Entry 01. ”There Are No Small Promises.”
When I was a young reporter, circa 1995, I made an appointment with a Sumiyoshikai (住吉会)boss, Kaneko Naoya, at his office in Minami-Ginza at 7pm. I showed up at 7:20. And Kaneko was pissed. Unreasonably so, or so I thought.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” I said apologizing.
“Why were you late?”
“I had some work to do.”
“Why didn’t you call?”
“I guess I should have.”
“No, ‘I guess I should have’ isn’t good enough. You should have at least called. And you should have been here when you said you would be here in the first place.”
I bowed my head and apologized again.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were so busy.”
“I’m not busy,” he laughed. “That’s not the point.”
“Then why are you so pissed?”
“Because you promised you would be here at 7pm.”
“Is it such a big deal? It was a little promise. (大した約束でもないでしょう)”.
He was silent for a second and then stared me in the eyes, and said, “There are no small promises. You need to learn this now if you’re going to be a good reporter and if you’re going to walk in and out of our world. If you’re going to be a man. Trust is built on little promises and it can all be lost by failure to live up to them. All promises are important. Do you know the saying, 武士に二言はない–bushi ni nigon wa nai? *Literally—A samurai does not have a second word.
I said I wasn’t familiar with the proverb and asked him what it meant.
“It means this: a samurai values his honor, his good faith more than anything and once he has given his word, once he has made a promise he always keeps that promise. If you say it, you do it. I’m not saying I’m a samurai but this is what an honorable man does. If you didn’t think you could have been here exactly at 7pm you shouldn’t have said that you would. “
I was a little pissed when I heard this, the way anyone is when he or she gets lectured. I thought he was just being a cantankerous old bastard or giving me crap because he could.
“I’ll say it again—I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep my promise.”
“Could not or did not? Which is it?”
And before I opened my big yap one more time, I thought about it again. I’d spent too much time at a bookstore on the way there. I stopped to have a can of coffee. I could have been there on time—I wasn’t. For him, my answer was going to be critical in his decision if he could really trust me. I could feel that.
“Did not. I’m sorry I did not come here on time. I do not have an excuse. I will try not to do it again.
(二回と同じ失敗しないよう頑張ります.).”
He offered me a cup of tea and smiled.
“That was almost the right answer. Don’t try, just do it.
（惜しかったな。がんばるんじゃないよ。やるんだよ。約束を守るんです。）
He then very politely explained to me why I should pay attention to his words.
“When you’re a yakuza or a reporter or a cop, people count on you to keep your word, to do what you’ve said you’ll do. In our business, sometimes we got to war—over turf, over money, over a meaningless quarrel. But that’s part of the business. If we’re going to bump heads with the Kokusuikai and one of my soldiers says that he’ll be at his post at seven pm sharp and he’s not there—what do you think will happen? Maybe the guy he’s supposed to back up will have to go in alone—maybe his buddy will get killed. Maybe we’ll lose the chance to make the strike. Apologies don’t cut it. You’re a reporter, you have deadlines. If you don’t meet your deadline—what happens? Can you just blow it off? Do you think your editor will just say, ‘no problem, we’ll just leave part of the paper blank.’ I don’t think so. You can get fired for things like that. I don’t know how it is in America, and maybe I don’t know how it is for the civilians but for us, a man’s word is the most important thing in the world. You need to learn not to promise things lightly and to know the difference between promises you can’t keep and promises you don’t keep. Nine times out of ten, the failure to keep a promise is in yourself, not something you can blame on the world.”
I nodded once more but I think I smirked a little and he raised his finger and pointed at me quite forcefully and said, “And when you break a promise, you need to show in your attitude that you are sincerely sorry. And you should try to make amends.”
“What would you like me to do?”
