Tokyo Reckoning by Toi Suzuki
There is a rule in Kabukicho, and the rule is this: a man can lose his money, his liver, his wife, and three of his fingers, and the district will forgive him every one of these losses, will even buy him a drink to commemorate them, provided he never once loses the one thing that cannot be returned to him, which is face.
Taro Bessho was about to lose all five at once, and he did not yet know it, because at this particular moment, nine minutes past eleven on the last Friday night of November, 1990, he was standing under the neon waterfall of the Koma Theater intersection with a metal briefcase in his hand and the warm conviction of a man who believes he has, for once, gotten something right.
He had not gotten anything right. But the night was young, and so was the lie he was telling himself.