during WWII. Brought up well under such a father, all of the three sons had been admitted to the army preparatory school.

I was subject to various influence from both of them; however, it was the elder brother (second son) who exerted the greatest influence on me. He had enrolled in the Faculty of Law at Kyoto University after the army prep school. At the same time, he had joined the Japan Communist Party and had become a leading figure in the student movements at the university. At the time I got to know him, he was in an akward position as a leader of the Sanson Kousakutai which had been striving for a Bolshevik revolution.

As I mentioned earlier, the Japan Communist Party (JCP), in January, 1955, had self-criticized the radical struggles fought by its Sanson Kousakutai and Chukaku Self-Defense Forces with Molotov cocktails as "Extrem Leftists' Adventurism." At the 6th National Council meeting held in July, the party declared to pursue an intra-party democracy and to establish a collective leadership. It marked the beginning of a new post-war structure for the JCP, coinciding with the establishment of the '55 Political Structure.

I have no background information as to how the elder Amagase came to take up the tutorial job. But I remember my father mentioning at a much later date, "Gase-han (a friendly way of addressing the elder Amagase) was really driven to the wall at one time." It was possible that my dad gave shelter to him when police were in hot pursuit after him. Perhaps because my father had struck some acquaintance with Senji Yamamoto, a pre-war socialist who was assassinated, he had an inclination to support leftists with much respect for them. So, to me, it looks possible that he had extended some sort of assistance to the elder Amagase.

I am not sure whether or not he had been expelled from the JCP at the time he started tutoring me, or if his name had still been on the university's list, either. It can readily be imagined, however, that he was mentally exhausted. He must have been at a loss after he was baffled twice in his devotions, first to the Empire and then to revolutions, in a short span of 10 years. He confined himself at home, where I would go see him every day.

Initially I kicked at the idea of studying with a tutor. I was more interested in deviltries. Just around this time, my physique started to grow quickly, and my mischievous conduct accelerated. I played truant from school, and did nothing but playing practical tricks. Accompanying me were some Korean classmates, as though my followers, who also detested going to school because of discrimination they were subjected to there. What we were up to was just wanton mischief, no more than throwing rocks or snakes in the neighboring houses. One of my persistent targets was a house owned by the head of a 'Koto' music school. The head, being an old lady, was very vain of the social standing of her family which had had a long tradition of being the school's head for more than 10 generations. Her overbearing attitudes were just too much even to my juvenile mind.

After she made a protest to my mother against what I had done, I was given a good scold and chastised by my own old lady. My father had never raised his hands up to me, whereas my mother thrashed me with her bare hand or a bamboo ruler, to the best of her ability. Undaunted by her punishments, I kept my monkeyshines as before, and never studied nor had any intension of studying, to begin with.

The learning under the elder Amagase turned out to be fun, against my initial anticipation. But, on the day of my first lesson, I had declared to him, "Gase-han, I hate studying, so I'm not going to sit here and take your lessons. Let's go out to play." Then, he understandingly laughed and said, "That's true. I'd be rather surprised to see a boy of your age who is fond of study. Shall we go?" He took me to the playground of a nearby junior high school.

After having spent a while doing foward upward circling on the horizontal bar alongside of me, he asked "Manbu-chan, have you ever seen a gymnastic trick on the bar like this?" He jumped to hang from the bar and swung his body back and forth a few times. Then, he all of a sudden started circling on the axis being the bar. It was a giant swing. I was flabbergasted at his performance. I had never seen anybody do a giant swing in my life or even known of the technique, either.

He was a rather good-looking guy with long hair. Though he was of medium height and build, he was strongly built as any other graduate of the army prep school. After turning about 10 times on the bar, he let go of his hold of the bar to fly high in the air, and then made a marvelous landing. That was enough for me to entertain a deep respect for him.

"Reading textbooks is not what I call study. To study something boils down to grasping firmly the bases or roots of the world and how nature is made up," he used to say. His teachings were a series of amazement and wonders, too. In science lessons, he took trouble to employ flasks and beakers to give me specific explanations on how physical principles worked. When teaching the subject of electric waves, he demonstrated how to send electric signals by using the Morse code transmitter that he had once used in his illegal activity during the days of Sanson Kosakutai. It was the best of audio-visual education we are now familiar with. It was so easy to understand.

In the lessons of social studies, he took me out to various historical places in Kyoto, citing passages from such classics as "The Tale of Genji," "The Historic Romance of the Taira Family," or "太平記," to give me easy-to-understand explanations on the history of our society. They were good lectures, indeed.