“I’d like you to listen to what I’ve told you and take it to heart. If people don’t think they can trust you, you will never be a good reporter. You have to show them that they can trust you. Every little promise you keep, every time you’re punctual, every time you do something that you said you would do—you build trust. And every missed appointment, every favor you forget, every loan you fail to repay, every time you say you’ll call and don’t—these things add up. You do some things right. But you still don’t get it. Think about what I’m saying. And we’ll call it even.”
Kaneko passed away years ago and I’m still not batting a hundred on keeping my promises. I still fail to keep them but I try my best to uphold them and when I can’t do it, I try to make amends as best as I can. Lately, I’ve been so bombarded with work and other things, that I have a very hard time keeping up to date or writing back to everyone who’s read the book and is kind enough to send me a letter. I haven’t promised I’d respond to each person but I do a feel a duty to do it—it seems like the bare minimum of required politeness.
Honor is a hard currency to trade in. There are promises and debts that can lock you down and not let you go. In the thick of a scary time in my life, I promised Mochizuki-san, ex-yakuza boss, my friend, bodyguard and driver—that no matter what happened I would look after him and his family. And he promised that he’d lay down his life for me if he had to, and that if he failed to do his job, he’d find the person who took me out and kill him. Sure, it’s pretty melodramatic crap but that’s how it went. I meant what I said and he meant what he said. It can be a cumbersome thing.
Sometimes, I’d like to leave Japan and not come back but I owe the man and his family. And until I’m reasonably sure that he, his wife and their son are taken care of, I can’t leave. When he had to move out of his apartment on short notice, I put up the money for his moving expenses. When his car broke down, I bought him another one. I’m not wealthy but these things are essential and I scrambled each time to find the money so I could keep what I see is part of my promise to him. He has severe diabetes and that means that a minor injury can set in motion a chain of events that might result in him losing his hands or his feet. Necrosis. He’s in the hospital today. He bought a new pair of shoes and they didn’t fit well and in a short time, his foot was severely infected. It’s touch and go whether they’ll amputate or not. I’m hoping they won’t have to do it. But even then, I’ll still take care of him. I’ll find work for him, even if he can’t walk.
It’s the same way with the Polaris Project Japan. I said I’d be a director on the board and that I would take on certain duties. Honestly, I want out of that as well, sometimes. Valuable things come out of the work but it’s hard. Last week, the information brought to us about a homosexual pedophile ring that makes child pornography was so horrible and unpleasant that it made me physically ill. The informant wanted us to validate the evidence before going to the cops, and he showed it to us. Horrible, horrible, horrible. Some of what we deal with gives me flashbacks that keep me up for days. However, I said I’d do it and I’m not going to back out just because in retrospect that promise is slightly detrimental to my mental health or I didn’t quite see what I would get myself into.
God knows, there are some promises that I have colossally failed to uphold. My marriage vows would be up there. I could argue that I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into, but I don’t have a good excuse. No one put a gun to my head. I could argue that I’m not solely at fault but so what? It doesn’t matter. All I can do is make amends for that—I’ll be paying them off financially, emotionally, and in many other ways for the rest of my life. And I should. Not all promises are stated either. There are some promises that are understood. Journalists have an unstated promise that they will protect their sources. The sources don’t have to protect the journalist. And I can’t say I expect them to do it. Promises are often unilateral. And sometimes honor.
As a journalist, I have a promise to protect my sources and my friends and family. I have gone to extraordinary lengths to do that and I have done some terrible things in the process. I don’t regret keeping that promise. I only regret the times I have been unable to do it. Those are the things that haunt me.
The thing is that the damages people can suffer are immense, when you fail to do your job and honor your word as a journalist. If you blow a cop source, he might be disciplined, fired, or since technically they could be seen as violating the government worker confidentiality laws–they might even go to jail. If you don’t conceal a yakuza source–they might be expelled temporarily from their organization, banished for life, or just vanish, completely. If you are careless with government sources, they might be demoted, fired or harassed for the rest of their careers. Sometimes, to protect a source you have to kill a story. I’ve done it before. But I’d rather lose the story than lose what little honor I have left. There will always be other news. People only have one life.
