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Chikara

(From the Japanese word for “Power”)

How I survived a Yakuza death hit
Rebecca Taylor Bratland

As dusk turned to night, I settled down to sleep under a row of bushes where I was safely hidden from public view. There was no comfortable way for me to sleep these days, I’d lost so much weight that only a thin layer of skin cushioned my bones from touching the ground. With me were the only three things I had left in the world, the clothes on my back, the black plastic garbage bag I was laying on, and my Tag Heuer watch…a memory of my seemingly forever-ago modeling days. It served not just as a reminder of the passage of time, but as my searchlight, my beacon in the darkness. Its glow-in-the-dark face was my only companion.

It has been 26 days since I went on the run…26 days since the Yakuza—the Japanese mafia—put a price on my head. Twenty six days since they forced me into homelessness and constant hyperawareness of every sound, sight, noise, touch, and smell around me…26 days of trying to stay one step ahead of them by hiding in parks and surviving on discarded food and cigarette butts…26 days of being hunted like an animal. I was scared and hopeless, and felt like I’d been swallowed by a huge black hole. My only goal was survival.

At least it had been so for 26 days.

Anyone who knew me in the “before” days would walk right past me now as if I were a total stranger. I dyed my short, blonde hair as jet black as I could, wore glasses, and lowered my voice so people would assume I was a Japanese boy. No one ever suspected otherwise, unless they saw my blue eyes, which threw them into instant shock as well as the instant realization that I was a foreigner…a gaijin. Next step in my metamorphosis? Avoid eye contact with anyone ever again.

God, it’s me, Rebecca. I know this is the millionth time I’ve prayed to you. I’m way past the point of hoping to be rescued. Now, I just need forgiveness.

On the 27^th day of running, the very next day after today, I planned to kill myself. I was so very tired, and there was no hope left. A sense of relief washed over me because I knew that as painful as the thought of suicide was, at the very least, the terror would end and I would be free of this hell.

The self-blame and self-hatred for what I felt were foolish mistakes echoed in my head, and the words of my best friend Erika—who was also in dire straits in this country that was foreign to both of us—replayed on an endless loop in my thoughts…they know you’re a snitch, and Yakuza don’t just kill snitches. They torture them first. There’s no hope, Rebecca. You might as well kill yourself, because I can’t help you anymore.

Opposing battles raged in my head. Good versus evil. Dark versus light. Rational versus crazed. My rational mind reminded me, I did all this for you. I became an informant to save you. Then the crazed mind countered, You’re a loser. You should never have signed the documents that the Japanese police forced you to sign. Erika’s voice rang through these thoughts and crucified me more than I could ever crucify myself. If you never signed the papers, they would never have known it was you!

But I trusted them. I trusted her. The woman I thought I knew as my best friend, my sister, my confidante, gave me cash so that I could rent a room at the YMCA where I could kill myself quietly and privately. After all this time running, starving, and hiding, the only soul I trusted not only funded my kill room, but also threw in some razor blades and sleeping pills to seal the deal as easily as she might have shared a meal with me.

My eyelids finally fluttered from exhaustion as I took one last look to the sky. How did I end up here? ran through my brain as I caught sight of a fleeting, bright star that peeked through the bushes, as if the universe was sending her own signal.

Then it all came flooding back to me.

It was 1988 when I arrived in Tokyo to work as a fashion model for the second time. From the moment I landed, I was working nonstop. Magazines, posters, commercials, catalogs, and runway…it was all so exciting to an American girl in the bright lights of this exotic city on the other side of the world. The Japanese loved my baby face and slightly boyish look, and I counted my blessings because I never knew how long my popularity would last.

My previous trip proved so successful that there was even a bidding war between agencies that wanted to sign me. They really had high hopes for me and I didn’t want to let them—or myself—down. This modeling game was not easy. It’s not the glamorous, no-brainer, easy life that most people on the outside assume it to be. The constant struggle to be thin, coupled with continuous rejection based on your appearance and the stigma of only being as good as your last job was all consuming. In spite of it all, I loved it because it gave me the freedom to express myself artistically and travel the world. Modeling also gave me a nice income and freedom to do what I really loved… and that was to make music.