Come to think of it, I realize that the elder Amagase, from time to time, nonchalantly spoke out his mind and faiths as a Marxist. I remember that at one time when we were strolling downtown Kyoto he said,

"You know, Manabu-chan. The history of our country has not been molded only those big historical figures like the emperors, Minamoto Yoshitsune, or Toyotomi Hideyoshi--the one who constructed the Fushimi Castle near our houses. But the truth is that our history has been made by ordinary people--like the people you see around here, although their names are not left in history for us to see."

His precept taught from the popular view of history was of course beyond my comprehension at the time. I retorted upon him saying, "How can these men and women on the street make history? It's hard to believe." It was quite unlikely that he'd been trying to communize me, a grade school kid. But it was beyond doubt that he was really sincere and earnest and he always put his whole personality in his relations with me.

The elder Amagase was the elite of elites. Being healthy, physically strong and very bright, he had aspired to be a man in khaki during the war with the intention of being at the helm of the militaristic state, and in the post war era, he had joined the Communist party on the judgement that Communism should be the only path for a new Japan to take. I am sure he must have experienced great shocks in the face of the nation's defeat as well as inner dilemmas concerning his own political conversion. But I presume that he had an intense awareness of his slef-appointed responsibility to lead the time on his own--a feeling positive enough to offset the past setbacks and frustrations. Mere child that I was, I could sense it from odds and ends of what he told me.

Amagase's tutorship continued after I got into junior high school. And it was during this period that I received first lessons of Marxism from him.

Compared with the exuberantly interesting lessons with Amagase, classes at school just bored me, which led me to skip even more classes than before and to look for fights. What I did while cutting classes was some childish stuff like playing sword battles in the compound of the Fushimi Inari Temple for a while. The precinct of the Temple was dotted with numerous stone statues of its guardian fox deity and I used to beat them with a stick, supposing that they were a bunch of bad guys I, as a hero samurai, was to do away with. At a later date I happened to be suspected as the "Fox-eyed Man" implicated in the Glico-Morinaga case. I was probably taken by retribution of the fox deity.

It was when I was a fifth-grader that my fight had ever made some repercussions. There was a classmate by the name of Nakano who had recently transferred from another school in Hokkaido. He fell a prey to some of his classmates and seniors who took pleasure in bullying him. Nakano patiently stood the overbearings for quite a long time until his patience wore out at last. Then he came over to ask my advice and said in annoyance, "I hate to tell my teacher on them. What do you think I should do?"

In those days, there was a distinct kids' world that kids kept to themselves, separate from schools and homes. Most of the troubles occurring within that sphere would be resolved among themselves--through fisticuffs. And the social values of those days implicitly acknowledged that fights among boys were inevitable, unlike the present day society where violence is morbidly shunned. So even in a case where a bully tyrannized over his classmate, somebody in an upper class or a fight-confident classmate would appear to thump the bully, roaring, "Hey, you, stop bullying the weak." That was it. Though a bit violent, our kids' world seemed well-ventilated in terms of intra-communications. Strong fighters were much appreciated as well as respected, allowing themselves to excercise their fraternal authority. I was one of them.

I just couldn't stand anybody who bullied the weaker behind the scenes. It would have been more tolerable had it been an open fight that Nakano was subjected to. The fact that it was a senior boy who had been hard to the new kid on the block, who must have been feeling lonely, really angered me. So without much ado, I called the senior boy out and beat him up.

Just around that time, my fighting was breaking from that of a child to a more juvenile style, adopting boxing techniques learned from watching other people. To my surprise and then satisfaction, all the punches I threw landed on the other guy's face, as if hitting a sandbag hanging still. Again, I got carried away and wound up leaving his face full of bruises.

When I got home that evening, mother working in the kitchen said unruffled,

"Heard you had a fight at school. How come?"

"Because the guy bullied a new comer."

"Oh, is that right?" she nodded, without a single pause in using a kitchen knife. Then she said nothing thereafter.

Later, one of our maids told me that the boy with black eyes and his mother had come to nag. Closing in on my mother, the boy's mother had said with a furious look, "See what your son has done to my boy? What are you gonna do about it?" My mom had coolly dodged the raging woman's questioning tone by saying, "No big thing about boys fighting each other. It's not something that their parents should step in, is it?" Finding it impossible to keep the ball rolling, the visiting mother, and her son, had hightailed, the maid told me.

