The Moon and The Sky

A period piece about a woman who writes a letter to a Canadian newspaper about her life growing up in the yakuza.

My Father's Concubine 
By Rin Kurosawa 

 

Date: July, 28th 2000.

    Greetings my fellow readers of the Vancouver, My Name is Rin Kurosawa; and I am a 30 year old single mother of twins. Yamiboro is my birth name, as Kurosawa being the last name of my late husband. I write to you today because my origin as a blood member of the Yamiboro clan has brought me to a state of disgust, bewilderment and betrayal by the only other person I thought loved me. I’m not going to give you my description or any unnecessary bullshit details that’s only a ploy for plot filler, as well as poor writing. For those of you confused about the subject of origin, allow me to clarify; I come from yakuza blood. A matter of fact, I was in the yakuza. You see, I was born September 30th, 1970 on a calm breezy morning in the mountains of Okinawa. Minutes after my birth, an assassination order was placed on my grandfather (who was in the room with me, my parents, some doctors and mid-level enforcers (little brothers).) in which five men with ak-47’s tore down our room and shot my grandfather (who was our "Oyabun" or head of our clan) dead before my innocent eyes. Several little brothers sacrificed their lives for me and my mother. I can actually remember my mother cleaning off the fragments of skull and brain from my soft hair. Twas, the day of my birth was my inception into desensitization. 


    The assassination turned out to be an inside job from within our organization from a jealous lieutenant known as "Sakei Umagami". He wanted complete power over our clan, but my grandfather arranged before his death for my mother to take control of the clan as the new Oyabun. This and Sakei’s betrayal lead to a bloody ten year long civil war within our clan. My father’s position at the time went up from Lieutenant to Second in command. My mother was the strategist, my father was the general. Between 1972 and 1979 my father has killed over four-hundred and fifty men; more than half of them with his bare hands. I remember I’d come home from school to a tool box covered in blood on the kitchen counter or nights where my father would come home with a bullet in his gut; spewing blood all over, turning our porcelain carpet into crimson. I mean, it’s fucked up having to see your parents nearly killing each other every day by a means of what’s possibly forgotten. Is it still honor? If so, then yes; we must keep our family safeguarded and protected at all cost. Yet is it still economics? No. However, Sakei’s motivation wasn’t honor, nor business, it was control. 


    I would know because Sakei kidnapped me from my parents when I was eight years old. I remember him smelling of vodka and dressed in black. From what I remember, his ambition for control consumed him like an angry Shinigami. Later that night, the war was escalated. It was raining and I was bound in a trunk crying for my parents. Sakei later took me into his penthouse and I remember blacking out. Two days later I was held for a ransom of 500 million yen. I was tied by my throat to a bedpost and I remember the lower half of my body in severe pain. He was on the phone with my parents drunk and high off cocaine. I later blacked out and woke up in my mother’s arms covered in blood and bruises being rushed to the emergency room. My father was in the opium fields in Taiwan at the time organizing exports to Japan. As I was being tended to in the hospital, my father came back three days later. He looked a little different. I find it weird how much I can remember from being so young, but everything was just so traumatizing to me… I still have rope burns on my wrist to this very day.  

 

    Anyway, my father found out the news that I was drugged and sexually violated by Sakei and my parents did not take that lightly. To set an example, my father abducted all the heads of Sakei’s crew and threw them in a concrete basement in an industrial complex near Fukushima. That night my father made something of an urban legend out of himself that gained him respect out of the use of fear. My father would have Sakei and his men stripped naked and chained to stools and steel bearings. They would be drenched with sea water and beaten with eight inch thick-splintered bamboo sticks for 45 minutes, nonstop. After the 45 minute flogging, my dad would urinate on them and shoot the big toe off each and every one of Sakei’s men but Sakei got his penis shot off instead of his big toe. Eventually, my father forcefully gave them all two tabs of LSD on each of their tongues and duct taped their mouths shut. This would send the men on a horrific psychoactive trip. Once the LSD kicked in, my father would proceed to take his tanto while Sakei and his men are tripping out and proceed to skin them alive. The men would remain alive for another six to eight hours in excruciating pain while still hallucinating. Sakei begged my father for a quick death, but my father poured hot cherry sake all over their skinless bodies and left them to die. This led towards my parents reasoning for this orgy of violence as a tactic to gain respect through the utilization of fear. 