Even when we realize that we’ve made shortsighted, foolish, or difficult promises–it’s doesn’t nullify the promise. If we could retroactively change every promise we didn’t like or wish we hadn’t made—a vow wouldn’t mean anything at all. Of course, it’s hard to learn to not make those promises in the first place. Maybe that’s even harder than keeping a promise, learning the gravitas of our words. But when you break them, no matter how foolish they might have been–if you don’t at least regret it and ponder it, you haven’t yet learned anything. And ultimately that lack of regret makes a person untrustworthy and prone to do it again. People remember every missed appointment, every casually promised thing not delivered, or book not returned. Just as they remember every little favor you have done, or kindness you have bestowed upon them, or little promise to them that you kept. These all add up when we judge a person and ourselves and how others judge us as well. And if they don’t, they should.
I don’t have many close friends and it’s probably because I hold people to the same standards that I try to live up to. Maybe that’s not fair. I don’t know. But the people who are my close friends, are invariably very good about keeping their word. They don’t forget. They pay their debts. Alien Cop (as I still think of him) may be a little shady, but if he says for example, “Oh, I have a good book about the new revisions of the organized crime laws. I’ll bring it to you next time we go drinking”—well, he will bring it. I almost never have to remind him. If he says he’ll do it, he does it. If he says, “I’ll call you back tomorrow”—he calls. It’s not a big deal, but over time, his pattern of behavior has established that he is trustworthy. I don’t really believe that there are no small promises but each one has considerable weight.
The keeping your word thing has a lot to do with leadership, I think. There are hundreds of crappy books written about leadership. I haven’t read many that impressed me. I’m not a leader. I work best alone with a small group of people. And I also believe if you have people following you, then you should know where the hell you are going. I have a terrible sense of direction, the proverbial sense and the literal sense, what the Japanese would call a方向音痴 (hook-onchi). Well, actually, I’m not bad navigating on horseback and out in the wild but unfortunately I don’t really have the space for a horse here.
However, I’ll defer to what Shibata-kumicho once told me about what it means to be a yakuza boss. I’ve internalized the words so well, that I forget they are not my own.
“If you are a leader, the people who follow you have to know that you are as good as your word and that you won’t leave them stranded behind and that if you did, you’d make every effort in the world come back for them. Or that at the very least, you wouldn’t forget about them—that you’d agonize over the decision. Otherwise, no one will follow you. The measure of a man is the promises he’s kept and the promises he hasn’t. In the end, that all we have. Our honor, our memories and the decisions we’ve made.”
I’m not a cop, or a samurai, or a yakuza but I admire some of their ideals. Maybe, I’ll come close to living up to them someday.
.
29 Comments
An honest and true post. Our Man tries to be honorable (when he’s not taking the piss) or at least honest. Trust is the highest reward anyone can bestow. Living up to that trust is the hard part.
It’s not every day that Our Man blesses the website with his approval. Thank you very much. I wholeheartedly agree.
“A samurai does not have a second word.” What a great code to live by. Leave it to a yakuza (or a Don Corleone, for that matter) to inspire us to be nobler.
(BTW, at first, I read it as “a second sword,” which makes a certain amount of sense if you think of a sword as an extension or symbol of the warrior’s honor. A warrior only has one sword. Right? Sure. But then you remember samurai carried two swords, and your head starts to hurt, and you hate yourself a little, and you curl up on the couch and cry.)
PS – Working alone or in a small group doesn’t mean you’re not a leader. Leadership doesn’t require followers.
