Random, Random 2.0

[ashkor87]

I wish you the best, and that you will have a wonderful year of light.
I have only seen pictures of the festival. Spectacular, to say the least.

thank you...

[ti-amie]

Rare female yakuza walks path to redemption in Japan


Retired yakuza Mako Nishimura sorts fallen leaves during a clean-up activity at the Gifu Gokoku shrine in Gifu Prefecture on Sept. 28. | AFP-JIJI

By Tomohiro Osaki
AFP-JIJI

GIFU –

A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura's criminal past as one of Japan's few female yakuza. But after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society.

The multi-billion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan's drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade.

In recent years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and anti-mafia laws are tightened.

An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records began in 1958.

Heavily inked with dragon and tiger tattoos, 58-year-old Nishimura navigated the yakuza's patriarchal hierarchy — where brute force and authoritarian leadership reign — on and off for three decades.

Rival gangsters "looked down on me just because I was a woman, which I hated," she said at her cramped apartment in Gifu Prefecture.

"I wanted to be acknowledged as a yakuza," she said. "So I learned to speak, look and fight like a man."

Nishimura says she was officially recognized by authorities as the first female yakuza after she was jailed for drug possession when she was 22.

While no official police data verifies this, experts say female members are extremely rare.

Retired anti-mob detective Yuichi Sakurai said he had never seen a female yakuza in his 40-year career but "it was possible a few are included" in the annual numbers tracked by police, which do not give a gender breakdown.

Nishimura, skinny with dyed-blonde hair, finally put the syndicate behind her around five years ago.

She now ekes out a living at demolition sites — one of the few jobs that tolerates her full-sleeve tattoos.

She also supports other mafia retirees, taking huge pride in leading the Gifu branch of Gojinkai, a nonprofit dedicated to helping ex-criminals.


Nishimura shows off the tattoos on her forearms during an interview at her residence in Gifu Prefecture on Sept. 28. A missing fingertip offers a clue to her yakuza past. | AFP-JIJI

Yuji Moriyama is among the posse of middle-aged tough guys — one has a prominent knife scar across his belly — that Nishimura takes out for monthly trips to pick up litter.

"She's like a big sister. She scolds us when we deserve it," 55-year-old Moriyama said, recalling a time he skipped the trash collection trip and she made him kneel on the ground to apologize.

"She scared the hell out of me," he said, laughing.

For Nishimura, "the idea I'm doing something good for other people gives me confidence," she said.

"I'm slowly returning to a normal human being."

Nishimura grew up in a strict family, with a civil servant father who heavily pressured her academically.

As a teen, she ran away from home and fell into crime, joining a major yakuza clan by the age of 20.

Brawls, extortion and selling illegal drugs soon became routine. She even cut off her own finger tip as part of the yakuza's ritualistic self-punishment for blunders.

But in her late 20s, Nishimura absconded from the syndicate and was "excommunicated," putting gangsterism behind her to marry and raise her son.

"For the first time, I felt a gush of maternal instinct. He was so cute, I thought I could die for him," she said.

The determined new mother studied her way into the care and medical industries, only to be fired over her tattoos.

Unsure where else to turn, she relapsed into selling stimulants.

In her late 40s, she rejoined her old yakuza organization but found it poor and bereft of "dignity."

The yakuza had thrived in the post-war bedlam of Japan, when it was at times seen as a necessary evil to bring order to the streets.

It still exists in a semi-legal gray area, but harsher anti-mafia laws have left fewer people willing to do business with the mobsters.

"Yakuza used to be the king of villains," she said, but seeing her old boss struggling to scrape money together disillusioned her to the extent that she quit the underworld shortly after her 50th birthday.

Today, Nishimura has found a new mentor — Gojinkai chairperson and prominent former gangster Satoru Takegaki.

Proceeds from her recently published autobiography help her make ends meet.

"I think yakuza will keep shrinking," she said.

"I hope they will become extinct."

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/ ... 1761030237

[ponchi101]

A brutal mafia. Like most things Japanese, steeped in incredible tradition and rituals. But truly evil in almost every way.

[ti-amie]

Something to bring a smile.

[Owendonovan]

If that's just a fingertip gone, what is considered a finger?

[ponchi101]

It means she committed two violations. The Yakuza made (makes?) you cut one joint off per violations. So, if she is missing two segments of her left hand pinky, it is because she screwed up twice.

[dryrunguy]

Ancient Roman Gravestone Found in New Orleans Backyard Touches Off a Mystery
Nobody knew how a nearly 2,000-year-old grave marker landed in a backyard for decades — until this week.

By Aimee Ortiz
Oct. 10, 2025

Daniella Santoro and her husband, Aaron Lorenz, were busy “de-junglefying” the backyard of their New Orleans home in March when they found something, well, curious.

There in the dirt and muck, covered by thick vines, was a marble slab with Latin engraving.

Dr. Santoro, an anthropologist, thought that the stone looked like a grave marker, but there was no English anywhere on it.

