Takehiko Sugaya

Takehiko Sugaya was a twenty-seven-year-old member of the Yamaguchi-gumi who surrendered after the Konosu shooting with the gun used in the attack. His claim that he had acted alone left Chiaki Sekiguchi with a harder question than simply identifying a gunman: had Sugaya carried out the shooting himself, or had the organization sent him as a substitute? Sekiguchi’s prosecution secured Sugaya a ten-year sentence, while Shibata later regarded the young man’s willingness to accept punishment as an example of an older yakuza ideal already disappearing.

Identity and the Konosu Shooting

The book gives little personal background for Sugaya beyond his age and membership in the Yamaguchi-gumi. It introduces him through a telephone call to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department on the morning of the eighteenth, when a man claiming to be the gunman said he would surrender that afternoon with the weapon. He followed through. The gang war that had made the shooting news had ended, and police had the alleged shooter in custody; in the rapid turnover of crime reporting, the incident was already becoming old news.

That apparent resolution did not settle the central question for Sekiguchi. Sugaya maintained that he had acted on his own and that no one had ordered him to shoot. The victims were alive and could identify the attacker, giving investigators eyewitnesses, but Sekiguchi still had reason to examine whether the confession described the whole operation rather than only its visible participant. Sugaya was not merely a suspect who had admitted involvement: he was a young member of a large organization whose internal incentives could make a lone act and an assigned role difficult to distinguish.

The Question of a Proxy

Sekiguchi explained why Sugaya’s account warranted scrutiny. In the Yamaguchi-gumi, a member who incapacitated a rival and then surrendered could, after serving time, be promoted to executive rank. Sekiguchi also knew of cases in which the actual gunman escaped while the organization sent a proxy to take the consequences. Those practices made Sugaya’s claim of acting alone consequential, but they did not prove that he was a proxy. Sekiguchi’s task was to establish what happened in this case, not simply to apply a pattern from other gang conflicts.

The distinction between the gunman and the possible organizer also exposed a problem in how such violence was treated. Jake Adelstein initially argued that Sugaya would probably receive only a few years, partly because the victims had survived and the violence was between rival yakuza. Sekiguchi rejected the idea that the identity of the victims should make the crime less serious. In his view, lighter treatment encouraged gang members to shoot one another because they expected not to face substantial punishment. The argument shifted attention from whether the shooting had produced deaths to the incentives created by the justice system’s response to attacks within the underworld.

Investigation and Sentence

At home beneath a kotatsu, while Sekiguchi’s wife prepared late-evening fried rice, Sekiguchi told Adelstein that Sugaya was proving difficult to interrogate. He planned to appeal to Sugaya’s pride to persuade him to tell the truth. The exchange was not simply a contest over whether the young man would confess: the possible benefits of a gang-sanctioned attack, the prospect of a proxy, and the difference between admitting the act and disclosing its organization all shaped the investigation.

Adelstein predicted that the courts would give Sugaya no more than four years. Sekiguchi answered that he could obtain ten. He did so by securing a prosecution for attempted murder as well as violations of gun and firearms laws. Sugaya was sentenced to ten years, a result that exceeded Adelstein’s estimate and demonstrated the difference Sekiguchi could make by treating the attack as a serious crime rather than as an inconsequential exchange of violence between gangs. Adelstein lost their bet and took the Sekiguchi family out for yakiniku, paying 30,000 yen for the meal.

Honor, Punishment, and a Changing Underworld

Shibata later scolded Adelstein for betting against Sekiguchi, whose reputation, he said, was respected even by people who were not his friends. He also admired Sugaya. In Shibata’s account, Sugaya represented an older form of yakuza conduct: a person who committed a crime accepted the punishment instead of pleading to evade it. His admiration did not erase the violence of the shooting or settle whether Sugaya had acted alone. It registered a particular standard of honor within the criminal world, one tied to accepting responsibility after the act.

Shibata contrasted that standard with a present in which younger gang members were, in his view, more afraid of prison and organizations increasingly delegated dirty work to Chinese and Iranian outsiders. He predicted that Sugaya would leave prison to find no organization waiting for him and no community that valued the honor he had displayed. That was Shibata’s expectation, not a reported outcome for Sugaya. Its force lies in the mismatch it anticipates: the willingness to serve a sentence could earn admiration from an older yakuza while leaving the person who served it with no place in the organization’s future.