When you travel to different countries as a model, you live in what’s called a model’s apartment and you always have a roommate. Sometimes you get along and sometimes you don’t. I was lucky. My roommate, Erika, and I got along great from the start. She was from the Midwest, and I originally came from a small farm town in Wisconsin but now lived in Manhattan. We quickly became best friends and formed an inseparable bond. Every day was a new adventure, working during the day and, in the evening, going out to explore Tokyo’s exciting nightlife.

When Westerners think of Japan, they assume it’s a clean, efficient, safe place where residents wear masks, police are unarmed civil servants, and maintaining one’s family honor as well as upholding one’s civic duties are key tenets of the model Japanese citizen. And while this is indeed true, there is a deep, menacing underbelly that co-exists with culture: The Yakuza. Japan’s mafia. And during my time there, Japan experienced great wealth and the Yakuza was not only feared because of its ruthless, violent ways, but it also enjoyed a bizarre sort of celebrity. Members cruised around Tokyo in sleek, black Mercedes vehicles with heavily tinted windows. They wore double-breasted designer suits, punched permed hair and yes…sunglasses at night. Their crimes mainly involved extortion, money laundering, drug-trafficking, weapons deals, and running prostitution rings.

One night, Erika and I partied at one of our favorite clubs, and the most charismatic man walked through the door with a friend. The waiters all jumped to attention and served the men a bottle of champagne. We didn’t recognize them as politicians or celebrities, but thought maybe one of them owned the club. The man was exotic and had wavy, shoulder-length auburn hair. He was undeniably handsome. Erika and I were intrigued, but we eventually moved on to another club, as we did on most nights.

In Tokyo, there are endless clubs stacked one on top of the other lighting up the night. It was always carte blanche if you showed your comp card (your head shot) at the door, free drinks and even free bar food flowed. These were great perks for a perpetually broke model. We arrived at the new club, and I soon saw a familiar face. It was the handsome man I saw at the previous club. He and his friend approached us, he introduced himself as Roberto and his friend as Kenji. I had a good laugh at this Japanese guy calling himself Roberto, but he seemed to idolize the Italian culture and told me that’s why he took on that name.

We hit it off immediately and danced the night away until last call. I was with Roberto and Erika with Kenji. Even though I could hardly understand him, his energy spoke volumes. Neither of us wanted to part ways, so I accompanied him back to his apartment. As we arrived, a strange sight waited at his door: a Japanese woman. I watched as they conversed in Japanese. I had no idea what she was saying, but if looks could kill, I would have been dead right there on the spot. Roberto abruptly turned and said he was going to take me home. Roberto and the woman sat in the front of his Mercedes as I sat in the back, and he left me with the promise of breakfast.

A few hours later, we sat at a linen-covered table at a four-star restaurant that was empty except for us. Even though I spoke conversational Japanese, Roberto’s way of speaking was just…weird. He would babble on and on and simultaneously flip his long wavy hair over his shoulders as he uttered “Sure, sure” as fillers while gazing into my eyes saying “abore.” I guess he was really trying to say amore. There goes that Italian thing again. In spite of all this strangeness, there was this undeniable attraction between us. So at the end of breakfast, when he said he had some unfinished business to take care of and wanted me to go along for the ride, I couldn’t say “no.” I wasn’t ready for this magical date to end. We went off in his convertible on an unusually warm December day with the song Boys of Summer blasting through the radio speakers.

He made two stops and what I witnessed made me very uncomfortable. I desperately pretended that I didn’t hear anything as I nervously looked away and walked out of the room during these secretive business dealings. But it was too late. I was a material witness, and what I saw and heard could not be undone. Roberto claimed he owned a cosmetic company, but clearly there was much more to all of this.

