Noriko Sakai

Noriko Sakai's yakuza upbringing in spotlight

Singer-actress Noriko Sakai, recently arrested on charges of drug use, certainly came from an unusual family background. Her only sibling and half-brother, Takeshi Sakai, sent a letter to Shukan Post shedding light on their childhood in the yakuza world. Takeshi is currently incarcerated at Fukuoka Jail, pending trial in September for drug use. Ironically, he, too, was arrested in July, shortly before his sister.

It is a well-known fact that their late father Mineki Sakai was a gang boss of a local crime syndicate in Fukuoka, where the siblings grew up. While Noriko was the daughter of Mineki’s first wife and Takeshi, 8 years her junior, was born to his second wife, they had a close half-sister/brother relationship.

The 30-year old Takeshi admits he was a one-time yakuza member and has a criminal record. After his half-sister became a popular TV idol, he kept his distance from her, declining invitations to events she was participating in. “I didn’t tell people that she was my sister, and I just didn’t want to be a nuisance to her… As long as I knew she was doing well, I was happy,” he writes.

Several years ago, he started hearing rumors that Noriko was hanging out with the “wrong sort” of people, and possibly using drugs. He expresses his regret in the letter, “if only I had confronted her at the time,” and says he cannot forgive Noriko’s husband, Yuichi Takaso, for making his sister a drug user.

No doubt her marriage to Takaso caused Nori-P to get into drugs, but the Sakai family background may have laid the foundation, since both brother and sister were exposed to drug use from an early age. When the two had been placed under the care of foster parents and were living together with young yakuza members, they witnessed narcotics abuse and the suffering of family members.

An individual who knew the family well acknowledges that the sister and brother were indeed very close, and their bond had much to do with the circumstances they were living under. As gang boss, the father was often absent in the evenings, and younger members were constantly at their home, which was in the same building as the gang office. There even was a large-scale police search of their home and the gang office when Noriko had just entered elementary school.

According to this individual, Mineki cut ties with the yakuza business when his daughter went to Tokyo at the age of 14 and made her debut in the entertainment world. But he adds, “It’s a recognized fact that the father was a drug abuser for a time. I’m sure Noriko knows as well. He tried to hide it from his family, so he didn’t inhale or use syringes, but instead he mixed the stimulants in curry, which he ate… He was wearing sunglasses and a hat all the time. I guess he didn’t want others to see how bad he looked.”

That Noriko allowed her husband’s lover to live with them and even look after her son may not be so surprising either. Sakai’s stepmother and mother to her half-brother Takeshi, who later divorced their father, comments that Mineki always had mistresses. As wife of the boss, she was expected to take charge in looking after those mistresses—which was the “ordinary” yakuza lifestyle that Nori-P grew up in.

Noriko Sakai’s trial will begin on Oct 26. It remains to be seen how much of her unusual upbringing will be disclosed in court.

› Login to comment

Latest 15 of 46 Total Comments Show All

alphawolf at 05:29 AM JST - 10th September

She looks very attractive.. her face and hair.

aw
randomenigma at 07:49 AM JST - 10th September

I don't blame the parents... I blame the government for making the kind of law which makes what she did illegal.
pathat at 09:55 PM JST - 10th September

"According to this individual, Mineki cut ties with the yakuza business when his daughter went to Tokyo at the age of 14 and made her debut in the entertainment world."

It was probably his connection to the criminals that control so much of the entertainment world that got Noriko Sakai into the idol business, especially without having to do anything related to porn first.

A stink has been raised, the harmony flow has been disrupted, so it's time to bring her all the way down. Then, after she's been punished by the legal system, she be able to rehabilitate herself through a tear-jerker apology on TV sometime down the road, followed by a book and a gradual reinsertion into the entertainment world. Cry me a river, sweetie!
KitsuneYoukai at 10:07 PM JST - 10th September

He expresses his regret in the letter, “if only I had confronted her at the time,” and says he cannot forgive Noriko’s husband, Yuichi Takaso, for making his sister a drug user.

Yep! I'm sure the guy forced them down her mouth. No one makes you a drug user. You make that choice on your own.
Cicada at 10:17 PM JST - 10th September

This article (and comments above), does a lot to solve the mystery of why they are badgering this woman, and why the media is in a frenzy. It's all a plan to help her write a book and star in a movie.

Her only sibling and half-brother, Takeshi Sakai... is currently incarcerated at Fukuoka Jail, pending trial in September for drug use. Ironically, he, too, was arrested in July, shortly before his sister.

