Yubitsume

Yakuza culture + a major screwup + a bad case of Honor Before Reason = ouch.

"Apologies are a fine darb of a gesture and all, but I never know what to do with all those extra fingers..."

— Daimon Kiyota, The Secret World

Yubitsume, also referred to as "yubi o tobasu" (meaning "finger flying"), is a ritual from yakuza tradition that is performed when groveling in apology just isn't enough. If a yakuza were to dishonor himself or his superiors, he is required to cut off the tip of his left pinky finger and offer it up as an apology to the offended party. And if a yakuza continues to screw up, it might not stop at one pinky tip, continuing in losing more joints and more fingers.

Yubitsume usually involves a specific ritual. The offending yakuza spreads out a clean cloth and lays his hand palm-down on it. With a short sharp knife (often a tanto), he then cuts off his pinky tip at the first knuckle. The knuckle is then wrapped in the cloth like a nice "package" and delivered to his superior.

Keep in mind, though, that within the Yakuza, many higher level members of the gang would bypass the punishment. If they screwed up, they never got their fingers cut off. It's all a fake show to keep the lower ranked members in line. Ain't fair, but that's life.

The practice originates in feudal Japan, where conventional sword grips rely on use of the pinky finger for control (typically the left one, if the wielder is right-handed); after yubitsume, the offender becomes weaker and more dependent on his superiors. These days however it is not as widely practiced anymore, and replaced with simply giving the offended party loads of cash.

Sometimes in fiction the exact ritual isn't followed, but the idea is the same: self-mutilation for the sake of honor or an apology.

A yubitsume scene is a must for any work prominently featuring yakuza.

Subtrope of Self-Punishment Over Failure and Fingore.

See also: Honor Before Reason, Amputative Sentencing, and Seppuku. May invoke Major Injury Underreaction.

This is one of two reasons (the other being Four Is Death) why Four-Fingered Hands are considered offensive in Japan.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• In the seinen manga Wolf Guy - Wolfen Crest, Haguro Dou, the son of a yakuza boss, punishes a mook who seriously failed him by taking away his finger in a horribly bloody Fingore scene; rather than using something sharp, Haguro uses a metal ring he is wearing, grinding the poor mook's finger against the floor until it comes off. He then points out that it'll be quite impossible to surgically reattach the finger now.
• In Change 123, a Yakuza attacks one of Motoko's three badass fathers with a folding knife, but the blade folds down onto his thumb. The father calmly tells a horrified boy not to worry, because these guys cut their own fingers all the time.
• In Higurashi: When They Cry, instead of having to cut her finger off, Shion Sonozaki has to rip her own fingernails off, one for each of her sins, to earn repentance from her family, who are the Hinamizawa equivalent of the Yakuza. After that, her twin sister Mion was so shocked and depressed that she willingly ripped her own fingernails off, just so Shion wouldn't have to suffer alone.
  • This is actually a standard punishment inside the Sonozaki family. Shion and Mion's mother Akane had to do the same after confronting Granny Oryuu on her love life (ironically, her future husband was also a Yakuza boss), and Oryuu herself did it too for an undisclosed incident in her past.
• Referenced in Gokusen after the Family lawyer, a close friend of the Yakuza Princess heroine is shot by a member of an opposing group. Two of the Yakuza who are her friends/subordiantes comment that it wouldn't be enough for the rival group to make amends by sending her the shooter's pinkies and little toes; she'd demand his life.
• A Yakuza boss in the seinen manga Homunculus did this almost constantly. Most of his gang members were missing pinkies because he would remove them for insignificant reasons like interrupting a meeting. Turns out he has a Freudian Excuse from accidentally slicing his brother's finger off as a child. When the main character helps him realize his problem, the boss slices his own pinky off.
• Ichi the Killer:
  • The manga has an interesting variant. When summoned over his torture of Suzuki, Kakihara cuts off the tip of his tongue instead of his finger. He's also doing it more because he's an extreme masochist than because he really wants to atone for his mistake. It's noted that the Yakuza bosses have been trying to cut down on the practice and try to go for compensation in cash when possible.
  • When Kakihara's men leave him to join Suzuki, they are forced to perform yubitsume and send the results to Kakikara in a box. Specifically, the tips of their middle fingers.
• A variant of this is s performed in Rurouni Kenshin by Houji as an apology to the other members of the Ten Swords for deceiving them in a previous mission (which had actually been Shishio's strategy, but he told them it was Houji's idea). This is subverted as It's actually a Secret Test of Character by Shishio to gauge Houji's devotion to their cause. In the manga, the form is somewhat different as instead of cutting off a finger, Houji tears off all ten of his fingernails. It's played more straight in the anime, where one fingernail's removed and then Houji stabs the finger it came from.
• Twittering Birds Never Fly: Doumeki cuts off his pinky finger in penance after leaving his post momentarily and letting his boss get shot.
• The Way of the Househusband: Played for Laughs when the ex-Yakuza House Husband Tatsu tries to perform yubitsume to apologize for buying his wife a gift that she already owns. She's used to him treating domestic minutiae as Serious Business and knocks him flying before he can follow through.
• Altered Carbon: Resleeved. As his Establishing Character Moment, jerkass Yakuza boss Shinji draws his sword and chops the finger off a minion simply for annoying him (he was brandishing a gun at Takeshi, ironically for disrespecting his boss), then tucks the severed finger into the man's pocket when Takeshi refuses to accept it.
• GTO: The Early Years: Kurita tries to force Eikichi to chop off one of his fingers to free Katsuyuki. He's only saved from going through with it by the timely arrival of Kurita's boss Matsuoka.
• Akiba Maid War parodies this by having a maid be forced to chop off one of her pigtails in a manner similar to the Yubitsume ritual in the first episode. When she can't go through with it, the manager chops it off herself, leaving her sobbing over the loss of her "beautiful pigtail".
• Referenced in Tokyo Godfathers. When the main characters help a middle-aged man get out from being trapped under his car, Gin notices the man is missing his little finger and tries to escape. Fortunately, things are quickly smoothed over.

