It was a lazy spring afternoon outside Ueno Station in Tokyo where our team had agreed to meet Pastor Kaoru Inoue.

We hadn’t met him in person before, but based on photos we had seen online, we were looking out for a heavily-tattooed, tough and buff guy.

Instead, a grandfather with a weathered face greeted us at the station gates. He was dressed in a full suit and had a white beard, with eyes that were full of warmth and kindness as we approached him.

Looking at him, you would never have guessed that Pastor Kaoru used to be in and out of gangs since his teenage years, and a former yakuza – a member of an organised crime syndicate in Japan.

We sat down on a bench carved out of stone in the middle of a bustling Ueno Park, accompanied by his wife Mrs Hiroko Inoue and his interpreter Samuel Anudeep.

Sickness, stealing and storms

Pastor Kaoru grew up in Hokkaido with a sickly mother and a fisherman father who was constantly out at sea.

His mother’s medical bills had left their family finances in a dire state and a young Pastor Kaoru came to believe that life would only be enjoyable with money.

“I was a child who grew up being very obsessed with money. I was poor, and I thought that money would make me happy.”

He was left to fend for himself and began stealing when he was a junior high school student.

Eventually he was sentenced to five years in custody and was unable to enrol into high school. At the young age of 15, Pastor Kaoru moved to Saitama to work.

A life away from home without any parental guidance for a young teenager proved to be an ominous beginning of a tumultuous story.

At 18, Pastor Kaoru got married but slowly lost his motivation to work.

Two years later, the young couple moved back to Hokkaido as the economy was not doing well and that was when he ended up joining a biker gang.

He developed a violent nature that resulted in the end of his marriage the following year. He was such an outstanding gang member that he was scouted by various yakuza leaders.

“But I didn’t like the yakuza because I could do whatever I wanted now. If I joined the yakuza, I would have to be a yakuza all the time,” he shared, referring to the strict hierarchies, codes of conduct and ritualistic practices that the yakuza is known to have.

Despite Pastor Kaoru’s resistance, the same leader persisted and approached him repeatedly. Eventually he found respect for that man and felt that he finally had a male role model in his life. That was how Pastor Kaoru was inducted into the yakuza.

I joined the yakuza because I wanted to die

Life in the yakuza did not make things better for Pastor Kaoru. While he vowed to never touch drugs because he hated them, a one-time challenge by a fellow yakuza member sent him on a journey of no return.

“He told me that if I was a yakuza member who didn’t do drugs, then I was a weak-willed person. So, I started injecting drugs… but I became a slave to them.”

Pastor Kaoru was becoming the very person he never wanted to be. Day and night, he was consumed by his own addiction and the voices he was hearing in his own head. He also became increasingly violent due to his hallucinations.

“I went to sleep everyday with a samurai sword, ready to attack. When I saw my girlfriend cower in fear around me, I became suspicious of her and threatened to kill her. In the end she left.”

In his search for meaning and purpose in life, Pastor Kaoru found himself spiralling instead into the darkest depths like never before.

He started to harbour suicidal thoughts and attempted to take his life three times. But all three times he failed, and was always rescued somehow.

“I want to live, but I don’t know how to live. I want to stop, but I don’t know how to stop. I realised that I joined the yakuza because I wanted to die. I was looking for a way to end my life.”

“If You are real, please help me”

Just like that, 10 years had passed in the yakuza. One day, the boss of a construction firm asked Pastor Kaoru if he was able to help out at one of their projects.

It was a dental clinic undergoing renovation, and there he met the daughter of the dentist. She was a Christian, and during his month spent at the dental clinic they became well-acquainted with each other.

They even went out together to a carnival, where Pastor Kaoru ended up losing his jacket. And some time later, to make up for his lost jacket, the dentist’s daughter gave him a used Bible.

“I was very confused why she gave me a Bible instead of a jacket, plus it was a hand-me-down too. But I thought since she gifted it to me, I should try to read some of it. And then I reached the book of Matthew.”

Matthew 5:30 was the verse that would change Pastor Kaoru’s life completely.

“Matthew 5:30 talks about how if your right hand causes you to stumble, you cut it off and throw it away. It is better to lose that one hand than for your whole body to go into hell.

“So I looked at my own right hand. With that hand I had committed a lot of crimes. I stole, I was violent and I was also using that same hand to inject drugs. It was a really dirty hand.”

