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'The devil's child': the rise and fall of the only female yakuza -- The Guardian - Long Read
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/may/21/the-devils-child-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-only-female-yakuzaSean Williams
Mako Nishimura fought her way into the Japanese underworld, but drug addiction and the slow demise of organised crime gangs almost destroyed her
I enjoy these "The Long Reads" from The Guardian (I think they were in The Observer previously.) More in-depth coverage of some aspects of life that usually don't get much exposure.
In almost 40 years, Mako Nishimura never lost a fight. She told me this as if it were as obvious as night following day. Nishimura is 5ft-nothing and slight of build. She is also probably the only woman ever to have been a full-fledged yakuza, a member of Japan's feared and rule-bound criminal underworld. She must have defeated many male gangsters. How, I asked her, did she do it? "First the legs," she said, hands clasped, maintaining the calm demeanour of a village priest. "You cut him down with a club or a plank of wood." Then you get to work.
Nishimura's relaxed attitude to violence - you suspect, speaking to her, that it's a little more than that - is what first caught the attention of yakuza members in 1986, when she was a 19-year-old runaway and former juvenile-prison inmate living in Gifu, a city near Nagoya. One night that year, Nishimura received a phone call. A pregnant friend named Aya was in trouble. Nishimura grabbed a baseball bat, ran down the street and found Aya surrounded by five men. When one of them kicked Aya in the belly, Nishimura yelled for her friend to run, then went for the attackers with her bat.
By the time the police arrived, the attackers were covered in blood and Nishimura had fled. She went into hiding 170 miles away in Tokyo. A fortnight later, when she returned to Gifu, a local man approached her in a nightclub. He was a member of the Inagawa-kai, one of Japan's largest organised crime syndicates, and he wanted her to join. Nishimura was already in a biker gang called the Worst, who raced and robbed while dressed in the white jumpsuits of wartime kamikaze pilots. She was getting more deeply involved in serious crime, too, running sex workers and extorting local businesses, as well as selling - and taking - large quantities of methamphetamines. The Inagawa-kai man didn't have the right energy, Nishimura thought. She turned him down.
Yakuza life nonetheless appealed. It offered respect, protection and, above all, the opportunity to make big money. A few days later, another yakuza sent for Nishimura. His name was Ryochi Sugino, and he ran a Gifu affiliate of one of Japan's largest yakuza groups. Sugino was a convicted murderer but he was also charismatic and, somehow, paternal. Nishimura trusted him. "He had this aura," she said.
Aged 20, she and an underboss shared sake at the gang's downtown Gifu headquarters, a ritual known as sakazuki that formalised Nishimura's entry into the yakuza, and established her loyalty to Sugino until death. Now, as the saying went, if Sugino told Nishimura a crow was white, she would have to agree. She was proud of her new identity, she told me. "Everything that was yakuza-like, I would do."
. . .
Nishimura's relaxed attitude to violence - you suspect, speaking to her, that it's a little more than that - is what first caught the attention of yakuza members in 1986, when she was a 19-year-old runaway and former juvenile-prison inmate living in Gifu, a city near Nagoya. One night that year, Nishimura received a phone call. A pregnant friend named Aya was in trouble. Nishimura grabbed a baseball bat, ran down the street and found Aya surrounded by five men. When one of them kicked Aya in the belly, Nishimura yelled for her friend to run, then went for the attackers with her bat.
By the time the police arrived, the attackers were covered in blood and Nishimura had fled. She went into hiding 170 miles away in Tokyo. A fortnight later, when she returned to Gifu, a local man approached her in a nightclub. He was a member of the Inagawa-kai, one of Japan's largest organised crime syndicates, and he wanted her to join. Nishimura was already in a biker gang called the Worst, who raced and robbed while dressed in the white jumpsuits of wartime kamikaze pilots. She was getting more deeply involved in serious crime, too, running sex workers and extorting local businesses, as well as selling - and taking - large quantities of methamphetamines. The Inagawa-kai man didn't have the right energy, Nishimura thought. She turned him down.
Yakuza life nonetheless appealed. It offered respect, protection and, above all, the opportunity to make big money. A few days later, another yakuza sent for Nishimura. His name was Ryochi Sugino, and he ran a Gifu affiliate of one of Japan's largest yakuza groups. Sugino was a convicted murderer but he was also charismatic and, somehow, paternal. Nishimura trusted him. "He had this aura," she said.
Aged 20, she and an underboss shared sake at the gang's downtown Gifu headquarters, a ritual known as sakazuki that formalised Nishimura's entry into the yakuza, and established her loyalty to Sugino until death. Now, as the saying went, if Sugino told Nishimura a crow was white, she would have to agree. She was proud of her new identity, she told me. "Everything that was yakuza-like, I would do."
. . .