Comic Books

• The titular character in Kabuki is made to do this after killing the Big Bad against her bosses' orders.
  • This being Kabuki, she does it in a rather unique way: she bites the tip of the finger off, chews and swallows the flesh, then spits out the cleaned bone. Then, since her bosses are staring at the piece of bone and completely distracted, she goes ahead and kills them all.
• Defied in Green Arrow - the assassin Shado had all of her fingers intact, which Ollie's informant was a little surprised at hearing. He then warned Ollie it wasn't a good sign - in order to never have needed to make that sort of apology to her betters, Shado would have to be either completely green or a near-superhuman badass, and given the quality of her work, it definitely wasn't the former.
• In the last story-arc of the short-lived Manhunter series that stars Mark Shaw, Shaw's enemy Dumas has Shaw's friend Kazuo commit this ritual.

Fan Fic

• Ashes of the Past: Part of Annie and Oakley's punishment for the events of Heroes at Altomare, which, according to Giovanni, nearly undid the two years of PR work the main trio of Rockets have done. This was on top of a demotion to grunt work and a Pokémon ban.
• Referenced in Doing It Right This Time when Inspector Kijiro Horaki jokes that Toji's dad is missing a suspicious number of fingers (actually the result of a workplace accident), but "Even if he really is yakuza he's clearly rather bad at it anyway". Hikari is not amused.
  • Not coincidentally, in Neon Metathesis Evangelion, Touji's father actually is a yakuza who hides his hands inside gloves.
    • To prove how genuine her apology towards Touji's father is, Misato nearly performs this herself, only stopping when told it wasn't necessary.