    Think of it this way, you have my mother as the head of a clan within an organization not commonly run by women; this already is an issue to most since no one at the time wanted to take orders from a woman. Then you have my father, who takes my mother’s orders. My father demands to be taken seriously no matter who you are and this war paved a deranged way for them accomplishing this self-absorbed goal based on insecurities by this utilization. Now let’s fast forward to the 1990’s. My mother decided for the clan to venture into distributing ecstasy and I’m now a twenty year old enforcer for my mother. My teenage years was very mundane and awkward since everyone in school was scared of me and guys never approached me due to fear of my father skinning them alive. My father continued the practice of skinning individuals to the point where his nickname became "Sukinā" or "Skinner". This rather gained him the heartless notoriety he always wanted. 


    My dating life for the most part sucked and I’ve never dated anyone who isn’t yakuza come to think of it. At the time I was dating my husband since the age of sixteen and we got engaged in 1992. My father has been rather cold to my husband but respects him since he put a bullet in the head of one of his uncles for him. My husband was born from the "Kurosawa-gumi" but wanted to work in our clan as a repayment of debt for joyriding and totaling my father’s red 67’ Aston Martin. We met as underlings and pretty much got to know each other from there. My mother loved him like her own but my father still resented him. My mother was on good terms with the Kurosawa-gumi, however my father always resented Rinki (The second lieutenant of the Kurosawa-gumi and my husband’s father) just because of how nasty he is as a person. He's charismatic but deep down inside he showed no honor and was a crack-cocaine addict blinded by ego. This had led to times where he’s stolen a few kilos of my father’s cocaine exports. Rinki was forced to cut off half of his pinky as retribution. My father thought the same of my husband and even took his violent fits out on me about it. 


    By 1993 I gave birth to beautiful twins Kenta and Kiki. At this point my parents have been receiving turmoil in both their economics and marriage. My mother wanted to continue distributing narcotics and get into the booming sex trafficking racket; while my father wanted to go legit and start investing in technological and video game companies like "Syringe Corp" and "Sega". This led to a conflict of interest and this also affected their love life. My parents stopped talking to each other and if there was a job to be done, my father would be notified by pager from our clan’s chief of staff. Everyone knew something was wrong because my mother started making very irrational business decisions and this lead to our off shore American and German accounts frozen due to members of our crew getting busted dealing with Colombians and Armenians. My parents would get into violent arguments which usually ended in me driving from downtown Tokyo all the way to Okinawa in the middle of the night to stop my parents from choking the life out of each other. It took my mother up until 1994 to open up to me about how my father started having an affair with an Australian woman he met in Beijing since 1986. I thought I’d have a heart to heart conversation with my father in order to try and avoid my parents from splitting but it turns out the damage has been done. My father suffers from PTSD after all the years he’s murdered men slowly in cold blood, while coldly looking in their eyes. Every time he would want someone to talk to about it he would go to my mother, however my mother would ridicule him and pass it off as just another bad business day. Since my mother’s initiation as an Oyabun, my parent’s emotional connection has been strained due to being busy with the business and making sure I’m not raped or kidnapped again. This led to what my father felt as only an economic relationship not a spiritual connection based on intimacy and communication, thus the love affair sparked. 


    I’ve actually met the woman before and she’s very nice to me, but this is the woman my father is f*****g on the side for fucksake. Like I didn’t know whether to do the honors for my mother to slice her tendons and dump her duct taped body chained to my Honda, in a deep shore off an Osaka beach; or, consider her as just another loved one for the sake of my father! My mother just became so into the business it has even gotten to a goal ambitious madman like my father. All he wanted was someone to talk to that wouldn't perceive him as weak for expressing himself. I remember one night my father showed up at my mother’s house drunk, admitting to her he wants out the clan in order to raise the son he was having with the same mistress (My parents are still married at this point in time.) and later admitted to my mother, he's bared her a son since 1987. My mother was furious and refused. She threatened that if my father leaves her he’ll be dead by sunrise. My father realizing she has sworn sake ties with several other clans, remained calm and went along with business as usual. However, my father had ulterior motives. 


