Yubitsume (指詰め, 'finger shortening') is a Japanese ritual to atone for offenses to another, a way to be punished or to show sincere apology and remorse to another, by means of amputating portions of one's own little finger. In modern times, it is primarily performed by the yakuza, one of the most prominent Japanese criminal organizations.
The act of committing yubitsume is also referred to as yubi o tobasu (指を飛ばす), meaning 'finger flying' ('he made his finger fly').
Origin[edit]
The ritual is thought to have originated with the bakuto, itinerant gamblers who were predecessors of the modern yakuza.[1] If a person was unable to pay off a gambling debt, yubitsume was sometimes considered an alternative form of repayment.[1]
The yakuza, Japan’s organized crime groups, have close to 79,000 members. It’s very hard to understand why they are tolerated in Japanese society and not simply banned. Part of the reason for this is that for many years the yakuza observed, to some extent, a set of internal codes which made them.
In Japanese swordsmanship, or Kendo, the little finger's grip is the tightest on the hilt. A little finger-amputee was therefore unable to grip his sword properly, weakening him in battle and making him more dependent on the protection of his boss.[1]
Ritual details[edit]
To perform yubitsume, one lays down a small clean cloth and lays the hand onto the cloth facing down. Using an extremely sharp knife, or tantō, the person cuts off the portion of his left little finger above the top knuckle on the finger or the tip of the finger. He then wraps the severed portion in the cloth and submits the 'package' very graciously to his oyabun ('godfather' or boss), who is also referred to as a kumicho (gang-leader).
If more offenses are committed, then the person moves on to the next joint of the finger to perform yubitsume. More infractions could mean removing portions of the right little finger when no more joints of the left finger remain. In some cases, a person expelled from a yakuza gang might be required to perform the yubitsume ritual.
The finger of the yakuza directly responsible for an offense is called an iki yubi, 'living finger', while the finger of the yakuza that is directly in charge of him is called a shinu yubi, 'dead finger'.
In popular culture[edit]
A yubitsume scene is a staple of Japanese yakuza-eiga, or yakuza movies.
Yubitsume appears in several of Kinji Fukasaku's films, including Street Mobster and the Battles Without Honor and Humanity series.
American films in which the ritual appears include the 1975Sydney Pollack film The Yakuza, starring Robert Mitchum; the 1989Ridley Scott film Black Rain, starring Michael Douglas; and the 2018Martin Zandvliet film The Outsider, starring Jared Leto.
Yubitsume was portrayed in a more humorous (if perhaps less accurate) light in a skit on the TV show Saturday Night Live. The skit featured an American character, played by Chris Farley, who unwittingly went on a game show while on vacation in Japan. Not speaking Japanese, the protagonist was horrified to see the other two contestants that incorrectly answered a question have a finger chopped off as a penalty.
Yubitsume occurs in four of Takeshi Kitano's films: Boiling Point, Brother, Outrage, and Beyond Outrage.
The Yubitsume ritual is also seen in the movie Showdown in Little Tokyo, starring Dolph Lundgren and Brandon Lee.
The Yubitsume ritual is featured in the book Shimotsuma Monogatari (Kamikaze Girls in the United States), where the main character's father took a portion of the money for his family. He then proclaims, 'Not that one, that's my piano playing finger!'
In the 2001 movie Ichi the Killer, the character Kakihara cuts off the tip of his tongue with a sword after a yakuza boss tells him a finger alone will not be enough to pay back for his crimes of brutally torturing an innocent member of his group. There is a similar scene in the Korean movie, Oldboy.
Lady Vengeance, a 2005 Korean film, features a scene where the female protagonist cuts off her little finger in front of the parents of a young girl she is complicit in kidnapping in an attempt to seek forgiveness. She proclaims that she has committed an unforgivable sin and will continue cutting off her fingers until they forgive her. The parents are aghast and quickly rush her to the hospital after she severs her pinkie finger on their dining room table.
