Infiltrating Japan’s Biggest Organized Crime Group: Odo Yakuza Tokyo by Anton Kusters
For two years, Anton Kusters, a Belgian photographer, followed the yakuza more closely than any other outsider ever did.
Camouflaging with the rest of the room, Kuster stood far from the conversations and movements as his camera clicked to produce one of the most intimate and private photobooks about the yakuza.
The yakuza are one of Japan’s most feared and enigmatic members. Though they don’t hide from society, anything that happens within the community is kept inside, no matter how mundane it is. Odo Yakuza Tokyo is not a documentary, even less a journalistic project, but yet the silent, almost immobile insider view it takes offers more connection than anything ever made. When Anton Kusters flew to Japan in around 2009, he decided that his next project would orbit around the big untapped world of the yakuza. With the help of a fixer, a bar owner in Kabukicho, Kusters spent 10 months before being able to take a single picture, negotiating terms and establishing a mutual level of trust.
The photographer was like a mundane shadow, except he found himself quickly immersed in their routines, rituals, and bath house meetings. Kusters told Pen: “Everyone forgot almost immediately that I was there and, as long as I didn’t get involved socially, I could photograph everything.” He recalls, while presenting his TEDx Talk, that his most vulnerable experience was when he was fully nude in an onsen (hot springs), surrounded by macho, tatted men, with a small towel in one hand and his camera in the other.
After assisting at a traditional Buddhist funeral of a high-rank boss, Kusters says that, although him and the gang members never reached a level of friendship, he was invited to these ceremonies to capture their reality and participate in the mourning.
Anton Kusters’ life shifted after the publishing of the book in 2011. It is said that his fixer vanished and he possibly won’t be able to enter Japan again. Playing with fire is never recommended, but without Kusters’ ambition, bravery, and talent, Odo Yakuza Tokyo would’ve never seen the light.
About the Author:
Mizuki Khoury
Born in Montreal, based in Tokyo. Sabukaru’s senior writer and works as an artist under Exit Number Five.