Of all the things that took place around this time, frequenting a pawnshop was by far the most memorable. Ever since my father set up his second home elsewhere, only my mother and her children lived in the house in Keidai-cho. Our living was far from extravagant; still, mother had to run around to make the ends meet, because my old man did not give a cent to her. She was forced to lead an independent economic life: for one thing, my father arbitrarily assumed that she would be able to raise her kids well without his help--a slipshod wishful thinking which was quite characteristic of him being a Yakuza. For another, my mother harbored an old-fashioned conviction that raising kids should belong to women's domain. And each of them considered their respective belief not strange at all.

There were a few boarders sharing our house in Keidai-cho. By the way, one of them was a cop. When I was arrested on a charge of blackmailing a firm at a much later date, he was vice-president of the detention house i was put in. As he saw me behind the bars, he said between sobs, "Manabu-san, it's a pity to see you in a place like this. It really distresses me." I didn't know what to say. At any rate, there were some apartment houses from which my mother was receiving rents. The income, however, was far short of covering her expenditures, which mostly went to assist her henchmen's wives in making their livings. The single merit of the big mama of a Yakuza family's head house was to stand her people in good stead.

She also carried on various kinds of pay jobs at home. But it seemed that her larger-than-income expenditures often required her to raise money through a pawnshop. Then it was made my job to take gages to the pawnbroker.

"I can't have my daughters frequent a pawnshop for me. So you do the job," mother used to say. I took her 'kimono' dresses or rings there, and in turn came back with a few thousand yen and sometimes even more. Pawnshops were one of the most familiar financial institutions among the common people back in those days. Every time I went to a pawnshop, there was always somebody before me, borrowing money on the order of 100 yen. One time there was an old woman who was asking for 50 yen for her dingy 'futon' (thick bedquilts). As I saw those people struggling after their own fashion, I realized that my household was different from others even in the amounts of money borrowed. At the same time, I also thought with a bit of remorse that I should think twice before asking mother for pocket money.

So my primary school years glided by, and I was admitted into a private junior high school--a Christian missionary school--situated in Kyoto. This school had boasted of the highest ratio of students who went on to schools of higher grade, especially aided with integrated educational programs through its senior high school. My parents were quite happy with my enrollment, without really knowing why. Nevertheless, I got kicked out of school already in the fall of my first year. What caused it? A scuffle.

It all started with usual monkeyshines. While 5 upper graders and some of my classmates were playing on the ground, one of the seniors grasped one of my classmates by his vulnerable spot. The classmate paid the senior in his own coin. Boys good at their books as they were, they played childish games for their age. They repeated this ball-grabbing game a few times with horselaughs until one of the juniors took a little too firm a grip of a senior's balls, whether he intended it or he became too serious.

The senior student flared into anger and started beating up the junior. His balls must have hurt like anything, I could guess, but the way he beat his junior was just out of the ordinary. He madly punched the younger one in the face and in the head. Probably incited by his violence, the other upper graders joined him and my classmates took the side with the other. It was a free-for-all. At the sight of their ganging up on the poor junior, I flew into a blind rage, grabbed a white liner cart at hand, and smashed it on the head of the one that was the most wildly behaving in the scuffle. I knocked him down with that single blow and he lied down on his back.

The whole course of events was nothing but ridiculous. But it developed into a big issue, because the one I had knocked out happened to be a son of the PTA chairman. I became reckless as I got sick of the teachers who had made a big fuss over what I thought was a petty thing. Those classmates involved in the free-for-all, however, were utterly depressed and worried about punishments. Pitying them, I told my teacher in charge during a questioning that I was the only one to blame. So I got dismissed from school, as my wishes. And the other boys were let off with mild punishments.

The night my dismissal was announced, my father came over to the house in Keidai-cho. No sooner than he took a seat, he asked, looking grim, "I though it was a good school. Too bad you've been dismissed. So what're you gonna do?"

"There are lots of schools out there for me to choose from," I answered.

"Well, if you say so, I won't bother telling you what to do any more then. We get into quarrels even between parents and kids, so fights with other people may be inevitable. But you don't start a fight with other people until you think it's really in order. Tell me what started your fight this time?"

I felt tired of explaining, but gave him a brief account, anyway.

"Grabbing each other's balls? Oh, what a nice thing to get yourself dismissed for," he burst into falsetto laughter in the middle of my explanations. My mother, sitting beside him, laughted out in chorus. Thinking I was the one who knew its silliness most, I stopped my narrative. Father ordered me to go on. I resumed. Then, again, he cut in on me, "You took all the blame on yourself? That's great. O.K. You don't have to tell me any more about it. That's good," he nodded repeatedly with a great deal of satisfaction.