Film

• Black Rain: The villain performs it near the end, when a Yakuza boss insists that he'll only agree to a truce if he does so. Later the villain uses the same knife to kill the boss, and later still, the fresh injury bothers him when he gets into a fist fight with the detective chasing him. When the villain reinjures his hand it proves to be the turning point in their fight.
• Johnny Mnemonic. Shinji's monomolecular whip is attached to a prosthetic thumb. It is implied by his immediate superior that he had cut off his thumb in the past due to dishonor and had since turned this disability into an asset.
• Sympathy for Lady Vengeance: There are no yakuza in the film, but Geum-ja wants to get the point across that she's sorry...
• The Yakuza has two yubitsume incidents. Ken promised his brother he would ensure his nephew (a Yakuza goon) came to no harm, but after he's forced to kill him in self defense he tries to commit seppuku. His brother stops him, so Ken cuts off his finger instead. And in a surprise twist, the American protagonist Harry Kilmer is about to leave Japan when he suddenly returns to Ken's place and asks to speak to him formally. While Ken is fetching tea, he cuts off a finger and presents it to Ken, apologising for the pain he's brought to Ken's life (sleeping with his wife while Ken was missing presumed dead in the past and indirectly causing the death of Ken's daughter in the present), and asking him to forgive his wife and return to her. The act enables Ken to finally forgive Kilmer, declaring that no man has a greater friend.
• Dirty Sanchez The Movie. In Japan, a character has the end of his little finger on his right hand cut off with a cigar cutter.
• The first Battles Without Honor and Humanity movie has a yubitsume scene. Since the film is a ruthless subversion of Yakuza movies, they lose the finger. In the chicken coop.
• Predators features a Yakuza enforcer, Hanzo, who is voiceless for most of the film. At a certain point, Hanzo reveals he speaks English and is immediately asked why he hasn't talked more throughout the film. He shows two missing fingers on his left hand and replies "Because I talk too much."
• In Showdown in Little Tokyo one of the Big Bad's subordinates does this because he fails to prevent the heroes from rescuing the girl his boss had kidnapped and molested. Too pissed off, his master just drives his katana through the lackey's chest afterwards.
• Averted in The Streetfighter. Miss Yang, a major villain in the film, does not believe in second chances. If one of her Yakuza mooks fails her, she won't bother with making them cut off their fingers — she just executes them. As you can probably guess, this is a very good indicator of how much of a Bad Boss she is, even by Yakuza standards.
  Miss Yang: Assassination or suicide, that's the penalty!
• A Yakuza man who seems to have undergone this serves as the race starter for the final race in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. The actor playing the Yakuza man actually still had his fingers, so they were digitally (excuse the Pun) removed. This was one thing the Japanese ratings board disapproved of, so the fingers had to be digitally put back in for release there.
• In Jack Reacher, one of the Zek's underlings fails him. The Zek wants him to prove that he has the will to do what is necessary to survive, pointing to his own missing fingers, which he himself chewed off in a Siberian gulag. The underlings asks for a knife only to be told to use his own teeth. Ultimately, he is unable to chew off his own fingers and is shot.
• Mission: Impossible II: Big Bad Sean Ambrose's main henchman Stamp (correctly) guesses his boss's new main squeeze is actually an heroic mole. Ambrose is so incensed he uses a cigar cutter to sever the tip of one of his fingers, calling it "merciful" not to cut it at the joint. The injury is later aggravated by being slammed into a car door and reveals his true identity when Hunt uses masks to switch identities with a gagged Stamp, whom Ambrose riddles with bullets before noticing the bandaged finger.
• Pale Flower: Jiro has to do this after trying to kill Muraki—they're members of rival yakuza gangs, and Jiro's act broke a truce between the gangs. Afterwards, they become friends.
• Pleasures of the Flesh: Hayami's yakuza husband chopped off his finger and gave it to the yakuza boss in return for Hayami. Hayami then buys her freedom by slicing off her own finger, in front of everybody, and giving it to the boss.
• John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum. After being declared excommunicado for killing someone in a Truce Zone, John Wick goes to the Elder to ask that it be lifted. After swearing fealty to him, John cuts off his ring finger using a chisel, then removes the ring from the severed finger and presents it to the Elder. The wound is then cauterised with a hot poker.
• Lost Girls and Love Hotels: Discussed when Margaret asks her lover Kazu, a Yakuza member, about this practice, and he tells her what it's for.