At the end of the evening, he invited me to ring in the New Year in Paris. I happily accepted the invitation, and he promised to pick me up the next morning. When I returned to the apartment, I excitedly told Erika the news. Her reaction was strange. She turned beet red and screamed “How can you abandon me on New Year’s Eve?” I didn’t think I was abandoning her. She had many other friends, but my conscience got the better of me and I stayed. Still, I was shocked by her extreme reaction. The next day, Roberto and Kenji left for Paris. Within hours after their departure, while I was attending a dance class and Erika was out on auditions, our apartment was ransacked and a single black rose was left on our living room table.

The Yakuza left the black rose as an omen of death.

A mutual friend informed Erika that the woman waiting at Roberto’s apartment was one of his many girlfriends. She informed the organization that I knew too much and wanted me out of the picture. Erika was also told that Roberto and Kenji were members of the Yakuza, and that Roberto was not just any soldier or runner, but the right hand man to a boss who controlled a large part of Tokyo.

The black rose was just the beginning. In less than 48 hours, my life was growing more intense by the minute. Black cars with blacked out windows followed me constantly. The violence escalated when a man began body slamming the bifold doors of the phone booth Erika and I squeezed into to make a call. He was literally trying to crush us to death, but somehow I managed to escape minutes before he slammed the booth for the third time. After Erika screamed “fuck off,” the man punched her in the face. Fortunately, an American tourist walked by and yelled at the man to stop. He took off running. Erika turned to me with blood running down her face and said, “That was meant for you! You need to get out of Tokyo now!” At that point, I knew I had to escape Japan immediately or risk being killed. It definitely wasn’t going to be easy, and for the most part, nearly impossible because it was well known in Japan that the Yakuza would drag girls kicking and screaming out of Narita airport while people just looked the other way. Erika and I devised a plan: The only way I would be able to get out would be to go incognito and leave everything I owned behind. This way, the Yakuza wouldn’t suspect anything. We planned the escape down to every minute detail, because even the tiniest error would cost me my life. The next day, the plan was executed and I made it out and back to the states…this time.

I stayed with my parents temporarily to rebuild my life. They lived in a small town in Illinois, and the next few months back home were peaceful. Erika was living with Kenji in Tokyo and working as a makeup artist for a cosmetic company that Roberto owned. She started calling weekly, and always in a mental state that was beyond frantic. Kenji was a coke fiend and was operating a major drug trafficking operation out of his apartment. She tearfully admitted that Kenji beat her and she feared for her life. Worst of all, she was trapped as I once was. His goons would follow her everywhere. She pleaded for my help and begged for me to return to Tokyo and help her escape. I had only one choice, and that was to jump back into the fire and help my best friend.

I suddenly snapped back into consciousness because I heard a dog barking. I froze with fear. I didn’t want to be discovered, and now it was starting to rain and my clothes were getting soaked. I covered myself with the black garbage bag as tears ran down my face and I kept as silent as I could. The dog stopped barking, and I became invisible and non-existent once again. I just wanted to be gone. I wanted this nightmare to be over. Soon, I thought, as I huddled under the garbage bag. The flashbacks returned with a vengeance.

When I returned to Japan, I couldn’t model anymore because agencies always wanted fresh faces. Besides, I needed to stay under the radar as much as possible. Hostessing was a fairly easy job that consisted of sitting at a table with Japanese businessmen, mixing and serving their drinks, lighting their cigarettes, and laughing at their infantile, sexist jokes while dressed up as some sort of pageant queen. Easy right? Not for this independent New York City woman. Every minute of the job was mentally exhausting, but I was just biding my time until I could help my friend break free.

One evening after work, I accompanied the club owner’s friend to another hostess club. We were escorted in and sat at a long table with other Asian hostesses. The young girl at the far end of the table began to mix drinks and another made small talk with the man I was accompanying. They were engrossed in a conversation and she was laughing loudly at his jokes trying to make feel like he was the most important man on earth. A young, baby-faced Filipina girl seated next to me was desperately trying to get my attention. She mouthed the word “help” as I leaned in close.