He was utterly indifferent to my schooling and never said a word on anything educational. But there was one precept he used to tell me all the time, "Act like a man." or "Be manly." His definition of "manliness": 1. To protect the weak, younger and friends in trouble, and cover them with one's own body, if necessary. 2. To fight thoroughly against the strong who put something over on you, and never back down on it. The norm of conduct he advocated sounded too simplistic to me being a puppy, so I used to let it go in one ear and out at the other, saying, "Yeah, I know it. You've told me many times before." That was how my dismissal tumult was ended, too.

After the dismissal, I changed to Fukakusa Junior High School, a public school run by the municipality, located near my house. I got involved in quite a few fights there, too. It was just an ordinary junior high. Most kids there generally didn't give a damn about going to schools of higher grade. Some of the boys were rough. Back in those days, it would take either a large physique or a well-developed motor nerve to make a deliquent student. Whenever those delinqents met each other, they would come to blows.

Those who knew I was the son of the boss of the Teramura Gumi controlling the Fushimi area would never challenge me. But for a short while after my transfer to the new school, very few students recognized me, particularly because my family name was Miyazaki, lacking anything suggestive of a link to the local gang family. There were several times where some kids tried to mess me up.

"Hey, man, you're a newcomer, right? How come you put on a grand face like that? I need to have some talk with you. Come on," a guy of slender figure came to summon me.

I followed the caller into the backyard behind the school buildings. There I found a guy of large build with a pimpled face, attended by a small guy swinging a bike chain. The adherent tried to force a quarrel on me again by mentioning my grand face, while the caller played around with his switchblade. As the small guy finished with his words, the pimply face, who had been in waiting with an air of perfect composure till then, took a few paces to me, and said by filling his eyes with as much intimidating emotions as possible,

"Have you got the guts to fight with me, man?"

In no time, I shortened the distance bewteen us and landed a beautiful punch right in the middle of his pimpled face. That was the ABC's of fighting--strike first. I followed up with a nice kick to fell him who had already been faltering by the first strike. As a final touch I buried a couple more kicks in him lying on the gournd. He curled up his body and became motionless.

The following morning the three came up to me, apologizing on the verge of tears, "We didn't know you were a Bon of the Teramura Gumi. Please forgive us, please." They stood at stiff attention and bowed many times.

"OK, stop bowing. Before you pick up a quarrel next time you must know whom you are dealing with. Or else you can get in a big trouble," I said.

The pimply face, in a look of sudden relief, confirmed, "Yes, Bon. I'll make sure, next time." After that incident, they represented themselves as my followers, and indeed followed me wherever I went.

The sense of the times in those days was far more macho-oriented than the present time. The value expressed through "Every man must live like a man" was ubiquitous, or it was an obssesion among most men who took up the value as the norm of their conduct. Acts like desertion, unmanly conduct and cowardice behavior were extremely abhorred and scorned. At the same time there was a deep-rooted belief that men should live in a world of physical work, which I feel was more strongly believed in the Kansai area. Apart from sports, physical labor like construction work was far more respected, as a manly job, than in the present time.

In such a spirit of the times, men were having quarrels every day, vying with one another in bravery and physical competence. No more different than male monkeys hissing at each other in their habitats and male dogs glaring at each other in alleys, teenage villains in every nook and cranny of the country were quarrelling--day in, day out. I, too, was being incited by the wind of the times in a corner of the city of Kyoto.

However, born to a special family, I found myself stuck in an akward and complex situation when it came to fights. I could never afford to run away or otherwise act unmanly. If a rumor like "Teramura Bon backed out or backed down" had circulated, it would have embarrassed the henchmen of the Teramura Gumi. Yet I couldn't fight out a tremendous quarrel to a finish to get badly injured, either, because my dad's henchmen wouldn't let it go unchallenged. And when I got badly injured, there was always a Yakuza involved in the fight. Then, our henchmen would be infuriated, "Bon, you've got your head cracked! Tell us who the hell has done it to you? We can't let the guy get away with it."

That was obviously an issue where the face, or honor, of the Teramura Gumi and its members was at stake. No matter how hard I tried to check them by saying, "It has nothing to do with Teramura, so stay away from this," it would not be listened to. I know it sounds ludicrous; but there were several occasions where my quarrels resulted in an intervention by our henchmen or developed into inter-gang strifes. For example, one such incident happened as follows:

It happened when I was an eighth grader. One of my classmates appealed to me to judge, telling me that one of the nineth graders had been maliciously and repeatedly pecking at him by ways of beating and extorting money. I knew that the bully was one of the most infamous students at our school. He was also the one who had occasionally laid his provocative eyes on me. I decided to give him a lesson. So I called him out during the lunch break, and gave him a sentence, "I can't stand your nasty bullying on my classmate. Give him back all the money you have taken from him," and beat him up.