Nice point (pun intended). Well, the samurai also used to do things like test their new swords on the peasants and as we all know–many of them were just hired killers. Some of them used their zen-training to make themselves better heartless and efficient killers as well. Some scholars say that yakuza were founded by locals to protect their communities from rampaging samurai. Karate in Okinwawa where weapons were banned, originally is supposed to have been practiced by peasants so they could fight the samurai as well. One never knows whether to believe these things or not but there are some writings about Karate which say that the two most important elements used to be the powerful fist to break the lower part of the samurai armor, followed by the knife-like nukite, which then went into the soft spot the punch created into the inner organs of the samurai, killing them. Even the so-called karate chop was allegedly designed to be able break the neck of aforementioned samurai–through a weak spot in their armor or simply to break the neck if there was an opening.
The ideal of something and the reality of it are always far apart. Most yakuza spout the “honor” crap and have none. Just as in any organization, there are always some exceptional individuals that follow the code they’Ve established and live up to it.
And there are some “good” yakuza. Not enough to justify their existence but enough to make the Japanese believe they are an instrument of social justice, at times. And maybe some of them are.
Ironically, there at least two yakuza I trust more than I trust so-called 堅気 (civilians). One of them is actually no longer a yakuza–not able to keep up with the “money is honor” modern yakuza and the other stays in the business because he sees himself as the person keeping his misfit children in line or perhaps because he knows that when he leaves, some thing much worse will replace him.
If leadership doesn’t require followers–well ,then, I might be a leader.(lol). I’d rather just have “followers” on Twitter than in real life.
This was a fantastic post, thanks.
What a great post. Thanks.
Rick,
Thank you. And you have a great blog. http://cookdingskitchen.blogspot.com/
Taoism/Daoism is a fascinating thing. THE TAO IS SILENT is one of my favorite books on the subject and your writings about it are also extremely enjoyable.
It had one line that I’ve pondered often.
“Do you think of altruism as sacrificing one’s own happiness for the sake of others, or as gaining one’s happiness through the happiness of others?”
I had made a promise to myself to decrease my twits and blogs, but this blog was so meaningful to me, I have to break this promise. Just as you said, promises should be made only if you agree to keep them. I cannot restate what you said in a way that is more meaningful than you did in this blog. I still feel I partially understand you, but I know I do not. Because of that I probably have made comments to you that don’t make sense or insult you. I promise you that I will not send you those kind of comments, again. Promises are exactly what you stated.
Please don’t give up the good parts of your life.
Larry
This post hits home with me, especially because I have 5 children that I’m responsible for raising. I know that my example, how I keep or fail to keep my word, will pass on to them and so I try very hard to stick to my word. Like you, I’m not batting 100%, but that doesn’t mean I don’t try.
Also, with regard to your friend Mochizuki-san, diabetes can be pretty brutal. The problem is, once the damage has been done, it’s nigh impossible to reverse. Amputation is sadly the most common choice of action in cases like that, not because it fixes any problem, but because it prevents the spread of infection or further necrosis. The best thing he can do, is work on getting his blood sugars regulated, then his body will do its part to prevent infection and further damage. All in all though, the general rule of thumb is: “if the tissue is dead, it’s dead.” There is a lot of research going on in an attempt to solve the revascularization process of limbs with poor circulation, but it’s only been in the elementary stages of research since the last few years. Some of it, from what I understand (and I’m no expert) involves the use of Hyperbaric Oxygen Chambers.
Wish there was more I could do to help, but I myself am a type 1 diabetic and may be facing the same thing as Mochizuki-san in the, hopefully distant, future.
Yes. Is a very heavy word.
Thanks for the reminder…
[Came in from Roland's site.]
All things being equal, Yes is about two tons heavier than No. Except in outer space.
If Roland’s site brought you here, I owe the man another beer. Thanks for writing in.
Outstanding piece. I agree completely.
You, Jake -san, are an honorable man. Tis is a moving piece about something that many people take for granted, myself included. I do try to keep promises, but only if i say I promise. But some promises go unstated, and you can pretend like it doesn’t meaning because you never gave it words, but the breaking of such promises can have real world repercussions as i’m sure we all have learned the hard way…at least I have. Thanks for the reminder of their importance.
