Elder Sister

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.

The Matsuzakaya gang had its roots in the 17th Century, when the samurai, Japan's warrior class, had formed brawling street associations as a relief from unemployment between wars. More recently members had become black market dealers and fences for stolen goods.

No 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.

Going straight did not 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.

Next day loyal Matsuzakayans closed their stalls for a half day's mourning, gathered to elect their dead leader's attractive widow, Yoshiko, as "Matsuzakaya the Sixth." In her flower-banked office, the first woman gang chieftain in Tokyo history planned a memorial service that promised to be "the biggest thing the tekiyas have ever seen." Then, her face still 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."

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