Viraj's Weblog

I've been on some long flights and just finished reading Toppamono. I had actually heard about this book after reading Yakuza Moon, which is a biography of a daughter of a yakuza in Japan. Yakuza is basically the Japanese mafia.

Toppamono is a biography of a son of a yakuza. Here are some quotes from the book about the word toppamono:

The word suggests "bulldozing one's way through," so a toppamono is someone with a devil-may-care attitude who pushes ahead regardless.

...

Toppa means being single-minded and bullheaded once you've decided your course of action, and as such it has both a positive and negative side. It's negative if the person is too single-minded to recognize that his actions are having an adverse effect. But it's positive if he holds his own and stays the course. At any event, toppa describes a man who charges forward without actually knowing where he is going. Given family considerations and social conventions, it's very hard to be toppa. But a small number stubbornly succeed, and while their reckless behavior is regarded with disdain, it also earns them a certain respect.

In general I liked the book but it was rather tiring in just how many street hustle stories there were. The author also spent a large part of the book covering his revolutionary activism during college, which generally consisted of lots of violent student organization clashes. It did however give a very good history of the the Japanese underground and gets the reader sympathetic towards such criminals.

After college the author starts working for the press. I thought this was an interesting quote about the press that very much relates to things in the U.S. as well:

Take the police beat, for example. There was a time when reporters used to be allowed into interrogation rooms to get their stories. Now one just sighs wistfully for the freedom and latitude of the past, when in any case journalists tended to go about their work more aggressively. These days, by relying primarily on official announcements, the main newspapers provide surprisingly uniform news coverage and are only able to differentiate themselves in the small details. In such an environment, reporters gradually equate reporting with receiving news supplied by the government. So prevalent is this attitude, and so many bad habits have developed as a consequence, you could say that freedom of the press has effectively been given a pain-free death.

Many other areas of the Japanese underworld were covered. Here is an interesting quote regarding geisha and their danna (patron). It shows what is at work underneath the pretty kimonos:

Once a young woman had snared her patron, the old ladies shifted their attention to seeing how much money she could get out of him before making a clean break. It never entered their heads that the girl might find long-term happiness as a second wife or mistress. There was a shrewd Asian realism at work that saw the young women as merchandisable commodities whose earnings would make it possible for the whole family to lead a better life - and as relatives, the old ladies wanted to get the highest price they could. It was a hopeless world, really. But everyone involved was quite straightforward about what they were doing and carried on matter-of-factly. Of course, girls did develop feelings for their patrons, but mercenary motives ruled in the end. In that sense, it was a world of uncompromising professionalism.

This history of Japan's real-estate bubble is also telling of similar times here:

... Speculation bred more speculation, resulting in a swelling balloon of false creditworthiness. It is interesting how money reveals its true nature as an abstract entity at times like this, when huge sums come into play. Its nihilistic character, usually unnoticed, is magnified for all to see.

When a move was made on a piece of land in the early days of the bubble, for example, the landowner would receive his sale price and the tenants forced to leave would be compensated. In other words, the movement of money was strictly tied to actual movements of land and people.

But at the peak of the bubble, money moved around irrespective of whether land or people did. No longer anchored in reality, money became an abstraction that behaved according to its own logic, entirely related to numbers. The world that seemed to be represented by money was illusory, a false one in which the intrinsic distinction between a genuine banknote and a counterfeit bill no longer existed; and one in which money did not reflect the effort individuals put in to earn it over a long period, or the suffering and hardships they endured to make a living. All around me, people rushed wildly about in search of these false rewards.

If you are interested in Japan's post-war underworld history, both Yakuza Moon and Toppamono are good books. The former is more personal and emotional, and the latter more historical.