Yeah, what a coincidence.
movieguy at 02:32 PM JST - 11th September

This must be one fun girl! Living most of her life in that controlled J-entertainment world, but with her real self wanting to burst out. Just one date please.
oberst at 09:34 PM JST - 11th September

wow, eat the drugs with curry...............some hot stuff !!
neonzebra at 02:28 AM JST - 12th September

I'm not sick of hearing about this case, but I AM sick of all the irrelevant little details the prosecuters and the media keep dredging up. It's like they've administered some sort of hypnosis/truth serum to find out every single time in her life that she ever drank too many cans of redbull, popped a sudafed, or inhaled a puff of ventolin. Slight exaggeration (barely) I know, but we get it already. Noriko Sakai tried illegal stimulants, 0.008 of a gram of them. Maybe even more than that. And not just once either, possibly several times over the last few years. Shocking! I wonder if she ever drank alcohol when she was underage? Perhaps they should try to squeeze that out of her as well. How old, 14? 15? How many times? Wine, beer, sake, or the hard stuff? Shocking.. Why, they ought to pull her records off the shelves, cancel her contracts, fire her from her management company, lock her in jail and treat her like the arch super-villain she is. Oh wait, they've already done that..

I admit that as a fan I'm biased in her favour and I registered specifically to comment here, but I'm pretty confident that I'd feel the same way even if I'd never heard of her before today. It's stupid. She grew up in weird circumstances as a yakuza kid, being shuffled around between different drug using family/gang members. She spent half of her life being expertly sheltered and "handled" by the idol makers who she made very wealthy in the process along with the presidents and CEO's of quite a few big companies - all of whom have turned against her now that they've determined she's in league with Osama bin Laden. She's been in the public eye for close to 25 years and has always been a squeaky clean model of goodness and purity and sweetness and light (ad nauseum), despite her own best efforts to shed the cute and perfect "Nori-p" image - never a hint of scandal in all these years. Now that she's a grown woman who's been out on her own for a decade or so, of course she's going to make a mistake eventually. I think people are having a hard time accepting that their perfect princess Nori-p isn't perfect after all and that's why this case is so "shocking". Well good morning Japan, nobody's perfect, not you, not me, and not even super-idols like Noriko Sakai. Get over it. These self-righteous and no doubt hypocritical (many of them, at least) prosecutors, journalists, industry executives and media figures who've been condemning her should .......well you get the idea. My two cents.
Ukhti at 03:24 AM JST - 12th September

Ahhh, nobody's family is perfect. Hell, I'm just waiting on the book. Better yet, I agree with another comment, I'm waiting on the J-dorama, too! Who's gonna play Nori-P?
Triple888 at 06:57 AM JST - 12th September

Surprising as first but not so surprising on second thoughts. Showbiz and the underground gangs always have links.
azzassa at 12:03 AM JST - 14th September

Nori-P is a drug user. In most countries she would go to NA and be done with it. Why does it seem like everyone thinks she deserves jail time? How many of you have never smoked weed?
Shaolin7 at 06:16 PM JST - 14th September

azzassa -- except it wasn't mj, it was amphetamines she was arrested for possessing. In Japan, as we're seeing now, the laws in place are incredibly strict with regards to drug possession. The problem some people seem to have is the selective nature of the application of said laws, which I understand; however, if you ultimately believe in the rule of law then you need to understand why others here applaud the hardline stance being taken.
illsayit at 12:22 PM JST - 20th September

The yakuza have to learn to split their business. Drug trafficking and sex trafficking, is their problem, and while they dont distinguish one from the other, their problems, will always be at bay because they have the inner turmoil from these 2 businesses constantly battling each other-or covering for each other. Again, I would mention the word drug being very ambiguous.
AK619 at 06:45 AM JST - 21st September

What a shame to be having your personal business exposed to the public. What a hard lesson for Sakai to learn from the school of hard knocks. See getting involved with the wrong people can drag you down. I heard of someone who had to cut a friend off in Japan for doing drugs. The guy just came over the friends house one day and suddently started smoking pot, even offerred it to the friend. After that, the friend never emailed or contacted the other friend again. You have to cut people off that do drugs in Japan, people like Americans and British folks keep trying to justify that its OK to do illegal drugs here because its accepted in there country. This is another country, and people have to respect the rules, it isn't about complainting to change the law so that some drug users will benefit from a high. Sakai is learning a good lesson, and hopefully, her example will make others think deeply about being friends with bad associates and drug users. She put her self in that situation, she can't really blame anyone else but her self, this is a major wake up for many drug users in Japan to break there habit quickly.
idicemic at 05:52 PM JST - 23rd September

I'm waiting for someone to say she got her drugs from an NJ. Step 1) drug bust, i.e. major shift in news from more socially important talk; step 2) incessant disclosure of irrelevant information, i.e. endless variety show blathering; step 3) link NJ affiliation, i.e. deflection.

Perhaps this Yakuza thing is just a deflection... but what a poor testament to what feeds people these days. "Give her a break, give us a break"