“When yakuza kill yakuza, nobody gives a crap”

The expression that society disregards violence within the yakuza is more than a cynical observation about public attention. In Jake Adelstein’s conversations about Naoto Kametani and Takehiko Sugaya, it points to a perceived distinction in how violence is treated when its victims are themselves gang members. Chiaki Sekiguchi refuses to leave the idea as a punch line: he argues that lenient sentences can help make gang warfare more likely.

Meaning and First Use

The saying emerges in a discussion of Kametani’s sentence. An interlocutor asks why Kametani never explained his motive and why he received twenty years rather than life. Adelstein says he had assumed that killing a civilian would have brought a life sentence. The reply turns that assumption into a bitter generalization: violence between yakuza attracts less concern. The contrast is not between a proven motive and an unknown one; it is between the identity of the victim and the punishment Adelstein expects the law to impose.

The exchange makes the expression do two things at once. It names an apparent hierarchy of concern, in which a civilian’s death is treated as more serious than a yakuza’s, and it draws attention to the resulting difference in sentences. The statement is blunt, but its force comes from the disparity it alleges rather than from any account of Kametani’s reasoning, which remains unexplained in this conversation.

From Cynicism to a Case

The idea returns while Adelstein visits Sekiguchi after a gang war has ended and the gunman is in custody. The investigation is not over. Over late-evening fried rice, Sekiguchi explains that Takehiko Sugaya claims to have acted alone, while Sekiguchi suspects someone else may have arranged the shooting. In the Yamaguchi-gumi, Sekiguchi says, an attacker who strikes a rival and then turns himself in may be promoted after serving time; a proxy can take the punishment while the actual gunman goes free. Because the victims survived, investigators can question eyewitnesses and test whether Sugaya really fired the shots.

Against this investigative background, Adelstein repeats the expression, now predicting that Sugaya will be convicted but released after only a few years. He emphasizes that the victims were wounded rather than killed. This application differs from the Kametani discussion: there, the sentence of twenty years prompts a comparison with a hypothetical killing of a civilian; here, the saying becomes a forecast about the likely penalty in a shooting case whose victims lived.

Sekiguchi’s Challenge

Sekiguchi answers that unequal punishment is a problem, then identifies a consequence beyond public indifference. If gang members know the courts will treat their violence less severely, he argues, they have less reason to avoid gang wars; they may be more willing to shoot one another because they expect not to serve serious time. His point shifts the expression from a verdict on what people care about to a claim about how legal expectations can shape conduct.

Adelstein remains skeptical about the case before them. He cites the statistics and predicts a maximum sentence of four years for Sugaya. Sekiguchi counters that, as interrogator, he could get the suspect put away for ten. Adelstein dismisses that prospect as unrealistic. Their disagreement keeps the discussion grounded in competing expectations: Sekiguchi’s view of what a determined interrogator might secure, and Adelstein’s estimate of what the courts are likely to impose.

Recurrence and Significance

The expression links two otherwise distinct conversations through a recurring concern with the value assigned to victims. In the first, its speaker uses it to explain the gap between punishment for killing a yakuza and the life sentence he associates with killing a civilian. In the second, Adelstein deploys the same idea as a cynical prediction about the aftermath of a gang shooting. Sekiguchi’s response resists treating that disparity as inevitable or harmless: if offenders anticipate lighter consequences, the difference may feed the violence it appears merely to judge.

The phrase therefore changes function as it recurs. It begins as an accusation about whose death counts, then becomes an argument about incentives, investigation, and sentencing. Its force lies in the tension between Adelstein’s fatalistic forecast and Sekiguchi’s insistence that the expected penalty is itself part of the problem.