“We are all trapped here, all of us,” she whispered frantically, trying to get the message out before anyone heard. “They promised us work as waitresses and flew us here, but now they have taken away our passports. We are all locked in one small room and have very little food to eat. We are beaten and forced to be prostitutes. If we don’t comply, they say they are going to kill our families.”

I gazed into the dark, soulful eyes of this woman-child and saw a single tear run down her face. With a barely audible voice and her body trembling she said, “I have been raped.” I mouthed the word “Yakuza!” I knew the danger she and all the girls were in. I reached under the table and squeezed her trembling hand. In a whisper, I said “Escape! I will pray for you.” Unfortunately, that’s all I could do. I knew the power of the Yakuza. To this day, I wonder about her and the others and if they ever made it out. But sadly, most don’t and the women who do are irrevocably damaged.

I learned that there were different levels to these hostess clubs. The one I worked in required me to do the typical hostess duties: pour drinks, light cigarettes, and make “charming conversation,” as the Japanese would say. However, in the lower level clubs mostly run by Yakuza, girls were brought over from poor countries and signed bogus contracts with the promise of making good money as professional dancers, models, or waitresses. Once in Japan, they were stripped of their passports, locked up in rooms, beaten, and only let out to service men. They were warned that if they attempted to escape, their family members would be killed, just as the Filipina girl described. This is only one of the many ways human trafficking can happen, and I can only thank divine intervention that I didn’t end up as that young woman did.

The rain finally stopped and birds started to chirp, signaling the impending dawn. I ran my hand through my hair and hundreds of black strands clung to my fingers before falling to the ground. My hair, once thick and healthy, had been falling out for the last two weeks, and I had no idea why, nor did I care anymore. The fact that I had been a model, even a well-known one, was from another lifetime. I glanced at the glowing face of the Tag Heuer. It was 4:46 a.m. and my stomach was beginning to growl. I searched the ground for a cigarette butt to kill the hunger. I only had a bite of rice to eat in two days and was starting to feel faint. Luckily, there were cigarette butts all over the ground. I pulled a matchbook out of my pocket and lit the last remaining match from the torn up book. I put the butt to my mouth and inhaled deeply. It burned and tasted like a dirty ashtray, but it camouflaged the growling and the pain in my stomach. I laid back down and watched the sunrise, which was the only peace I could find. Now I know why Japan is known as the land of the rising sun. It was magnificent. I drifted back into my daydream still trying to comprehend how this all happened to me in the first place.

There was something off with Erika, but I just couldn’t pinpoint it. As often as I tried to help her break free of Kenji’s abuse and the Yakuza, she would always return. And for some odd reason, she never wanted to leave Japan. I finally managed to help her escape and hid her in my apartment on the outskirts of Tokyo. After a few weeks in hiding, Erika became restless and was now determined to remain in Japan, just not with Kenji. She wanted to venture back into Tokyo and go clubbing as long as Kenji wasn’t around, and in doing so partnered up with a famous Japanese actor and former J pop star, Hiro. Erika very quickly became pregnant, and when Kenji got wind of it, he began stalking both her and Hiro. As the stalking and threats began their crescendo, Hiro started to unravel. His major concern was not for Erika, but for his career, as the Yakuza controlled the entertainment industry and were known to blackball entertainers.

So Hiro and Erika devised a plan, and needed my help. They would go to a local police precinct where Hiro had a friend who was a cop. The idea was to turn in Kenji and his drug trafficking operation so he would be arrested and jailed, saving Hiro and Erika from further harassment so they could live happily ever after. Erika begged me to accompany them to corroborate her story. Against my better judgement, I agreed to help…after all, anything drug-related in Japan was treated as an extremely serious crime, topped only by murder.

The next day, detectives grilled us with the intent of using our intel to take down Kenji, but as interrogation continued and they pressed for more information, it became clear that they didn’t just want Kenji, but also wanted to take down the entire organization. They planned additional interviews, and we soon realized that we were in way over our heads. There was no way to close the Yakuza can of worms we just opened. There was no turning back. The next day, Erika called me in hysterics because Hiro threatened to leave her. She begged me to continue the investigation by myself. If I didn’t, she would lose her baby and her boyfriend. When I asked how I could possibly do this when she knew all the information, she said she had it all figured out. “I will just feed it to you and then you bring it to the cops.” Guilt, sympathy, and unwavering loyalty washed over me. “OK,” I said, “But once this is all done and you are safe, I’m going back to New York.”

