Word: matsuda
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Scar-faced Giichi Matsuda, known to his fellow gangsters as "The Intellectual" because he was a high-school graduate, was fascinated by the newfangled ideas of democracy and progress. Last December, when he became boss of the 2,000 open-air shopkeepers (tekiyas) in the Matsuzakaya street gang, he tried to put the ideas into practice. Last week they proved his downfall...
...sooner was he sworn in as gang boss, with the hereditary title of "Matsuzakaya the Fifth," than Matsuda began cleaning house. He reorganized the tekiyas into a modern, businesslike corporation (the Matsuda Carrying Trade Co.), ordered his followers to wear Western-style sack suits instead of the traditional drab blue coat and tight white shorts. He also talked about taking the "black" out of the black market, commanded the adoption of "legitimate, ethical and businesslike" methods, prohibited Matsuzakayans from dealing in stolen goods...
...appeal to some of the henchmen. They renounced the blood brotherhood pledge and left the gang in discontent. Last week pasty-faced Tomiji Nodera, who, though an accountant, could not stomach the new business ethics, visited the boss, pulled a German Mauser pistol and fired three times. Matsuda slumped dead in his chair...
...puffy from mourning, she sat easily behind her husband's desk and issued quiet, businesslike orders to the gangmen, who called her "Neisan"-Elder Sister. While her chief henchman, faultlessly attired in a morning coat with a red carnation in his lapel, sat approvingly by her side, Mrs. Matsuda proclaimed: "I intend to carry out my husband's ideas though it may entail considerable danger to my person and some resistance from among my henchmen...
Others, who want to stay in Canada, fear they will never be welcome again. Mrs. K. Matsuda, 35, born in the Dominion, is married to a Jap national. She has been resettled in Winnipeg with her two children, Takumi, 3, and Atsushi, 6. Sadly she says: "People say things that hurt your feelings. They tell me we don't believe in God. If we did, the Japs couldn't . . . [commit atrocities] to Canadian men." Said she last week: "I don't know what they will do with...