Loco
Thanks for writing. I wish some people could understand that consistently not honoring your word is a deal breaker in a relationship. Because when people won’t do what they say they’ll do, how can you believe anything they say? Broken promises turn the words spoken before into lies. Break enough promises and you’re not just unreliable, you’re essentially a liar. I can appreciate the honesty of people who admit to breaking a promise but without genuine remorse and attempt to amend what they’ve done, they’ve just been honest about the fact that they’re essentially dishonest. I know–circular reasoning in a sense. Perhaps so. I wish that you could teach people that there some binding promises that you cannot just explain away. But maybe they only learn that when they’ve been betrayed themselves, enough times.
A Very well written post on self reflection and self actualization, I admire you for having the courage and passion for trying to keep your promises and looking after your benefactors. Magnanimosity is what I have for you Jake. I hope that you will keep your fighting spirit up and may the lights of Enlightenment shine upon you one day.
BTW: You have the same proverb in French:
‘Un homme d’honneur n’a qu’une parole’
Thanks for the post, I completely agree with you.
Without honour, on our own we are
With honour we have our word as solace
On our word some threads are uncut
Our word on our sleeves, hearts hidden.
Thank you for the proverb, I had someone who speaks French read it to and translate it for me. It’s a good one.
Thanks Daruma-san. I try, sometimes I succeed.
Jake, I just finished your book moments ago and came to your site. This was the first post I happened to read and it was quite a good one. It seems to me that in these times, and it may just be the people I hang around with, are not too good on their word. Last weekend I had 3 people break promises on three occasions. A simple phone call would have sufficed at a proper time, but not 15 minutes before our plans. None of them are bad people by any means, but it does make you think twice about asking people in the first place. I myself am not perfect but I do strive to stick to my word. Increasingly I believe that people do not live up to honor, or to be more exact, even have an idea of it.
I graduated December 2008 and had written my senior thesis on honor codes…comparing those of the east and west, Budo and Chivalry, and how this bled through in modern society with film. Part of my thesis even addressed what I called “anti-honor” codes, like that of the Yakuza or Mafia. Too bad your book wasn’t around then as it would have been cited! Anyways I just wanted to say I really loved your book and I look forward to checking out your website in the future…this post has sold me.
Would love to read your thesis sometime. Thanks for writing.
jake
Thanks, that would be great…should I just send it the email under the “About Us” tab above?
Hi Jake,
I just finished your book “Tokyo Vice”. I found it both enjoyable and informative. I have spent about a total of eight years in Japan, however I never had the occasion to expose myself to the seedier side of Japan, described in your book. I never had enough money to patronize the places or associate with the type persons that you describe, but I don’t doubt that they exist.
The only thing that I would like to express is intended for persons who have not lived in Japan. You can visit or live in Japan without ever being exposed to the criminal elements described in this book. Generally crime is not an issue in Japan, unless you go looking for it. You just use common sense and steer clear of it as you would any other place in te world.
Again, I enjoyed your book….G Miles
Miles-san,
Thanks for writing in. You are right–if you don’t go looking for trouble, Japan is a very safe place. However, sometimes even the pure of heart may find that trouble finds them even when they don’t go looking for it.
The yakuza make a big show of being honorable, live up to their word,etc… but their profits come from sad sleazy exploitive activities. The official yak members are not running the businesses but of course the yakuza are there protecting, guiding and financing these things every step of the way correct? I think most of the business owners start by getting some small assistance from the yakuza and then find themselves slowing getting pushed deeper and deeper into a situation where they can’t back out. One japanese guy I know borrowed 50 mln jpy, and by an amazing coincidence that night his house was robbed and he’s still paying back the money 15 years later. hmm…
Do you have any insight into the elderly investment scams? My japanese mother-in-law lost half of her life savings to an investment scam two year ago. The organizers collected retired people’s investment into a legit registered company, and then as we started making calls everyone involved just disappeared. We retained a lawyer, who I was sincerely impressed to see go up against a yakuza backed company for very little personal gain, and actually won a court judgement. Then the bad news a few weeks later when the lawyer informed us there was no way to collect as he could not locate the individuals or recover any money as the police would not offer any assistance in enforcing a court order. The police had absolutely ZERO interest any step of the process from doing any action. It seems they don’t get out of the koban unless there are physical casualities. There has been quite a bit of media coverage of scams affecting old people but after talking to many involved people it appears the police and government in general has absolutely no will in taking any action to change things. I think things won’t change unless Japan creates an FBI/ICAC type agency.
