Gifu (Japan) (AFP) – A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza. Now aged 58, she has clawed her way out of the underworld and now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. “I’ve started thinking like a normal person,” she says, following three decades of on-and-off navigating of the yakuza’s patriarchal and brutal hierarchy.
