One of those she talks to is Anton, whom she met while making “Garage People.” He lives in northwest Russia and recently told her about a conversation he had in a doctor’s waiting room. I simply listen to what they have to say.” “People keep on asking me: How come the accounts are so authentic, so intense? What a question,” said Yefimkina, who left Ukraine as a child when her mother was hired by a German university. What are you doing right now? How did you experience the beginning of the war? What do you feel? What are your worries? The questions to her subjects are straightforward and specific: Name. Stories, diary entries and audio tracks are translated and published on the website of Berlin’s main broadcaster. Her focus these days is making phone calls from her Berlin studio to record the syntax of war. She followed them for so long that they openly spoke and behaved as if the camera had been forgotten about. She spent months on her most recent film, “Garage People,” intimately documenting the lives of Russians on the Kola Peninsula, where many escape the misery of prefabricated high-rise existence by retreating to the freedom they find in their garages. The finger of the yakuza directly responsible for an offense is called an iki yubi, "living finger", while the finger of the yakuza that is directly in charge of him is called a shinu yubi, "dead finger".A tall, slender woman with long brown hair and a deep voice, Yefimkina is accustomed to exploring human stories. In some cases, a person expelled from a yakuza gang might be required to perform the yubitsume ritual. More infractions could mean removing portions of the right little finger when no more joints of the left finger remain. If more offenses are committed, then the person moves on to the next joint of the finger to perform yubitsume. He then wraps the severed portion in the cloth and submits the "package" very graciously to his oyabun ("godfather" or boss), who is also referred to as a kumicho (patriarch/head of the family). Using an extremely sharp knife, or tantō, the person cuts off the portion of his left little finger above the top knuckle on the finger or the tip of the finger. To perform yubitsume, one lays down a small clean cloth and lays the hand onto the cloth facing down. The reason for this is that the Japanese sword cannot be held tightly, thus weakening the mafia's ability to fight in a war. It is also a sign of surrender by the defeated in a Mafia war. A little finger-amputee was therefore unable to grip his sword properly, weakening him in battle and making him more dependent on the protection of his boss. In Japanese swordsmanship ( kendo and iaido), the little finger's grip is the tightest on the hilt. Yubitsume was a form of credit and reputation score. If a person was unable to pay off a gambling debt, yubitsume was sometimes considered an alternative form of repayment. The ritual is thought to have originated with the bakuto, itinerant gamblers who were predecessors of the modern yakuza. In modern times, it is primarily performed by the yakuza, one of the most prominent Japanese criminal organizations. Yubitsume ( 指詰め, "finger shortening") or otoshimae is a Japanese ritual to atone for offenses to another, a way to be punished or to show sincere apology and remorse to another, by means of amputating portions of one's own little finger. Man's hand showing yubitsume, with the upper two portions of the little finger having been removed.
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