Tadamasa Goto gives up the gangster life

Tadamasa Goto, one of the Tokyo underworld’s shadiest characters, has turned his back on a life of crime and turned to Buddhism. The charismatic leader of the Goto-gumi yazuka, a gang of Japanese mafiosi, told the Sankei Shimbun newspaper that he is training for the priesthood, and will undergo a ceremony on Wednesday - the day the Japanese consider to be Buddha's birthday.

For many years, 66-year-old Goto, labeled the 'John Gotti of Japan', was a feared and violent criminal who earned a fortune through protection rackets, white-collar crime, drugs and prostitution, and would bulldoze any business that resisted him. In one incident, the Goto-gumi bashed up Juko Itami, a renowned film director, because he portrayed Japanese gangsters in a negative light in one of his films.

Last October, however, Goto was expelled from the Yamaguchi-gumi, a parent crime syndicate, when his superiors decided that Goto had become too public a figure. They were enraged when, in September, the Japanese press reported that he had invited several celebrities to a sumptuous birthday feast.

Likewise, the trip that Goto took to the US in 2001 didn’t endear him to his mobster peers. Goto traveled to America, as a guest of the FBI, for a life-saving operation. In return for a fast-tracked liver transplant from a teenage boy who'd died in a car crash, Goto gave a $100,000 donation to the UCLA Medical Centre in Los Angeles.

He also talked to the FBI about how Japanese criminals went about legitimising their earnings, and about their links with North Korea. Apparently, Goto wasn't actually that helpful, and didn’t tell the authorities anything they couldn't have gleaned from a yazuka fanzine.

Now, rejected by the underworld, Goto is looking forward to the "solemn and meaningful" priesthood ceremony. Speaking about his reinvention, he said that "Buddha will make me his disciple and enable me to start a new life."