In the oneshot Horror manga Mr. Sarubato's Rowdy Classroom by Waita Uziga, the students are forced by their mentally unstable sensei Mr. Sarubato to have one of their limbs severed by him as punishment for inappropriate behavior in class. As a result, many of the students in his class have missing limbs or other body parts depending upon the seriousness of the offense.
In the 2006 movie Dirty Sanchez: The Movie, Matthew Pritchard has the end of his little finger on his right hand cut off in Japan with a cigar cutter.
In the 2006 movie The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, a yakuza member starting the final race is shown to be missing four fingers (the ring and little finger on each hand).
Michael Slade's novel Kamikaze has many instances of yubitsume as a punishment for failing the kumicho (Godfather) of the local yakuza.
During the Mafia Vs Yakuza episode of Deadliest Warrior, David Kono, an expert representing the Yakuza team, as well as having blood ties to them, goes on about how the Yakuza would pay for their mistakes by chopping pieces of their pinky fingers.
Roald Dahl's short story Man from the South (1948) describes a betting game in which a man wagers his left little finger.
William Gibson's 1984 novel Neuromancer contains a passing reference to Yubitsume.
In the 1990 movie Darkman, the underworld boss Robert G. Durant uses a cigar cutter to remove the fingers of his rivals. In the opening scene, each time he made a point to a rival mobster, he cut off a finger. When he got to point three, he said that he had seven more points to make, before cutting off the third finger.
Yubitsume is a recurring element in the Yakuza series of Japanese video games (known as Ryū ga Gotoku or Like a Dragon in Japan). Yubitsume is often performed, offered or demanded both as a test of loyalty to a superior or to a clan, and as punishment for actual or perceived mistakes, including by higher-ranking members for the mistakes of their underlings. An early scene in the original game has a finger being offered along with millions of yen as part of an apology payment, while an early scene in Yakuza 0 has a lieutenant being forced to cut off his finger for expelling a lower-ranking member without permission from the oyabun.
In an episode of Archer, 'Drift Problem,' Pam refers to members of the yakuza as 'those pinky-less bastards.' In episode three of season 5, 'Archer Vice: A Debt Of Honor', Pam uses counterfeit money to buy amphetamines from the Yakuza to which Cyril fearfully exclaims 'Oh my god, they chop off their OWN fingers!'
In the 2010 film Predators, one of the characters is Hanzo, a yakuza assassin who does not speak much throughout the film, and when asked why, he responds, 'Because I talk too much' and showed that he is missing the ring and little fingers of his left hand, revealing he had committed yubitsume.
In the Battletech novel Lethal Heritage, the yakuza status of Shin Yodama is called into question because 'he still has all his fingers'. Another character points out this simply means he is very good at his job.
In Season 5, Episode 2 ('Bloodlines') of the TV show Burn Notice, a character surmises that a Japanese man is a member of the yakuza due to a missing finger. It is later revealed that he is indeed a member and lost a finger due to falling asleep on guard duty.
In Season 8, Episode 13 ('Die By the Sword') of the TV show CSI: Miami the act of yubitsume is briefly depicted by the member of a Japanese gang with several members having missing fingers.
In Season 3, Episode 12 ('Silverfinger') of the TV show Teen Wolf (2011 TV Series), Takashi, a reclusive weapons collector and a member of Yakuza had cut off his little finger as penance for being a coward when he was attacked by Oni. In season 3 episode 3 of the Starz series Power a character named Dylan Shin, a member of a Korean gang, is forced to commit yubitsume after it is revealed he stepped on and diluted some of the gang's cocaine.
In the TV Series Game of Thrones, the character Davos Seaworth has had the fingertips of his right hand removed as a punishment for smuggling, similar to yubitsume - while also being knighted for heroism.
In the children/young adult book The Ring of Wind from the Young Samurai series , the protagonist Jack Fletcher has Yubitsume done to him by a former Sensei, preventing him from dual wielding his swords.
