Everything I Ever Needed To Know I Learned From the Yakuza or the Cops That Arrest Them #3: If you love your family, don't shoot yourself to death

A few weeks ago, a yakuza boss who I only knew vaguely shot himself to death. He was badly in debt and facing charges of extortion. I'm sure he was guilty.  I knew his son from a story I did years ago on a Korean-Japanese Savings and Loan Bank that had folded  (Saitama Shogin).

When I read the article about his death, I called the son and expressed my condolences. He was relatively calm about it all. He ran a pachinko parlor in Saitama and unlike his father had stayed out of organized crime.

"Y...