Yakuza Moon: Yakuza tattoos in book form

Yakuza Moon: Memoirs of a Gangster's Daughter by Shoko Tendo provides a rare glimpse into the world of the Yakuza through Tendo's eyes as the daughter of one of Japan's mob bosses. She has really lived the Yakuza life and has the authentic Japanese Yakuza tattoos to prove it. Tendo is polite, even demure, but when her tattoos are revealed, you realise just what an unusual life she has lead. The Yakuza tattoos cover Tendo's body, winding up from her wrists across her chest and culminates on her shoulder with the face of a courtesan with a knife clenched between her teeth and her breast exposed.


Truly a defiant tattoo and one that accurately reflects her unhappy childhood and subsequent deliquency including addiction and a series of abusive relationships. If anyone knows the mind and soul of the Yakuza and has the tattoos and scars to match, it is this young lady.

"I hated the way my father behaved, But then I became just like him. I was a glue-addicted delinquent like a junior yakuza, picking fights and not caring about how other people felt."

After years of relative calm, the yakuza have recently captured the public imagination in Japan. The swearing-in two summers ago of a new godfather of Japan's biggest underworld organisation, the Yamaguchi-gumi, was followed by a spate of shootings of high-level gangland bosses.


Obviously in a patriachal society, much is written and known about the males in the Yakuza. Yakuza Moon gives an insight into the women who inhabit this sector of society.

When she finally managed to come out of her troubled teenage years, she quickly rose up the ranks of the Tokyo hostess scene. In her early 20s she decided to tattoo the top half of her body, yakuza-style which helped her end her emotional and physical dependence on the men of violence.

Though she is not ashamed of her tattoo she knows even a tiny patch of tell-tale ink poking out from beneath the cuffs of her shirt is enough to invite looks of disgust. "Musicians and artists can get away with showing off their tattoos, but a delinquent like me does her best to hide them."

The chapter in her book describing her getting the tattoo is a good read and a testament to her commitment to herself

While the tattoo was fresh, blood would ooze out and stick to my shirt.

when I looked at that beatifully crafted tattoo I was filled with a sense of total contentment I had never experienced before. I felt as though I had been set free

Yakuza tattoos