Scott-san,
You said it very well. I completely agree with you. 15 years. Good god that’s a long time. Almost as long as my marriage. Maybe it’s time for your Japanese friend to stop paying. He should speak to the cops. I’d like to talk to your lawyer friend, if I may. I’m curious about the case and why the cops won’t help or can’t help.
The idea of being lectured about honor by a crime lord is fabulously ironic.
The whole notion of society rests, it seems, on cooperative behavior, on a set of “rules” which, if followed, gain more for each of us than we could accomplish on our own (we see the germ of it in ant colonies and dog packs and ape tribes). The business of trusting / relying on others is a bedrock part of human society itself; so I guess it’s not odd to find that the subcultures of society must follow a portion or variant of those same rules.
But I’m also reminded of something I read some years back from Stephen Pinker or Richard Dawkins, to the effect that there is an opening in this setup for a small minority to take advantage by flouting those same rules. These are often people who are marginal in some way, people who do not stand to benefit particularly from playing by the rules; and from a strictly Darwinian sense these people are “failing” if they do not do whatever is necessary to maximize their potential, even if it requires wandering into the antisocial.
Thanks for the food for thought.
Bought the book after finding out about it via Boing-Boing. Felt 100% assured after seeing Barry Eisler’s back cover blurb. The book is totally engrossing so far.
I once freaked out a Nationalist in 1994 who used to preach in an SS officer’s uniform near Akihabara about “the Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and other anti-Jew nonsense but explaining to him that Japanese are Jewish. The clincher were the words that are nearly identical in both Hebrew and Japanese. Tori meaning bird; Japanese “samurau” means to guard the noble compared to the Hebrew “shamar” means to guard. The word later became samurai. I told him the Emperor knew and that is why 12,000 Jews were sent to Osaka and Shanghai and rescued from the Nazis. I think he wet his pants. My sincerity scared him more the possibility I spoke the truth.
Thanks, Alan
Alan,
I love your story. I have an entire anti-Jew thread on 2-chan devoted to my life and work. Maybe, I’ll start insisting that the Japanese are actually the lost tribe of Israel.
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[...] Jake Adelstein writes of his experience as crime reporter in Japan in two juicy entries titled Everything I Ever Really Needed to Know I learned From The Yakuza or The Cops 1 & 2 [...]
[...] There Are No Small Promises: Even when we realize that we’ve made shortsighted, foolish, or difficult promises–it’s doesn’t nullify the promise. If we could retroactively change every promise we didn’t like or wish we hadn’t made—a vow wouldn’t mean anything at all. Of course, it’s hard to learn to not make those promises in the first place. Maybe that’s even harder than keeping a promise, learning the gravitas of our words. But when you break them, no matter how foolish they might have been–if you don’t at least regret it and ponder it, you haven’t yet learned anything. And ultimately that lack of regret makes a person untrustworthy and prone to do it again. People remember every missed appointment, every casually promised thing not delivered, or book not returned. Just as they remember every little favor you have done, or kindness you have bestowed upon them, or little promise to them that you kept. These all add up when we judge a person and ourselves and how others judge us as well. And if they don’t, they should. No Comments by Huiwei on January 26, 2010 filed in Culture, Reflections tagged Honour, Link, Promises, Yakuza « Previous postOne thing I am certain of, I do not want to be betrayed Next post »I don’t know. [...]