Literature

• In Alderamin on the Sky, yubitsume is the traditional form of penance among the Sinack tribesmen of the north. Ikta does it before the Sinack chief to apologize for the Imperial Army's misdeeds against her people, knowing it will prove his sincerity to her and secure the aid of the Sinack against the invading Alderan Holy Army.
• Discworld
  • In one novel it's mentioned that Harry King, who is definitely not a mob boss, has a missing pinky on one of his hands.
  • In Reaper Man, Miss Renata Flitwick's father is identified by Death as missing the tip of his left pinky finger. Understandable, given the former had been a smuggler in life.
• In William Gibson's Neuromancer, when Case is trying to score drugs under the alias "Lupus", his ditzy companion asks if he's Yakuza:
  Cath: How come you got all your fingers, then? I thought you had to chop one off every time you screwed up.
  "Lupus": I never screw up.
• Michael Slade's novel Kamikaze has multiple examples as a punishment for failing the kumicho (Godfather) of the local Yakuza.
• The Judge Dee story "The Morning of the Monkey" is about a rich old man who's fallen in love with a young street girl, and to prove his love, he goes as far as to have his finger cut off to join her gang. Unfortunately it goes downhill from there: the old man asked a pharmacist to chop it off in exchange for forgiving a debt, unfortunately the pharmacist's mentally-retarded son thought the old man had stolen his fiancée (the same young street girl, who'd only met him that afternoon) barged in and jostled them, chopping all the man's fingers off before killing him, which is why the judge is called in.
• In The Devil's Arithmetic, the woman in charge of the prisoners at the concentration camp gets a finger shot off every time someone escapes or things get out of hand.
• Referenced as kind of a joke in the Layer Cake novel. Villain with Good Publicity Eddie Ryder is telling the protagonist about his business dealings with Japanese businessmen. The Villain Protagonist, knowing Eddie is a London Gangster, and that the business deal involves drugs assumes (likely correctly) the "businessmen" are Yakuza, angering Eddie. While the protagonist apologizes for the assumption, he makes a sarcastic reference in his narration about (paraphrased) "perfectly legitimate businessmen covered in tattoos and missing their pinkies".
• Referenced when Phoenix Force find themselves up against the Yakuza. A Japanese detective says that the sight of missing fingers is so common among gangsters that he suspects their bosses set them up to fail just to test their willingness to chop a finger off.
• In Charles de Lint's cyberpunk novel Svaha, yakuza attorney Fumiko Hirose does this shortly before setting out to avenge the murder of her lover.
• In Kamikaze Girls, Momoko's father is an incompetent low-ranking yakuza member who was supposed to get his finger cut off after a screw-up, but cried and begged so much that the boss let him off the hook. (Momoko has nothing but disdain for his cowardice.)
• Parodied in Janwillem van de Wetering's Amsterdam Cop novel The Japanese Corpse: the Comissaris is taken prisoner by a yakuza who tries to force him to do this. The Comissaris pretends to be clumsy and fumbles around with the knife until the yakuza leans over him to do it for him, at which point he spikes the guy's hand to the table with the knife.
• Jay McInerney's second-but-really-first novel Ransom, about an American teaching English in Japan, has a scene at a nightclub where one character discreetly points out the missing finger sections on the, uh, security.
• The practice is brought up in The Man with the Red Tattoo after James Bond notices a youth who is missing a digit in one of his fingers, and his partner Reiko explains the practice of Yakuza members making amends for failures by cutting them off. Earlier, they had come across an informant who is missing all of his fingers for talking too much.
• A variation of this features in Ser Davos Seaworth's backstory in A Song of Ice and Fire. He was given a knighthood for smuggling onions to the besieged lord of Storm's End, Stannis Baratheon... and then, after the war, Stannis chopped off four of his fingertips as punishment for smuggling. Davos doesn't particularly mind.

  Davos: Life's been good since you hacked 'em off, Your Grace. An' it's four less fingernails ta' clean.

• In the Neal Stephenson novel/series The Baroque Cycle, sailing ship captain Otto van Hoek cuts off a part of his fingers and eventually a whole hand as a self-inflicted punishment each time he is bested by pirates.