As I was getting out of the school gate with 3 or 4 buddies after school was over that day, I found 5 or 6 apparently junior-high-looking students with thick wooden swords in their hands waiting for us. A prompt revenge, I thought.

Each one of them looked the very picture of a teenage villain, staring hard up at me. Their fashions were of typical delinquents, and not bad in their own way: some wore a black cashmere school uniform unbottoned all the way, showing off their red or purple underwear; another was in a crimson polo shirt, knickers and digitated 'tabi' shoes--a typical navvy style.

They all appeared experienced fighters, closing in on me without saying a word. Among them, I spotted a guy with the cold eyes of a professional outlaw. I could tell he was the chief. His reptilian eyes were expressionless, yet uncanny, just like the eyes of Yakuza ready to kill somebody. I had never met a junior high boy like him before. I felt some unknown sensation running up through my nasal cavity.

"You're Miyazaki? I heard you took good care of my buddy. I need to talk to you. Follow me," the chief said in a businesslike manner.

"You need to talk to me? I ain't got no time to spare with you! Who the hell do you think you are? Fucker," I replied, anchoring my equally uncanny eyes on him. The minute the chief's face appeared to turn pale, they made a concerted attack on us, bringing down their wooden swords right at my head. I had never been subjected to an attack like that, either. Particularly, I felt the blow swung down by the chief had an apparent intent to kill me.

We barely doged and parried their first strike; however, we were no match for them in armament. We had weapons like steel chains and switchblades, but were short of longer instruments. In a short while they beat us to a jelly. Every time somebody cried, "I'm gonna kill ya, fucker." There were sounds of my buddies beaten and groans and moans of pain. I got my head cracked and my face was covered with blood all over.

I attempted to grapple at the chief. Luckily I managed to wrestle his sword away. I could have been killed, I thought. Now raising that sword over my head, I advanced to the chief. Then he produced a long-blade jackknife in a quick motion, and assumed a low crouching stance, casting an upward glance at me.

Being frenzied by the cracked head, I undesignedly brought down the sword at his head. He not only dodged my blow in an agile movement but even wielded his knife sideways on my left elbow. The minute I thought he got me, blood gushed out. At the sight of the blood, I completely lost self-control, brandished the wooden sword, chased him around and cornered him. He was completely done up and finally ran away.

Even after all of them had left, we stood riveted on the spot, looking absentmindedly at each other gaspingly. One of my buddies rumbled, "Yeah, I thgought they were gonna kill us." To his comment, the rest of us foolishly nodded many times with our mouths open.

The wound of my left elbow was rather serious, part of bone showing white, and had to be closed with 13 stitches later.

As I got home, my mother flew to me, saying, "What's the matter with you? Your head, and your hands. They are all battered like hell. Go see a doctor right away." She quickly applied dressings to my wounds, exhibiting quite a skill in emergency measure, which she had gone through many times whenever her henchmen and scaffolding men got injured in rumbles.

At the voice of my mother a young henchman of the Teramura Gumi, who happened to be there on some other business, came running to me.

"Who the hell is it that has done such a thing to Bon?" he questioned, being furious with anger.

"I dunno. But this is strictly my personal fight. It has nothing to do with Teramura. Stay out of this thing. O.K.?"

"No, we can't let it off. There must be Yakuza involved. Otherwise, nobody would have chosen to go so far as to smash Bon's head like that. So if we shy away now, we won't be able to walk outside from tomorrow and on," he rushed out of the house.

That evening, the chief teenage villain who knifed me, together with his mother, was brought to my house by a Teramura henchman for apology. He turned out to be a rugged junior high student living in a place called Yawata, Kyoto. His father was a Yakuza. Teramura Gumi had a branch office in Yawata. The henchmen stationed there had marched to the boy's house and grilled him, "Hey kid. What have you done?" I could tell that there had been a quarrel at the house since the boy's whole face was swollen up.

"Fights between boys may be unavoidable altogether. It's a mutual thing, you know. But a junior high kid shouldn't resort to a knife in his fight. What if you killed somebody? It would be you who would have to spend a long time in confinement," she said, just as she scolded her apprentice hencmen. The junior high from Yawata sulkily listened to her. Watching him going into the sulks, the Teramura henchman vehemently slapped him on the cheek, saying, "Hey, listen to her seriously. You, idiot."