    In March 1995, right after picking up shipment with my father, my mother was assassinated by Russian gangsters. She took a bullet to the mouth and the heart, while my father got a bullet to the triceps and right thigh. I was in an argument with my husband about his drug use when I got the call. I found it odd how Russian gangsters decide to roll up on my parent’s minutes after extraction. At first I immediately thought my husband fucked up big time! But the way my father was looking at the funeral…it wasn’t an expression of grievance, it was guilt. When I hugged my father that day he seemed emotionally cold but in trauma. It was like he had this endless stare. I couldn’t tell what to think of it. But since that day I completely started to change my feelings towards him. 


   

    Soon after the funeral, my father was elected into power; however, rumors started going around, people became suspicious of my mother’s assassination and believed my dad had a hand in it. On the day of the child's eighth birthday, in the summer of 1995; blood drenched the streets in an all-out war. The Yamiboro clan was going through another civil war and along with a bloody turf battle over all districts in Tokyo. The rave/trance scene was becoming more popular and party drugs like quaaludes and ecstasy was on high demand. On top of all that, in Tokyo a crimewave of yakuza violence erupted in the streets leaving up to thousands of innocents killed in the cross fire, monthly. My father had no choice but to send his mistress and son to Australia until the heat cools down. Things eventually got worst because the yakuza also began having conflicts with the police and this led to even more f*****g unnecessary casualties over bullshit. 


    At this point I’m thinking my father is a f*****g selfish piece of s**t, who doesn’t care about anyone but himself. I mean what am I- matter a fact, who the f**k is he to f*****g go tell me to do all this s**t for him, risking my life (knowing I have children) and he barely even talks to me. I was getting furious, my marriage started turning to s**t and I just suddenly became a sadist. Whenever me and my husband would f**k (ever so rarely at that point, since he’s a cheating a*****e.) I would keep going beyond the safe word. Eventually, I even started giving tattoos to other yakuza. As fucked up as this sounds, it felt exhilarating because I was under so much stress and I hated drugs! Giving pain was my last resort. I then did a few more jobs for my father and two of the eight ended in disfigurements. My father told me to break some grocery store owner’s ankles; I snapped his shins with a bamboo stick. I felt horrible at first but it turns out he goes home piss wasted every night to batter his wife and kids. Now the other m**********r really f*****g tested me. This b***h’s kid broke my little boy’s arm over some f*****g "Pocket Monster" bullshit trading cards my son started playing with. I found out she’s an escort for my husband’s native clan and stole 18,000 yen worth of Ecstasy from my father; after that I met her in an empty parking garage coming out of work and I held her down on her car and proceeded to pour battery acid all over her face. I eventually started catching onto what my environment is turning me into. I discerned that I don’t want any part in this anymore. I felt like a product of my own environment instead of an actual human being. It doesn’t feel good having someone killed by their employer because they're disfigured by your own doing. This made me realize I have f*****g kid’s now! I can’t be doing this s**t anymore! I can’t have a f*****g husband who cheats, steals and lies! And I can’t work for a selfish blood thirsty android like my father. I just didn’t know how to break it to him. 


    In the winter of 1998, I get a call from my father and I’ve never heard him this angry before but the man was furious! I was told to make sure I wasn’t followed and to meet him in the same industrial complex Sakei and his men were skinned alive. We met there and my father was sitting on the broken wall of a desolated building. He tells me how this was the exact building Sakei was left to die in. My father seemed…cold. 

    "Rin, I’m going to need you to do the unforgivable…for the sake of the family." My father asks me coldly. 

    "Father what’s going on?" I asked- My father remained silent for about a minute. I began to get impatient. 

    "You don’t communicate with me, you only talk to me for business-now you’re going to call me from my children’s"- my father then coldly cuts me off, "You’re husband is a piece of s**t." 

    I was in shock my father actually said this to my face. I was about to snap but then he proceeded with "The father of your children is a traitor. He stole all the clan’s drugs and sold it to Americans for crack cocaine. On top of that, Rinki now gained Control of the Kurosawa clan due to him putting a bullet between his father’s eyes. He’s now battling over my territory including Osaka."

