and the thief's standard word for door is tanka (abusive words). When it comes to locks, Japanese thief jargon can spin out endless reels of inspired metaphors. There is the ebi (shrimp): one has to pluck and pull at the shell to break through into its delicate body; the hana (flower), which one can pick (toru); and the eri (collar), a witty mispronunciation of iri (entry). Locks can be roku (pulley), and lock picking rokutsuri (pulley fishing). Some cliques call locks yakuban (turning part), others tsukimushi (attached insects). Some gangs prefer more sensitive expressions such as momiji (maple leaves) and mimochi musume (pregnant daughter); in her delicate condition she must be handled with the softest of touches. Down south, on Osaka's streets, locks are known as aisu (rammable blowholes), kudarimushi (lower insects) or sagarimushi (low-down insects), and further down, in Wakayama city, thieves call locks sanpira and enko.
The most ingenious way to enter a mansion is to march brashly up the garden path. Debonair thieves who simply walk up to the main door are known as mae (fronts). Once on the porch, each has his own method. The aritsuke (ant attachers), kogatana (daggers), sori (benders), and atetsukai (blade users) stand in full view of the street and swiftly slip their metallic contraptions into the locks to jiggle them open. The shippiki-needle tests the lock's sturdiness and its make, while the takehari (bamboo needle) and the gen (bamboo teakettle handle) are used to press down the tumblers. These quick-fingered lock pickers are not above working in full view of the street. A passerby glancing into the garden would see only a tired individual hunched over, fumbling tipsily with his keys.
Front doors that succumb smoothly to the professional's touch are known as tanka ga moroi (the curse words are fragile).
In tougher mansions, where doors are double-and even triple-locked, the kobuya (gnarlers), and the yaburi (breakers) go to work with a hatchet. Their forceful technique is called akebabarashi (opening-place liquidation) or tankahiraki (Curse-word releasing). If the stalwart door still does not yield, then a small high-powered saw, the menoko (child of the eye), is flicked into action. This machine is used by the shibuita hane (board removers) and the kiji (grain wooders), who will saw their way through the body of the door and leave the locked frame standing.
• Komatta na! Akebabarashi no saich ni ate ga dame ni natchimau to wa! Damn! How could my jigger have broken right as I was working that door!
• Tankahiraki no toki ni wa armu ni ki o tsukero yo! Be careful of the alarm when you break down that door!
• Kono menoko de d yatte shigoto shiro'tte yn da yo? How the hell am I supposed to work with this saw?
Doors that are made of a robust metal, with crowbar and iron cross-beam reinforcements, are called tanka akan' (the curse words won't open). The only door specialists who can handle these formidable barricades are the tsuriage (jack screwers) and the tenbin (weighing scales). They do what is known as karahiku (pulling off the husk), in which they zero in on the hinges with drills, wrenches, and blowtorches, and lift out door and frame as a unit.
Another breed of thief prefers entering through windows. The easiest, many argue, is the bathroom window, dubbed in thief jargon as either hachinosu (nest of the bee) or hachisu (bee's nest). Few of them have locks, and if they are shut from the inside a brisk jolt with a baita, a metal staff whose ends have been chiseled down to a sharp point, will spring the frame open. Brigands who hinge their choice of mansion on the size and approachability of this window are classed by their peers as haiy (hot-water enterers).
Some thieves prefer to target the mansion's larger porch or balcony windows. These thieves travel light, their tool bags sporting a simple rope to climb to the balcony and a small diamond glass cutter to remove window panes. The jargon calls these masters sugarahazushi, sugara being the secretive reversal of garasu (glass), while hazushi means “remover.” More obscurely they are murakumo (cloud masses).
When doors are obstructed and windows barred, the amakiri (heaven cutters) spring into action. Using wrenches, electric saws, or even concrete blasters, they cut, kick, saw, or boost their way through the roof. The police call these thieves yanetsutai (roof enterers) and hai (scramblers),but the men and women who brave the slippery tiles and shaky corrugated roofings give each other more elevated names. The younger ones are the nyanzoku (meow gang), known also more morbidly as the nennen koz (sleep sleep little boy); they hope to tiptoe soundlessly through the children's room upstairs without startling an infant. Older professionals prefer the even more macabre sagarigumo (descending spider). They hook their ropes to the frame of the skylight and silently glide down into the house. The roof robbers define their descent into the upper rooms as ten kara yuku (coming from heaven). The idea of combining the heavens with burglary caught on, and soon roof specialists were inventing one grandiloquent name after another: tenzutai (enterers from heaven), tengaishi (heavenly-canopy masters), tenshi (heaven masters), and tengari and tongari (heaven hunters). Other names that have been passed down from generation to generation are watarikomi (cross-and-enterer), neyahaguri (roof ripper), tatsu (dragon), nezumimekuri (ripping mice), and kamisori (“razorblades,” or looters who cut into the roof). The brand of roof thief who works exclusively at night is the goishita (dark down). Men and women who access roofs by shimmying up telephone poles call themselves denshin (telegrams) and denshinkasegi (telegram breadwinners). Tokyo's Chinese jargon circles donated their own mellifluous word, teiauchintsu.
• Aitsu wa tengaishi dakara, doa no akekata wa shiran yo. He's a roof specialist, so he has no idea about opening doors.
• Ano goishita-tachi wa kanojo no ie de nusumeru mono wa minna nusunjimatta y da. Those night thieves just emptied her house.
• Aitsu watarikomi no kuse ni ochite ashi o otta rashii ze. Although he's a roof specialist, he fell and broke his leg.
• Teiauchintsu ni wa aitsu wa chitto futorisugi da ze. D yatte nobore'tte yn da yo? He's too fat for a telephone pole specialist. How the hell is he gonna climb up there?
Older thieves and those who prefer to keep both feet firmly on the ground specialize in what ethnic Chinese gangsters call ryahiyatan (swatting insects on the wall). They use a pick or sledgehammer to swat their way through the wall. In plain street-Japanese this is known as beka o barashikamaru, “disposing of the wall in order to crawl in” (beka is an inversion of kabe, “wall”). In some circles, wall breaking is also known as beka naseru (doing the wall), beka tsukeru (fixing the wall), and mado ga mieru (“the window is visible,” because a hole has just been blasted into the wall). The racket of the hammering triggered the expression mimibarashi (tearing off the ears). Some gangsters maintain that the burglar's ears are being torn off, others that it is the mansion's, in that the building's main structure is its head, the windows its eyes, and the smashed walls its ears.
In the wild sixties and seventies wall breaking came to be called, dramatically, harakiri. The image was that of modern wall breakers plunging their drills and chainsaws into the soft belly of a home, much as elegant classical heroes and heroines turned noble daggers on themselves. The generation of the eighties, a more internationalized set of thieves, upgraded the harakiri idea with a twist of English. The most fashionable name for wall breaker, they decided, was to be beriishi (belly master).
If doors, locks, windows, and roof tiles prove too formidable for a pack of thieves, they solemnly declare the case to be yawai, ornery (from yabai, “dangerous”), and turn on their heels and march out of the garden. In a more unfortunate scenario, in which a light suddenly goes on in response to the sound of walls