I later learned that this junior high boy was really a crook. Shortly after the kinfing incident, he was arrested for rape. During his questioning, it was revealed that he had stabbed an adult to death in a quarrel. I remember that the news sent a cold shiver down my spine.

There was also a case in which my scuffle led to an inter-familial gang strife. It started when I took my nephew (elder brother's son), Yu, to a nearby public bath.

There we came across another junior high student who was a son of the boss of Shinohara-kai gang organization of Kyoto. The boss had his house in Fushimi, where we lived. His son was a mean boy. He started bullying my nephew, a pre-elementary school child, doing things like pouring water over his head. Yu bore to the best of his ability for a while, but in the end burst into tears. I was so vexed by the boy's audacious behavior that I grabbed a wooden bucket and slammed it on his head. To my surpirse, he collapsed with his head bleeding.

After I came home, nothing happened for a while. Then, Teramura henchmen dashed into my house with shot guns, Japanese swords, bamboo spears in their hands. They were all in black combat costumes, putting on black long- sleeve shirts, black jumpers, black knickers, black digitated 'tabi' shoes, and a white head band. Why in all black clothes? It's because when you bleed the black color won't show it, thereby not letting your foes notice you are hurt. It was a kind of ostentation. The practical side of its effect was that you would not let the foe overbearingly take advantage of your injury.

One of the most combative henchmen, by the name of Tetsujiro Kato, carried a shot gun in his hand with a couple of cartridge belts wrapped around his torso crosswise from the shoulder to waist, and in addition, about a dozen of dynamites belted around his popped belly. He was a short man of 160cm in height but weighed almost 100kg. He wore a pair of dark shades and wanted several fingers. He cut a quite hilarious figure.

Fires were up in several drums situated in the garden. Around them, hechmen were drinking 'sake' and wrapping the handles of their swords with bandages. Inside the house were other henchmen and non-gang men working together to flip all the 'tatami' mats-- a measure to prevent their footing from slipping during combats. The windows were being sealed up, and the glasses in the windows and doors were lined with glue and rice paper so as not to shatter when hit by bullets. Women were fighting their own war in the kitchen, preparing broiled rice and cooking other stuff under the direction of my mother.

"What the hell is going on?" I asked Kato bewideringly.

"Bon, you remember that you knocked out Shinohara's kid at the bath house just a while ago? Guess what. Shinohara's second man came over to nag, 'Are you aware that your Bon beat up our Bon? How are you going to settle this?' Then our old man spurned him, "If you wanna pay us out for what my son has done to your Bon, we'll take it. Anytime, man.' That's how it's happened," Kato explained in a loud voice, and added, "Bon, I'm so glad that you beat him up. Don't worry. We'll fix them all."

There came my father from his second home and asked me, "What was the cause of your fight?" I explained what happened at the bath house. "Oh, you fought to protec Yu? Very well. You're great," he said. His satellites agreed, and synchronized in commending me, "Bon, you're great."

Ordinary parents would have scolded their child if they had gotten into a fight, no matter what its cause might be. But in my home, what counted was the cause. As long as the cause stood to my home's reason, whoever fought the fight would be praised. The reason entertained by my family and people around it was as simple as: "Whenever a relation or follower of the family was beaten or killed, take his revenge on whoever has done it, even if the fault is with us. The one who doesn't revenge is a scum." So I had never been dressed down for the mere fact of having a fight.

My dad was exceptionally aggresive in this gang strife and whipped up his men to stay overwhelmingly aggressive and never to let the conflicting group take an upper hand.

The reason he was so aggresive was that he underrated Shinohara-kai which was a much smaller organization than his own. It was one of my dad's characteristics to change his attitudes depending on who he was fighting against. When he judged he could overwhelm the foe, his aggresiveness saw almost no limits. When the Teramura Gumi went into a big gangland strife with the Yamaguchi Gumi (one of the largest Yakuza syndicates in Japan) much later, he was far from aggressive. He was quick in sizing up his contestants.

There were several skirmishes with the enemy. Henchmen of both sides were running around with shot guns and swords. Unlike today's Yakuza strifes mostly counting on one-on-one type of combats or assaults by a small group of hitmen, Yakuza rumbles were fought collectively in those days. So masses of combatants went into direct contact, trying to overpower each other by way of fistfights or use of weapons. With a kids' fight being its cause to begin with, the strife came to an end after the Shinohara-kai had offered an apology to Teramura. I presume that Shinohara probably gave up some of its beats to Teramura.