Live-Action TV

• A Chinese version occurs in Kung Fu (1972). In "A Small Beheading", a sea captain played by William Shatner approaches Caine bearing a pardon from the Emperor of China for killing his nephew, but only if Caine receives a token 'beheading' by losing a finger. The Emperor has no intention of keeping his word. Caine losing a finger is just to avoid making the pardon seem too good to be true.
• This comes up from time to time in the Netflix shows for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
  • Subverted on Daredevil when a few mooks have just failed Hirochi and begin to tie off their fingers in preparation for this. Unfortunately, they have the wrong idea about who they're working for and their boss, from the Hand, kills them on the spot. He's later shown to have a cigar box on his desk with several severed fingers in it.
  • Luke Cage. Mama Mabel cuts off an associate's finger with garden shears for breaking her gang’s rule against drug dealing.
  • Iron Fist. Played straight when The Hand sends two enforcers to punish Harold Meachum by chopping off a finger. Alexi, the talking enforcer, points out that Vando, his mute partner, lost two of his fingers and his tongue as punishment for a previous failure. Before they can do so Danny Rand walks in and a fight ensues during which both enforcers are killed, but Harold arranges for their bodies to be disposed of and cuts off his own finger so it will look like the enforcers carried out their task and left.
• The Naked Director: When it seems that Toshi's yakuza gang will finally kill him as he simply doesn't have the last 100 million yen that Furuya demands for sparing his life, Toshi cuts off his own pinky and hands it over, saying it's worth 100 million. Furuya lets him go.
• Parodied in a Saturday Night Live skit. An American tourist (Chris Farley) accidentally winds up as a contestant on a Japanese game show and freaks out as he sees the two other contestants (host Alec Baldwin and Janeane Garofalo) each getting a finger chopped off after missing a question.
• Referenced in one of the early episodes of the fifth season of Burn Notice. Michael is trying to intimidate a wounded Yakuza member into revealing where the group has stashed a group of abducted women being smuggled into the US and forced into prostitution. The Yakuza guy laughs in Mike's face, then holds up his hand, which is missing half of his ring finger, and explains that he did that to himself as a punishment for falling asleep on guard duty. He says that Michael can't scare him, and that there is no way he'll betray his own people. Sure enough, he proves to be a tough nut to crack.
• Sorta used in 1000 Ways to Die. A high-ranked Yakuza boss gets pissed with a karaoke singer and has the dude's finger cut off... and then swallows it whole. As he chokes, one of his mooks attempts the Heimlich maneuver... but does it incorrectly and kills his boss,
• An episode of Time Trax has Darien square off again the Yakuza. He foils the plans of one Yakuza member, who then cuts off his own pinky to please his boss.
• One episode of The Pretender has the Centre (or more exactly, Mr Lyle) doing business with the Yakuza. One of their men (an old flame of Miss Parker's) is missing a finger and it's explained that he messed up and was forced to cut off his finger as punishment. Mr. Lyle cynically asks "What do you have to do to lose a thumb?" You could make a deal with the Yakuza and have Jarod screw it up while other Centre personnel^note Even Mr Raines disapproves of this deal make sure you can't refund, as Mr. Lyle finds out at the end.
• From Too Old to Die Young, the episode "The Tower" has Martin follow a potential hit to a Yakuza den, who — as a result of being several tens of thousands in debt — gets his finger slashed off for his troubles (by a katana-wielding Hideo Kojima of all people).
• Giri/Haji: Yuto is recruited into a Yakuza clan after killing a member of a rival clan during a robbery. To avoid a war, Yuto is made to cut off his pinky in penance to the leader of the rival clan. Later, his boss is forced to perform the ritual to end a gang war. After delivering his pinky to the rival leader, he's forced to cut off an additional finger, causing his wedding ring to drop off his stump.

Music

• Referenced in Lupe Fiasco's song "Popular Demand"
  "Young Yakuza, but none of my fingers cut,/So I can still sip Red Zinger with my pinkies up"
• In Hamell On Trial's song "Joe Brush", the title character is a great guitar player who cheats on his girlfriend, and as penance he cuts off his finger and mails it to her. He then moves away before she has a chance to get back to him "and now plays a mean slide guitar."

Tabletop Games

• Shadowrun. This has been mentioned in products that deal with the Yakuza's activities in the Awakened World. One sourcebook has a character noting that if you're working with a yakuza, you should check their hands: if they're missing a lot of digits it means they're a screw-up, but if they aren't missing any it means they're a coward who never takes risks.
• BattleTech:
  • In one of the "Blood of Kerensky" novels, the oyabun of a yakuza organization loyal to the Coordinator (ruler) of the Draconis Combine on the planet Edo orders an underling to do this after he takes the 'initiative' to blow up a bar that the invading Clan Warriors frequent, kills far more civilians than invaders, and in the end, allows a Buddhist monk to take the blame and sacrifice himself in order to prevent further lives lost in retaliation.
  • Happens at least twice more in the course of the Black Dragon trilogy written by Victor Milan, which takes place largely on Draconis Combine worlds. One instance is unusual in that its detriments to the pilot of a Humongous Mecha are made clear (unable to grip the controls or work certain triggers), and that the ritual is later reversed by microsurgery.
  • Shin Yodama, Hypercompetent Sidekick to Hohiro Kurita, is notable for being a yakuza MechWarrior who still has all his fingers, claiming his previous superiors overlooked his failures. Given his humble nature, it's more likely he simply had no notable failures requiring such punishment.
• The Dark Eye: Priests of the god of war and slaughter, Kor, cut off their left pinky finger as part of their initiation into priesthood. This is the ninth and final deep ritual cut during this initiation, as the number nine is this god's holy number.

