Shoko Tendo – Yakuza Daughter (Part TWO of THREE)
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___Interview:
__Shoko
__Tendo
–on growing
_.up in the
–seamy world
_of Japanese
._gangsters
By David McNeill
___November 11th, 2007
_-_THE INDEPENDENT
_in the seamy world of Japanese
_Part TWO of THREE
Plastic surgery has
helped reconstruct her face,
but her health is delicate and
she is recovering from another
operation.
Tendo worshipped her father,
an Armani-clad yakuza gangster,
and grew up in a world most
ordinary Japanese people
never see.
She recalls one incident
from her childhood,
when a young gangster
came to their door and tried
to hand his severed little finger
to her father –
a traditional method of
yakuza atonement.
“My mother tried
to shield my eyes,
but I could still see the blood
dripping from his hand.”
“My dad was furious
and split the guy’s head
open with an object in the hall.”
“He said,
‘Why did you cut your finger off?
You need it for work.'”
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Throughout her childhood,
Tendo listened to romantic
stories about the yakuza code
of honour and its role in society.
It is a role she defends,
despite the mob’s involvement
in prostitution,
drugs,
real-estate scams and
even murder.
“You can see what happens
when they are run out of a place
such as Kabukicho,”
she explains,
referring to Tokyo’s biggest
red-light district.
“Other foreign gangsters move
in and it becomes chaotic and
disorganised.
It is better to have
them keeping order.”
Tendo credits a
“life-changing decision”
to get a tattoo for giving her
the mental strength to pull out
of her death-dive of disastrous
relationships.
“No more wimpy attitude,”
she writes about her first
visit to a tattoo parlour.
“It was time to start over.”
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Her body is now a rippling,
inky canvas of dragons,
flowers,
phoenixes and courtesans.
Tendo has never
regretted her tattoos,
despite having to keep almost
permanently covered up in a
country where they still retain
their lurid association with
the underworld.
But she struggles to explain
why they are so empowering,
or why she would deepen her
symbolic association with the
yakuza even as she cut
her physical ties.
“It’s difficult to put into words,”
she says.
“My father had a huge buddha
on his back and many of the
people who came to our house
had tattoos.”
“I knew that made them
different to ordinary people,
but also that the relationship
between them was stronger
than blood.”
“I guess I felt that this was
the world that I belonged to.
I felt at home there.”
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Today,
she is the single mother
of a two-year-old daughter who
she is raising while writing the
follow-up to Yakuza Moon.
Her partner is a photographer
and a far cry from the volatile
men who almost ruined her life.
“He’s almost comically different:
very gentle and almost feminine.
He freaks out when he sees
my tattoos and tells me to
cover them when we’re out.”
The next book will be partly
about the differences in their
upbringing,
his being in an ordinary
middle-class home.
What would she do if her
daughter came home with
a gangster?
She smiles.
“If he was a real traditional
type with manners and honour,
I’d be OK,
but I’d draw the
line at chinpira.
I’d have to protect her.”
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Shoko Tendo links in GREEN
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