Don’t chop off your own finger if you’re not prepared to pay out of pocket to get sewn up afterwards.

Not that you’d ever want to lose a finger, but if you do find yourself in that situation, Japan is a pretty good place for it to happen, thanks to the country’s well-developed medical infrastructure and national health insurance system. For example, last year Masahiro Nouchi went to a medical facility in Tokyo and told the staff he’d had an accident that ended with one of his fingers being severed, and not only were they able to patch him up, Japan’s national health insurance covered 40,000 yen (US$285) of his medical expenses. Nouchi benefited from the system again a month later when, after returning to his home in Gifu City, he needed follow-up treatment and insurance saved him an additional 5,000 yen.

However, the 58-year-old Nouchi has now been arrested on charges of insurance fraud. This might seem surprising, since while it’s not so hard to fake internal damage such as intestinal disorders or whiplash, you can’t really fake losing a finger. Nouchi’s legal troubles don’t stem from pretending to lose a digit, though, but from lying about how it happened, since he severed his own finger on purpose, according to the authorities.

All this talk of criminal activity and lopping off fingers might have you thinking of the yakuza practice known as yubitsume. Essentially, when a member of one of Japan’s organized crime syndicates majorly screws up, the traditional way to atone for it is by cutting of a portion of their pinky. Sure enough, an investigation into Nouchi’s insurance claims found that he’s an officer in the Rokudaime Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s largest yakuza organization.

It’s said that yubitsume became a custom because severing part of the pinky makes it difficult to keep a firm grip on the handle of a knife or sword, thus symbolizing a yakuza acknowledging that his transgression was so great that he’s not fit to fight directly as a member of the organization. However, in the modern era yubitsume also implicitly embodies another solemn resolution: paying your own resulting medical expenses. Japan’s national health insurance doesn’t cover self-inflicted finger-severing, and so claiming that a yubitsume wound was an accident and accepting insurance benefits for it is illegal. The Gifu Prefectural Police say that, to their knowledge, this is the first time for yubistume-related insurance fraud to lead to an arrest.

Though yubitsume is often portrayed in films as a sign that someone has left a life of crime behind, it’s not exclusive to those who have severed ties with a criminal organization, and Nouchi is described by investigators as being an active Yamaguchi-gumi member, and two other members of Nouchi’s sub-division within the syndicate have also been arrested on charges of collusion in the insurance claim.

Source: Jiji, Sankei Shimbun, Tokai TV via Livedoor News
Top image: Pakutaso
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