A woman by the name Shoko Tendo still has the scars from being brutally raped and beaten by her father’s gang mates as a teenager. Her dad Hiroyasu Tendo was a member of the world’s deadliest gang – Japan’s Yakuza – and forced her into sex slavery for five years before she escaped.
The 35,000-strong gang make the mafia look like kindergarten, and are known for committing mass murder, organ trading and ritual pinky finger amputations. And while stats show the savage criminal gang may be dropping in numbers, just this week a gang member was shot in Tokyo’s entertainment district in front of dozens of startled tourists. Women have such little status in parts of the Yakuza that wives and daughters will often be used as prostitutes by their own family members.
Shoko Tendo, the daughter of a Yakuza gangster boss who wrote a memoir about her experiences, said her father allowed her to be repeatedly raped by associates he was indebted to, leaving her “bloody and bruised” in downmarket hotel rooms. As a result she became addicted to drugs, which the gangsters would constantly feed her. Shoko was also violently beaten by other gang members, being left with injuries such as broken bones and perforated eardrums. “Every time I met a new man I thought he would be different,” she said. “When they cried and said sorry I forgave them. I never learnt.” Now in her early 50s, she has had plastic surgery to recover from her injuries, but still has both physical and emotional life-long scars.
Photo Credit: Getty