In the Funcom MMORPG The Secret World, a mission to Tokyo features the player becoming allies with Daimon Kiyota, an eccentric Yakuza boss with supernatural powers and a penchant for collecting the fingers severed in yubitsume. During one encounter with Kiyota, one of his lieutenants is discovered to be serving as a spy for a group of mercenary Oni, and after being defeated and humiliated in front of the player, the lieutenant is forced to surrender two of his fingers as recompense. The act itself is not seen, but the spy is seen with a bandaged hand soon after, and Kiyota jokes that 'apologies are a fine darb of a gesture and all, but I never know what to do with all those extra fingers!'
In Season 4, Episode 10 of the TV show The Man in the High Castle, Takashi Kido performs the ritual of Yubitsume when he joins the Yakuza to pay his son's debts.
References[edit]
^ abcKaplan, D.; Dubro, A: 'Yakuza', page 14. University of California Press, 2003
External links[edit]
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yubitsume&oldid=926406021'
Synopsis
The Japanese mafia - known collectively as yakuza - has had a considerable influence on Japanese society over the past fifty years. Based on extensive interviews with criminals, police officers, lawyers, journalists, and academics, this is the first academic analysis in English of Japan'scriminal syndicates. Peter Hill argues that the essential characteristic of Japan's criminal syndicates is their provision of protection to consumers in Japan's under- and upper-worlds. In this respect they are analogous to the Sicilian Mafia, and the mafias of Russia, Hong Kong and the United States. Although theyakuza's protective mafia role has existed at least since the end of the Second World War, and arguably longer, their sources of income have not remained constant. The yakuza have undergone considerable change in their business activities over the last half-century. The two key factors driving thisevolution have been the changes in the legal, and law-enforcement environment within which these groups must operate, and the economic opportunities available to them. This first factor demonstrates that the complex and ambiguous relationship between the yakuza and the state has always been morethan purely symbiotic. With the introduction of the boryokudan (yakuza) countermeasures law in 1992, the relationship between the yakuza and the state has become more unambiguously antagonistic. Assessing the impact of this law is, however, problematic; the contemporaneous bursting of Japan'seconomic bubble at the beginning of the 1990s also profoundly and adversely influenced yakuza sources of income. It is impossible to completely disentangle the effects of these two events. By the end of the twentieth century, the outlook for the yakuza was bleak and offered no short-term prospect of amelioration. More profoundly, state-expropriation of protection markets formerly dominated by the yakuza suggests that the longer-term prospects for these groups are bleaker still: nolonger, therefore, need the yakuza be seen as an inevitable and necessary evil.
Excerpt
This book is an attempt to make sense of the yakuza. My interest in these groups was first aroused by two social encounters with yakuza gang members in bars in the northeast of Japan in the late 1980s. To a fresh-faced and impressionable youngster struggling to internalise the accepted norms of Japanese behaviour, these larger-than-life characters, with their ostentatious display of conflicting norms, were compelling. This was a very different side to the community I thought I knew.
My interest was not, however, a purely emotional phenomenon. On sober reflection, the apparent paradox of a number of large, clearly identifiable criminal gangs operating openly within a society widely regarded as one of the industrialised world's most crime-free societies was puzzling. Recourse to the popular English-language literature, such as van Wolferen (1989) and Kaplan and Dubro (1986), suggests that this paradox is resolved by seeing these syndicates themselves as an integral part of the crime-control process in Japan and enjoying a quasi-symbiotic relationship with the legitimate law-enforcement authorities.
This explanation raises two crucial questions: Is this posited social-control function unique to Japan or can we identify similar patterns in the dealings between organised crime groups and their host communities in other jurisdictions? Is it actually an accurate description of the interplay between yakuza, law, and the state?
With respect to my first question, examining the available literature on organised criminal groups outside of Japan, it has become clear
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