The second I gave in, her sobs magically disappeared and she delved into her dinner plans with Hiro for later that evening. I should have known that something was fishy and that I would later pay for it. To add insult to injury, Erika insisted that she and I speak and meet in secrecy because Hiro didn’t want us to associate anymore. And just like that, I became an informant against one of the largest criminal organizations in the world.

I made it to the YMCA, and on the 29th day, I woke up still foggy from the 40 sleeping pills I took two days earlier. The white cotton sheets were a brilliant crimson red from my slashed wrists. The cleaning staff knocked on my door, wondering why the Do Not Disturb sign was still up. I was still alive. Still in this hell.

I called Erika, who answered the phone with words that chilled me to the bone both then and even now. “What do you mean you didn’t die? Any idiot can kill themselves. I can’t take this anymore. You are putting me through too much stress and you are going to cause me to have a miscarriage. You should have never signed those papers. If Hiro finds out that I am still talking to you, he will leave me. Just find a building and jump. You know it’s just a matter of time before they find you…and the Yakuza hate snitches.”

The day was fading fast. My wrists stung from the slash marks which were quite deep and still bleeding, but time was running out. I needed to find a building high enough to make sure that I would die instantly. It was only a matter of time before the Yakuza would find me, and I couldn’t subject my best friend or her baby to this anymore. I couldn’t be selfish. I analyzed the buildings up and down so many streets…Is it tall enough? Is the guard rail low enough for me to step over? Another issue, it was Sunday and everything was closed and most buildings you couldn’t even get in. But then I saw it. Towering into the sky above, a tall building with elevator access on the street level. I entered the building and pressed the 30th/Top floor. Should I do it? I reached the top in a heartbeat. The offices were closed and locked, but I could see they had direct access to the roof that had a few tables and seats. For a moment, I imagined the salary men eating lunch or coming out to smoke a cigarette on a busy work day.

I analyzed the area and found a place on the rooftop where the guard rail was low enough to step over. It was a bright blue day and I was so high up that it felt as if I could see all of Tokyo. It was a stunning view. I summoned all the courage I could find within myself and gingerly stepped over the rail, first with one foot then the other, with both hands gripping the railing tightly. I said a silent prayer to God to forgive me for what I was about to do and the poor choices I made in my life. I inched my body slowly around until I faced the building in front of me and the street below. In my mind was a kaleidoscope of images: growing up as a child, my horse, my music, and all the dreams I never accomplished. It was like one of those near-death experiences that you read about where your entire life flashes before you from beginning to end. This was the end. I let go with my right hand. There was a deafening silence except for the beating of my own heart which I could somehow hear in my mind. Now all my weight pitched forward and my left hand was the only thing supporting me. I looked out into the big blue sky with the puffy white clouds and inhaled my last breath… “Sumimasen sumimasen” I heard a voice call. Startled, I grabbed hold of the railing with both hands again and turned around. A Japanese man stood in front of me. At the time, I couldn’t comprehend where he came from or how he got there. If he came up in the elevator, I would have heard the doors open and close. Besides, it was Sunday and every office was closed until Monday. “You need to come off there, it is dangerous!” he said in broken English. Then he reached out his hand to help me back over the railing. When his hand touched mine, I felt a surge of electricity unlike anything I have ever felt in my life. Once I was safely over the railing, he looked at me and asked what I was doing. Grasping for answers, I looked at and pointed to the ground below and explained that I dropped my watch and was trying to pinpoint it. When I turned back to face the man, he was gone, just like that…seemingly into thin air.

You may feel alone, but you’re not. There is help.

National Human Trafficking Hotline 1(888) 373-7888

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1(800) 273-8255

Chikara the memoir is coming soon.