    "And what do you expect me to do?" I said to him choking up in tears. 

    My father responds coldly "Get it done." 

    Not only did I feel betrayed by my husband, but also my own father as well. 
"What about the kids?!" I yelled. 

    My father proceeds to coldly walk away from me just as cold as he looked the day of my mother’s funeral. Later that night my husband told me he was going on a business run, so I came home quickly before he left out and hid in the backseat of his car. Turns out he drove down to Tokyo to pick up a prostitute. My husband picked her up and started driving to the mountains. As soon as my husband parked near the shoreline and started unzipping his pants, I covered his mouth with my right hand and fired three shots to the back of his head; then, I shot the dumb b***h in the face at point blank range twice as she tried escaping the vehicle. Poor woman, but you don’t get involved in another person’s family. Where I come from, it’s f*****g disrespectful and it turned out she was my husband’s favorite. I took a Polaroid of my husband’s body like my father asked. I wanted to f*****g vomit. 


    I later met up with my father with a tanto and shoestring in hand ready to quit. We met in his newly constructed office. It was full of female secretaries no more than five years younger than me. Me and my father had privacy in his office. I showed him the picture of my bullet ridden husband and he took it from me. He took the photo, struck a match and burned it to ash in front of me. I told my father straight up that I was quitting and I was ready to cut off half my ring finger to do so. My father expected me to want to quit due to the pressure of my mother, the kids, my husband and the war going on in the streets. But then suddenly he hugs me and hands me a loaded .45. 
"After what I’m about to tell you, my life is in your hands." 
I was confused as to why my father gave me a loaded gun. 

    "Father, what is wrong with you?!" I exclaimed. 
  

   "I dishonored you as a father and a husband to your mother. Your mother was going to hire men to take out the mother of my child. She was going to put out a 11,200,000,000 yen price on her head." 


    I started getting a slight sensation of anger and disgust; the more he told me, the more I forcefully caress the .45 into his face. My father, the man who drove me to murder my husband; murdered my mother. I question if it was honestly for her position as an elite or even to live comfortably with his little Aussie mistress or just blood thirsty ambition? I didn’t know what the f**k to believe! I guess the rumors were true all along. I killed the father of my children. My children doesn’t have a father because of me. My father was the ultimate traitor in my life to actually murder my mother and feel so bad about it, he forces me down to his level by having me kill my husband! Why should I f*****g give him the easy way out?! Every emotion I had in me just wanted to pull the trigger on this delusional, back stabbing dishonorable, weak, piece of s**t. Then I dropped the gun realizing I’m forcing a loaded .45 to my father’s temple. I told my father off in a tearful rage stating I’m not going to kill him but he’s nothing to me anymore. I told him I’m quitting and moving up north to take care of my kids. I sliced off the top half of my ring finger, my father sliced off his pinky and ring finger. Then we parted our separate ways. 


    It’s been two years since and I decided to write this letter based on the recent events of my father’s incarceration. However, I do not wish to slander his name until he retires his position as Oyabun. If you’re reading this then my father has retired and my uncle Lee is now the successor of the Yamiboro clan. All apologies to Uncle Lee for all the press tension. This letter is out of disgust for the one man who truly betrayed me. 

-Sincerely, 
Rin Kurosawa

 

Reviews

[Zoe Kaufhold]

I liked how it was to the point but not so much that it was a waste of time and unimportant, it was descriptive and not descriptive at the same time which made it great. I liked how I was able to see her life fold out from since she was a baby with the years and all, and because of all of the events that happened it made me feel the disgust and hatred per say for the person she dislikes.

[EssenceofDaringx]

I like the idea of this story, I just wish it wasn't so... direct? It was very blunt and to the point which can be great things in a story but I feel like it took a but of the emotion out for me. I wanted a deeper connection to the character.

[JayG]

First problem: This is the script for a verbal storyteller. You, the narrator, are talking to the reader. That can't work, because the reader cannot either hear or see you. And since verbal storytelling is a performance art, whose elements don't translate to the page, the constraints of the printed word preclude it working.