Video Games

• A variant of this is done in Heavy Rain: one of the tasks a Serial Killer gives the protagonist is to cut one of his own fingers off in exchange for more information about where his son is.
• This is found repeatedly in the Like a Dragon series, being heavily focused around the yakuza. However, it is rarely played completely straight. It is more common than not for someone to repay their failure in a more practical manner and keep their fingers intact. A superior being insistent that a failed underling cut off a finger usually is part of some wider plan, an indication the superior is particularly stubbornly old-fashioned (and outdated), or just plain sadistic.
  • Futoshi Shimano, of the Tojo Clan, doesn't do the ritual with his underlings that fails him: when one bears the bad news that they failed to defeat their target, Shimano cuts off his index and middle fingers with a straight razor as a warning to the rest.
  • Kazuo Shibata of Yakuza 4 presents Isao Katsuragi with his severed pinky as an apology for Arai murdering one of Katsuragi's underlings. It's later revealed that this was a fake finger.
  • A more formal and traditional example appears in Yakuza 0, when Dojima lieutenant Daisaku Kuze is asked to atone for releasing Kiryu from his oath and expelling him from the clan on his own, then getting his ass handed to him by the now-a-civilian Kiryu. Some time later, Kiryu runs into another Dojima goon out for revenge against him, as he was forced to do this as well after Kiryu's efforts to go legit inadvertently screwed up one of his boss' operations.
  • In the spinoff game Judgment, there's a long flashback revolving around whether or not Kaito will go through with this after failing his boss. He's forcibly stopped at the last minute.
  • In Yakuza: Like a Dragon, this comes up as part of Ichiban Kasuga's backstory: after beating up on a yakuza as a delinquent, he was kidnapped, beaten, and threatened by the family he unwittingly pissed off. In a last-ditch effort to save his hide, he name-dropped Arakawa of the Tojo Clan, a major figure in his heyday. When Arakawa came to investigate reports of an underling in trouble, he severed his own pinky and presented it as recompense for Kasuga's transgressions. As a result, Kasuga developed Undying Loyalty for Arakawa and joined his family not long after. Arakawa would wear a leather glove over his left hand from that day forward to hide his disfigurement.
    • It pops up again a few times later; Sawashiro tries to force Ichiban into cutting off a finger in retaliation for Ichi's latest screw up, only for Arakawa to arrive and interrupt the proceedings. Later, when Ichiban reveals Yamato Totsuka's euthanasia scam to Chairman Hoshino of the Seiryu Clan in Yokohama, Totsuka's about to go through with it when Hoshino calls it off, choosing to demote him and turn him over to some other underlings for a beatdown instead.
  • In a side content-related example, Jin, one of the Dragon Kart competitors who is a yakuza, tries to commit yubitsume after losing to Ichiban. Ichiban himself talks him out of it after pointing out that not only does the yakuza code not apply to racing, but he'd drive really crappily with one less finger.
  • Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth has a variation in a flashback scene where a younger Masumi Arakawa launches a raid on the Hikawa Family HQ by himself and confronts his old boss, Hikawa, about the whereabouts of his lover, Akane, whom Hikawa sent assassins after. When Hikawa proves uncooperative, Arakawa pistol-whips him, holds a gun to his finger, and threatens to blow his digits off unless he call off his assassins. He carries through with the threat, subjecting Hikawa to Cold-Blooded Torture all the while until he dies.
• Saints Row 2 has a variation of this, but not, surprisingly, with the quasi-Yakuza/Bōsōzoku "Ronin" gang. Instead, it's the Caribbean gang that does this, with the gang's leader cutting off his enforcer's ear with a machete for failing to destroy the Saints once, which the guy willingly accepts.
  The General: I took no pleasure in this, my friend. But a price needed to be paid for failure.
  Mr. Sunshine: Don't worry. I need only one ear to hear the whispers of the Loa.
• The Secret World features this in the mission to Tokyo, specifically when the player has to pay a visit to Kaidain district's local Yakuza. In his first scene, Daimon Kiyota outs his lieutenant Yamato as a spy for the House-In-Exile and, after an extremely tense standoff, manages to intimidate Yamato into creeping back into line with the rest of the Yakuza. Following the mission "The Pachinko Model," the player returns to find that the hapless lieutenant is repledging his loyalty to Kiyota... and he's now missing two fingers from his left hand. More disturbingly, the Black Signal claims that Kiyota likes to collect severed digits, and has entire desk drawers stuffed with them.
• Discussed in PAYDAY 2. Commissioner Garret notes Jiro's lack of this as an indication that Jiro was "an exceptional servant" of his Yakuza organization in the past.