It turns out that Dr. Santoro was correct. The object was in fact a gravestone, but not for someone buried in her yard. No, the nearly 2,000-year-old grave marker belonged to a man named Sextus Congenius Verus, a second-century Roman sailor and soldier.

The slab’s unearthing touched off a mystery that stretched across time and continents before finally, at least partly, being solved this week.

Susann Lusnia, an associate professor of classical studies at Tulane University, quickly identified and authenticated the tablet after Dr. Santoro emailed her a picture of it. When she first saw the picture, she said, “it was like a shiver up my spine.”

“It was clear to me that it was an ancient Roman inscription,” Professor Lusnia said. “I was going to be surprised if it turned out not to be, but I was also surprised that it was a Roman inscription because it’s in New Orleans and somebody’s backyard.”

Coincidentally, Professor Lusnia said, Dr. Santoro emailed her on April 1.

“Not that I was really skeptical,” she said, “but I just found that kind of amusing that it was on April Fools’ Day.”

The gravestone begins with the words: “To the spirits of the dead for Sextus Congenius Verus,” according to a translation provided by Professor Lusnia. It said that he had served in the military for 22 years and died at the age of 42. The marker was made for him by his heirs.

The tablet was in a municipal library in 1910, according to Professor Lusnia, and its text was recorded in the “Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum,” a primary reference source for Latin inscriptions. Then, in 1918, the stone was recorded as being at the new Museo Civico in Civitavecchia, but the museum was basically destroyed by Allied bombing during World War II.

That’s where things get murky. The slab would be lost to time — until Dr. Santoro and her husband uncovered it this spring.

Back when the stone was laid, Civitavecchia, which is about an hour north of Rome by train, was called Centumcellae, Professor Lusnia said. It was an imperial port city that today serves as a busy cruise ship terminal.

Lara Anniboletti, the director of the National Archaeological Museum of Civitavecchia, said in a statement that the epigraph was first discovered in 1864 in the Roman sepulchral area of the classiarii, a necropolis dating back to the second and third centuries A.D., in the Prato del Turco area of Civitavecchia.

“The epigraphs of the Civitavecchia classiarii document how these sailors were often recruited from distant regions of the Empire,” she said, adding that the inscriptions the museum has in its possession will be displayed in a new exhibition there, “offering a glimpse into daily life two thousand years ago.”

“It is hoped that, thanks to the joint efforts of the FBI and the Italian Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, the inscription found in New Orleans will also be returned and displayed in the new museum halls,” Dr. Anniboletti said.

The F.B.I. did not immediately respond to a request for comment because of the government shutdown.

As to how the grave marker ended up in a backyard in New Orleans, the Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans said on Thursday that a woman had come forward that day and claimed responsibility for placing the stone in the yard 21 years ago. She said that she had inherited it from her grandparents, who preserved it in a display case.

The woman’s grandfather, according to the center, was a soldier who was stationed in Italy during World War II. It’s unclear how he came to have it.

D. Ryan Gray, an anthropologist and professor at the University of New Orleans who also helped with identifying the slab, said that although he and his colleagues often handle inquiries from people who find strange objects in their yard, “I knew pretty quickly that it was something different than what we usually get.”

“Based on the style of the inscription and the type of stone, it was pretty clear from the outset that it wasn’t a New Orleans tombstone,” he said.

Dr. Gray said the stone’s finding “opens up a window” into what was happening after World War II with these kinds of souvenirs.

“I think we’ll see more people who kind of look into family collections and say, ‘Oh well, what is that’ as a result of this,” he said.

Professor Lusnia said that the “importance of a funerary inscription for a Roman is that it keeps their name in the public eye.”

“Memory is the way you have an afterlife in the Roman world,” she said. “To be remembered is to exist beyond your regular lifetime.”

And in that, Sextus Congenius Verus’s heirs have succeeded, perhaps far greater than they ever could have imagined.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/us/r ... f11dfcd63a

[ponchi101]

Interesting story. Txs.

[ti-amie]

I don't even want to think about what was in all that wool.

[dryrunguy]

I think that's actually from several years ago? Yes, it was quite a story. It's amazing he was able to survive it.

[ti-amie]

I think that's actually from several years ago? Yes, it was quite a story. It's amazing he was able to survive it.

I knew I'd seen it before.

[Suliso]

It's been three years now, but I only just noticed that there are more people living in Dominican Republic than Cuba. Sixty years ago it was 2:1 in favor of Cuba...

[ponchi101]

Contraception is readily available in Cuba (you have to give them credit there) and who in Cuba would have a child?
Take that and their need to escape that hell/island, and yes, I am surprised by that number too.

[Suliso]

One would imagine DR has a brighter future than Cuba, but predictions are hard...

[ponchi101]

Neither country has any bright future. These are part of the Caribbean islands that have no way to escape their poverty. Few, if any, resources, weak social systems and low levels of education (Cuba not so much, but no industrial capability to speak of).
Wouldn't want to live in either place.