In the western world, not much was widely known about Japan's Yakuza gang until Netflix premiered The Outsider - a movie which stars Jared Leto as an American captive soldier in the final days of WWII.
In the movie, Leto is freed from prison with the aid of his Yakuza cellmate and must repay his debt by joining the gang. While the film has received a host of criticism for casting Leto as a Yakuza member (there has never been an American in the gang), it has put the Yakuza into the spotlight.
Like most gangs, the Yakuza have extreme methods of proving your worth to them. While a lot of their members are heavily tattooed, a large proportion of them are also missing their pinky finger.
The act of cutting off one's pinky is called yubitsume, which literally translates to "finger-shortening" and it's a huge part of Yakuza culture. In the gang, members are expected to cut off their pinky fingers as a show of remorse for an offence that they have previously committed.
The ritual involves cutting off the topmost portion of the left pinkie with an extremely sharp knife, known as a tanto. The offender then wraps the severed joint up and presents to package to his oyabun (immediate boss).
If the offender then goes on to commit succeeding offences, they are expected to amputate further portions of their finger. When the finger has been completely removed, the right pinkie is then the next option.
The rationale behind yubitsume can be found in the traditions of Japanese swordsmanship. In the practice, the last three fingers - pinkie ring and middle - are used to grip the sword tightly, while the thumb and index fingers are not needed in the same manner. As such, yubitsume believes that the removal of the pinky will progressively weaken the offender's sword grip, therefore making him eternally weaker due to their sins.
Following yubitsume, it's presumed that the offender will now come to rely on the group, with activities such as hand-to-hand combat and handling firearms becoming increasingly difficult.
Traditionally, the offender must amputate their finger without any assistance, making the experience a particularly horrifying thing to endure. Not only this, but former yakuza members have found returning to society difficult - particularly if they are missing parts of their finger. Jobs that involve manual labour are much harder without a lost pinky and they often struggle with finding work due to the stigma.
According to Shintaro Hayashi, a man who makes body parts for accident survivors and silicone for breast cancer patients, there has been an increased demand for prosthetic fingers in the last decade.
“I started to see a gradual increase in people who were asking for prosthetic pinkies," Hayashi said. "They weren’t the standard small, medium or large, but custom-made pinkies.”
It's a pretty brutal ritual that must be endured in order to prove your loyalty to the gang. You would hope that, given that pain that they have to endure for doing so, the practice would be enough to put subjects of from offending again.
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