Think about it. When you begin reading, you know the situation, the characters, and the intent. So the voice you hear as you read is alive with emotion, and the performance works. But the reader doesn't get tone, cadence, intensity, volume, and all the tricks of that marvelous instrument called the human voice. Virtually all the emotion of a told story comes via the nonverbal means I mentioned. And none of that makes it to the page,

Missing, too, is the visual. Actors train for years to visually show emotion via fleeting expression, eye movement,a flick of the hand, a sigh or a shrug. None of that makes it to the page, either.

So what's left? The unemotional words. Have your computer read it to you. Better yet, though it can be a terribly humbling experience, choose a friend with no acting talent, and have them do a cold read of the first few pages and you'll hear the problem.

It's not a matter of talent or potential. It's that you're using a skill set inappropriate to the medium. In other words, pretty much what most hopeful writers do because we leave school thinking that writing is writing, so we're equipped for writing fiction.

If only.

nonfiction, which all those reports and essays trained us in, has as a goal informing the reader. As such it's fact-based and author-centric.

Fiction's goal is to entertain, so it must be emotion-based and character-centric. But how much time did your teachers spend on the elements of a scene on the page? How much on why most scenes end in disaster for the protagonist? Were you trained in how to best use tags, the three things a reader needs to know quickly? How about the tricks of placing the reader into the persona of the protagonist in real-time?

If your teachers were like most, the answer is: none. And that's the problem you must address, first.

Our schooling no more trained us to write fiction than it did to write screenplays and journalism. In fact, we leave high school exactly as well prepared to write fiction as to pilot an airliner—though we know we need to learn to fly.

Not good news, I know, but it is news we all need to hear if we're to fix the problem.

The solution is simple. Not easy, but it is simple. All you need do is spend a bit of time, and perhaps a few dollars on acquiring your writers education. The not simple part comes because it took us twelve years to perfect our nonfiction skills. So adding a new set, and convincing the present set to shut up and stop trying to steer you back into a nonfiction approach is a b***h. But it's necessary if we hope to have a reader enjoy our words.

My suggestion is to pick up a copy of Dwight Swain's, Techniques of the Selling Writer and read it very slowly, with plenty of time for thinking about each point as it's raised—and practicing it to place it into your tool kit in usable form, as against knowing it exists for week or so till that knowledge fades.

Bad news, I know, but it's something we all face on the way to publication.

You may want to dig around in the writing articles in my blog. They're written for the hopeful writer.

Hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein

[Lauren_The_Awesome]

Wow. A very great story about dishonesty and horrible betrayal by many. This story made me want more and more out of it. Very intriguing. Very good job :)

[Lord of mad men]

Very great story but it would of been a more powerful read if you slice in in twi a little but besides that it was wonderful.

[Cahjli Symes]

It's meant to be a letter to a journalist for a newspaper. Lul

[Cahjli Symes]

Thank you for the review, sir.

[Lord of mad men]

You do not have to call me sir i am sixteen and no problem. Okay cool

[747]

Wow. Did you do research to make this accurate to historical events or is it just stitched together from your imagination? Either way, it's quite captivating.

There are some inconsistencies in your voice though; considering you set this up as a letter to a newspaper I would not expect to see swearing in it. Also, considering the voice is of a 30 year old woman from the Yakuza, I would also not expect for her to so blatantly call out her former clan that way. The only other issues I see are some misspelled words and random changes in tense.

This was a great story, only the things I mentioned above jarred me from it. But even so, over-all it held my attention and interest to the end. Great job!

[Cahjli Symes]

It's historical fiction so its a blend of some real events (mainly the 90s crimewave) mixed in with my own characters. Well know I know it needs more cleanup thank you for the review. :)

[747]

Very interesting. Would you be opposed to increasing the size of font for better readability?

[Cahjli Symes]

Already increased ^v^

[747]

:) Awesome!

[Coyote Poetry]

A very good chapter. A very detailed story. I like the character, her life and the history shared. I wanted to read and know more. Your description of people and places is outstanding. Thank you for sharing the excellent story.
Coyote

[Cahjli Symes]

Thank you for your review. The short was to be a prequel to a current script I'm writing.

[Coyote Poetry]

I hope to read more. Please send read requests and you are welcome.