For yakuza posed with the question of how to wash their hands of the underworld for good an Osaka woman has got the answered fingered -- literally.

Reams of gangsters who've given up being crooks in favor of the straight and narrow are struggling to find legitimate work in a Japan where it's become common for new unemployment records to be set each month and employers have traditionally shown a reluctance to hire mobsters even in good times.

Though it's possible to hide some of the trademarks of their one-time profession -- "punch perms" are allowed to grow out, tattoos are covered up -- gangsters are at a loss when it comes to dealing with missing pinkies, a symbol of a yakuza who has severed the little finger of his left hand to atone for some misdeed.

But unlike many other job-seekers in this age of information technology who've found their way out of the dole queue by going digital, yakuza looking for work are choosing to go digit.

And that's where Yukako Fukushima comes in. The 31-year-old technician working at Osaka prosthetics manufacturer Arute is giving hopes -- and fingers -- to yakuza who've "washed their feet" of the underworld, as local parlance has it.

"How's the finger's hardness?" she asks a 37-year-old former wiseguy we'll call Taro who is sitting in Arute's office...