Web Animation

• Metaphorically invoked by the hololive V-Tuber Korone Inugami, who, put on the spot in an earlier stream, declared her catchphrase to be 'yubi-yubi'. It has since been taken to mean that she'll temporarily take away the viewers' fingers to prevent them from clicking away from her streams (though she'll give them back by the end).
• On The Edge: In You lose 4 fingers if you sleep with a Yakuza leader's girl..., Yamada gets his pinky finger cut by Kotoge as punishment for sleeping with the boss Sakamoto's girlfriend. However, Sakamoto pulled out his sickle and cut three more of his fingers.
• Lazy Bum YAKUZA: In this story, Tsuyoshi's father Iwaki bragged about lacking his pinky as proof of his membership in the Youkan clan. Years later when Tsuyoshi went to the Youkan clan's offices only to find out the Ooban clan took over, the boss explains to Tsuyoshi that they don't cut off fingers anymore; the offender must have done something really stupid for that.

Web Comics

• Reiko's father in Contemplating Reiko is missing the tips of the last two fingers on one hand. His character page explicitly links this to his membership in a Yakuza gang.
• In the Questden adventure Acid Soup, an anthropomorphized bunny is ordered to cut off half her ear for conducting personal, violent business while wearing gang colors.
• In the 2014 Halloween comic for Team Fortress 2, Merasmus the magician has a bandaged pinkie finger, due to dealing with the yakuza in order to gain funds for his Carnival of Carnage.

Western Animation

• Blue Eye Samurai. A variation when Heiji Shindo offers the title character a fortune in gold and a lordship if she agrees to give up her Roaring Rampage of Revenge. As guarantee he only asks for her right thumb, which will prevent Mizu from holding a sword properly. He shows her a tray of desiccated thumbs, showing that others have accepted this deal. "There's no shame in it. Many of the most powerful lords have reason to wear long sleeves."
• King of the Hill: Buck Strickland wanted to make a bet with a rival competitor where the loser has to cut off their pinky "yakuza-style".
• Referred to in passing on Archer: "That would be the yakuza. And against those pinkie-less bastards, you had best come correct."
• Happens in Star Wars: The Bad Batch of all places. Only instead of the Devaronian on the receiving end having his finger chopped off, it is one of his horns. Considering that Roland is a part of an organized crime group and the individuals doing this to him were members of The Pyke Syndicate, it falls underneath this trope.

Real Life

• As the War against the European Imperialist Aggressors ground to its bloody close, many fathers of Japanese soldiers, sailors, and airmen in the Tokubetsu Kogeki^note Literally 'Special Attack' units cut off the top bits of their pinky fingers and sent them to the Emperor in protest against the war. The Army and Navy intercepted the packages, of course, and the Emperor neither heard of nor saw them.
• The Trip-hop artist and ex Yakuza member DJ Krush once found a yubitsume-severed pinky on his desk, belonging to his best friend. He soon left the group.
• The Osakan artist and prosthetics maker Yukako Fukushima is able to help ex-yakuza who have been subjected to this, by making fake pinkies for them. She does, logically, ask her potential clients to prove to her that they have left the "business".

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