As shown in this strife, Yakuza fights were driven by two distinct motives at work: 1) a reason-oriented principle on which they sought to save their face (honor) even by intervening in kids' petty fights; and 2) a more realistic, political consideration which would make use of every opportunity, even kids' fights, to bite off somebody else's beats. And what makes it interesting is that these two motives often get mixed up and sometimes even the very parties to the strife end up being unable to tell on which principle they are acting indeed. The one fought against Shinohara was a typical case.

I remember that working or getting a job appealed to me at the age of 14 or 15 as something that would qualify me as a grown-up; hence something admirable. I decided to work for my dad's company as a part-timer on Sundays and during summer vacations, for I had more energy generated within my body than I could handle. It was fun to work with my family's henchmen and 'tobi' scaffolding men at demolition sites. Also I wanted to earn my pocket money on my own, without placing an extra burden on my mother who was making shift.

Demolition work of those days was a world of artisans, completely different from the present days' artless work of annihilation by dinosauric power shovels. When we were to dismantle a house, we went through the whole course the carpenters had once gone in building that house, but just in the opposite direction, that is, starting with ripping off the roofings and ending with removing the foundations. In the couse, we took the utmost care to disassemble various components ranging from pillars and other pieces of lumber to the tiniest of nails, so that they would be all recyclable. When a young apprentice pulled nails crooked, a senior henchman would in no time run up to the spot and give him a good whaling, "You bugger! Don't do things by halves!" It was a manifestation of an artisan spirit of the workers who took pride in doing even trivia like pulling nails to the best of their skills and putting their whole heart and soul into it--the right way.

A common trait among these workers was their aversion to the attachment to life or protection of their body. The tendecy was particularly notable among 'tobi' scaffolding men who engaged in risky work at high places. They thought that it was a matter of course to risk their life to rescue his colleagues from danger. I have personally seen several workers falling from high places and getting badly injured in their attempt to save collegues. It was not unusual to see senior workers, who had spoken very ill of junior workers, wage their own flesh and blood for his younger colleagues in danger. I presume that self-sacrifice in such a situation was part of the 'tobi' society's tradition since the Edo era; but at any rate their acts and mentality to stake their life for others just electrified me.

They were quite careless of their health and body. Workers often got injured by stepping on used, rusty nails scattered all over the demolition site. I myself had once stepped on a 6-inch long nail and had it pierce through my foot. A wound by rusty nails required proper treatment as it was likely to induce tetanus. They did give me a treatment, but it was as slovenly as anything. They cut a matchstick short, pierced it through the wound until its head showed out of the perforation, and lit it. Voila!

It hurt. Beyond description. But I couldn't utter a cry expressive of pain, because I knew they would have told me off, "Don't be a crybaby! It's nothing." If I had dawdled over putting my 'tabi' shoe back on, they would have bawled me out, "Don't be long about it. You, laggard!" Young workers were always subject to continual thrashes and nags.

Through my experience of working together with the members of the Teramura family, I discovered new merits in them. Till then, I had only known them through their unbridled aspects like gambling and rumbles. They were completely differenct at work, looking so intent on their duties. My dad, too, was quite an artisan and a serious worker. But what really impressed me was their 'Otokogi' or dandism, you might say. They regarded their bonds with his colleagues and associates higher than their own life, and they were always prepared to sacrifice all their interests for the sake of junior people.

Such dandism appealed to me as something that I should emulate. For that reason and otherwise, I really liked and enjoyed working on construction sites so as to continue my part time job throughout my junior and senior high school days.

As I spent more time working with the Teramura guys, they began to recognize me as one of them. When was in the eighth grade, there was an incident that changed the henchmen's view towards me. It was at a Dango conference held at a high-class Japanese restaurant to discuss in advance the bid arrangements for a demolition contract. My father had previously received several contracts for the work executed in the Osaka area from some public agencies like the Osaka Mint Bureau. The 'Dango' held this time was over another big project in Osaka.

"Your old man wants you to come along with him to a Dango meeting," one of the apparentice henchmen came to my school for me one day. The first thing I thought was, "Now it's my turn to become a boy commando." This role used to be played by my elder brother. But now that he had turned himself into a Yakuza after quitting Ritsumeikan University, my turn finally came around.

