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  • The Guardian

    Going straight: the yakuza gangster who swapped the underworld for udon

    As crime syndicates lose their attraction, membership is falling and some are making a new life on the right side of the law
    by Justin McCurry in Kitakyushu Dec 17, 2018 4 minutes
    Takashi Nakamoto, a reformed yakuza, in the kitchen of his noodle restaurant Daruma-ya, in Kitakyushu, on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu. Photograph: Noboru Aoki/Shinchosha

    Takashi Nakamoto yells a friendly greeting from the kitchen when he spots a customer slide open the door to his restaurant, his face just visible through the steam rising from pots of stock and boiling water.

    As he slices leeks and shakes the residual water from another batch of al dente udon noodles, it is easy to miss the most conspicuous physical reminder of Nakamoto’s life before he opened his restaurant, Daruma-ya, in the gritty southwestern city of Kitakyushu in June last year.

    His missing pinkie is the legacy of three decades entrenched in Japan’s underworld, during which he rose from foot soldier to a senior position in the Kudo-kai, one of

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