Shoko Tendo - A Yakuza Daughter

Doing some research on body modification, and ran across this story. I felt it was worth sharing.

Shoko Tendo is the daughter of a yakuza gangster. She's been forced into sex, and drug addiction; has had plastic surgery to cover the scars suffered from numerous beatings. By her own volition, she had her body tattooed, and now has her own life as an author.

Tendo's last speed fix came when she was 19, when her injuries from another beating in the room of a motel came close to killing her. "I kept thinking, 'I don't want to die in a place like this'. I was there for an hour and managed to drag myself home ... I knew it was time to stop," she said.

...it was her [Tendo's]decision, in her early 20s, to tattoo the top half of her body, yakuza-style, that marked the end of her emotional and physical dependence on the men of violence, and the beginning of the new life she has since made as a writer and, now, as a mother.