Back in those days, Yakuza was still a rough trade, so Dango meetings would not come to an end through civil negotiations, but the bid was to be won by muscle. To snatch the bid, one needed to intimidate the others into thinking out of fear, "This guy is crazy. He may even kill me if I go against his will." The quickest old trick was to rain blows one or some of the competitors, without warning, by trumping up charges on a trivial thing, saying, "What the fuck do you think you're saying." It looked like my dad had resorted to the trick quite often.

Although quite effective on the Yakuza, the trick had a drawback when it was applied to non-Yakuza competitors. It didn't look too good for a Yakuza to openly beat up solid citizens, in the first place. Even worse, the victim might run to the police. To dodge a lawsuit, therefore, they needed one who was a solid citizen and a minor--somebody like me.

Squatting on the 'tatami' in the grand hall of the restaurant that night were over a dozen of would-be bidders. Being bosses of their own construction business, all the guys carried a kingly air and radiated a powerful aura. They would never pass as solid citizens--no way. And they were all in extremely gaudy jackets and knickers, which unmistakably attested that it was nothing but a 'Dango' meeting. I wore a pair of knickers which I had changed in haste from my school uniform, and I sat next to my dad who was in his pair of knickers, of course.

The meeting started with quarrels in which threatening words and bellows flew around, although they did not develop into a fistfight at that time. The exchange of words taking place there put me in a tremor of excitement, making the caustic words I had used against my juvenile opponents theretofore look like a happy conversation by a fireside. Anyway, after a while, all the Yakuza-looking competitors backed down, because they had already reached an agreement with my dad beforehand. He kept threatening and coaxing the non-Yakuza competitors, and finally got them to agree, except one who had come from Shikoku.

"You know, I came all the way from Shikoku. I can't afford to go home empty-handed...," he insisted.

Looking sick of listening to the guy, my dad said to me in whispers, "Go give him a bust." Dad had warned me ahead of time that I might run into some rough situation like this. So I reluctantly rose to my feet and paced to the guy from Shikoku. A mere thought of getting the all attention of all the people there made me feel very nervous. I felt as if I had been walking on top of the clouds or something. I mustered up my courage to holler out, "Hey, you dotard! Save your breath to cool your porridge. Fucker!" I slapped him in the cheek. It was hell of a hard cheek.

He blushed his already reddish fat face and finally yelled with his mouth quivering, "Jeeze, you punk. What the fuck are you doing to me?" I was sure that he was a weathered construction man gutsy enough to come so far as Osak from Shikoku to seek a job, though he was not a Yakuza. But the shock from being slapped by a kid threw him out of his stride. He suddenly became dispirited.

Well I guess he must have found it rediculous to get into a serious quarrel with a kid. Or he might have thought "Just a bit of resistance on my part invited such an assault by the kid, then no guarantee that they wouldn't go so far as to put me away, if I persisted any longer." The rest of the competitors were watching, with a smiling face, the progress of our horse trading. In the end my dad's company got the better of the other bidders. Then he went on to distribute the 'Dango' money equally among the failing participants. He also gave me a considerable sum as pocket-money.

A temporary casino was set up in the hall after the 'Dango' meeting. To my astonishment, that man from Shikoku was enjoying himself in the game just like anybody else, with no trace of the shock shown when slapped by me. I couldn't make out how come he was able to gamble with sang-froid after that much fierce 'Dango' negotiations. Dad later told me, "A thing like 'Dango' is a one-shot game, so no preplanning will help much. You can never tell what's gonna happen a minute later. No matter how much you thrust even at the risk of your own life, if there is somebody stronger than you, then that's it." It finally dawned upon me that it was a sink-or-swim kind of game where people acted on the principle of 'Do your best. And if it doesn't work, just give up.'

Dad inquiringly said to me, "So did it tell you anything about the construction business?" Dad probably meant it to be part of my on-the-job training. On a later day, Teramura's henchmen were very pleased with the success in the bidding and severally said to me, "Bon, you did a great job." I kept my cool on the surface, but I was quite delighted at heart, because I had a feeling that they had accepted me as one of the Teramura members, rather than a Bon.

The logic of the Teramura family was interminably simple. Everybody in the family, be it a child or woman, had a role of his/her own, and in our own roles we were expected to go out and bring back a job, irrespective of the means. And we distributed the cash from the job among the rest of the family. It was that simple a logic on which the family acted on. It was a logic of outright self-partiality as well as a self-contained logic. The intra-family relations, therefore, were all the more thick and high in their intensity and voltage. We shared burdens, too. We all carried those burdens on our shoulders in unison. It was the logic of the poor.

I spent my junior school days going back and forth between such a family and school.