Confronted by the reality of his actions, Pastor Kaoru broke down completely.

Every deed that he had committed flashed before his own eyes and he was filled with a sense of remorse that he had never felt before.

“I really cried out, “If you are the real God, please help me.” I felt my dirty past gush out of me together with my tears, and I felt the chains that had shackled me my entire life break apart.”

Pastor Kaoru then became very passionate about reading the Bible, and he began carrying the Bible around with him wherever he went. Even his fellow yakuza members were astonished to see him reading.

About a month later, he finished reading the entire Bible and he reached out to the dentist’s daughter to let her know about it.

She was pleasantly surprised, and was patient with every question he had to ask about the Bible. She invited him to join her at church, but Pastor Kaoru still felt that he was too messy and too dirty for church and turned her down repeatedly.

“Mr Inoue, there are many beautiful single women at my church. Are you sure you don’t want to visit?”

That was how Pastor Kaoru found himself in a church for the first time ever. And the dentist’s daughter eventually became his wife.

Cutting off an old life

As Pastor Kaoru continued showing up at church, he started to feel joy in his life.

The sense of emptiness that he was all too familiar with began to fade away. He felt less drawn to drugs and his demeanour visibly shifted.

“Everyone around me had kept their distance, but everyone at church welcomed me with a smile instead.”

Even his leader saw the change in him, and decided to follow him to church one day to see what was going on.

That day, his leader met with the pastor at the church. What he said to the pastor left Pastor Kaoru very puzzled.

“Pastor, I’m speaking to you as Inoue’s father. If Inoue decides he is going to live righteously from now on, I will let him step away from the yakuza.”

His leader folded his hands in front of him and respectfully bowed to the pastor. He had tears in his eyes.

Pastor Kaoru found out later that his leader knew that if he had continued staying in the yakuza, he would surely die. And letting him go was the only way to let him live.

In the yakuza, there is a ritual called yubitsume which requires self-amputation as an act of atonement for mistakes and failure, and as an expression of remorse.

So in exchange for his freedom, Pastor Kaoru had his left pinky finger cut off. Four months later, Pastor Kaoru left the yakuza. He was baptised on 3 June 1990.

Finding meaning in being alive

To the unsuspecting passer-by, Pastor Kaoru looks just like a friendly and soft-spoken grandfather. His wife looks on with warmth and love in her eyes whenever he speaks.

As we move off to our next interview location, he tenderly checks on her and asks if the bag that she is carrying is too heavy. It’s hard to imagine that he was a man who used to live a life of violence and vices.

“When I read the Bible, Jesus told me three things: I love you. I will protect you. I will always be with you. Until today, these three things have always been etched onto my heart.”

Since he left the yakuza, Pastor Kaoru hadn’t stopped praying for the salvation of the people around him. He had been so moved by the love of God that he wanted everyone to experience the same joy.

Two years after he had left, his leader miraculously decided to disband the group. And Pastor Kaoru’s biological father, with whom he had little to do with since young, was baptised at the age of 70 during Christmas that same year.

“My father said, ‘There’s a God who changed my son who no one could change. My son was crazy with drugs and fighting all the time, but God changed him. I want this God who changed my son.’ 

“Life is worth living. It really is!”

In the face of hopelessness — defiant hope

Japan recorded its highest number of student suicides ever in 2024 despite a downward trend in overall suicide cases.

According to health ministry data, 529 suicides were reported in 2024 among elementary, junior high and senior high school students with a significant increase among girls. Suicide is the leading cause of death among children aged between 10 and 19 in the nation.

Pastor Kaoru feels a personal burden for the troubled youths of today as they remind him of his younger self.

“In the world today, there are many young people who have no hope. I didn’t have any hope for myself either. But I want to give hope to those youths. I want to walk with them and tell them that they are loved and they are not alone.”

Since 1990, Pastor Kaoru has devoted his entire life to ministry.

He has been serving actively in juvenile rehabilitation centres, prisons, drug rehabilitation centres and has also partnered widely with various organisations to advance the work of the Gospel together with his wife across the world.

Even now as he battles an incurable illness, he is still hopeful: “I’m trying to bring light to the places that I go to. The doctors have given up on me, so I think I’m being kept alive now for this sole purpose.

“I have a mission and I want to fulfil it to the end!”