Assassination exposes Japan's underworld

(07-29) 04:00 PDT Nagasaki , Japan -- For all the trouble he had caused, Nagasaki gangster Tetsuya Shiroo had atoned by cutting off half a little finger and the tips of two others.

And things were not looking up.

The code of the yakuza, or organized crime syndicate, calls for troublesome members to perform the joint-by-joint amputations when they upset the bosses. Shiroo was an old-style gangster, a man who believed in the rituals.

But yakuza life was hard and getting harder for Shiroo. Everyone knew he had money troubles. His bosses expected him to kick about $3,000 a month their way in homage, and it was tough coming up with the cash in a city where business had been so bad for so long. Even worse, the once- lucrative option of skimming money from public-works projects was dying now that the Japanese government had turned off the geyser of public money.