Female yakuza on path to redemption

58-year-old Nishimura now helps ex-gangsters return to society, writes AFP

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A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few women yakuza.

But after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society.

The multi-billion-dollar yakuza organised crime network has long ruled over Japan's drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade.

In recent years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and anti-mafia laws are tightened.

An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records began in 1958.

Heavily inked with dragon and tiger tattoos, 58-year-old Nishimura navigated the yakuza’s patriarchal hierarchy — where brute force and authoritarian leadership reign — on and off for three decades.

Rival gangsters “looked down on me just because I was a woman, which I hated,’ she told AFP at her cramped apartment in central Japan’s Gifu region.

“I wanted to be acknowledged as a yakuza,’ she said. “So I learned to speak, look and fight like a man.”

Nishimura says she was officially recognised by authorities as the first woman yakuza after she was jailed for drug possession when she was 22.