In the Empire of Child Pornography: AMAZON JAPAN REMOVES CHILD PORN FROM THEIR WEBSITE  May 2009

by Jake Adelstein and Polaris Project Japan

“Idols” in Japan refer to pin-up girls, teen pop stars,  and generally young models.  However, prepubescent “idols” are called “junior idols”,  a word which has been co-opted to distribute child pornography. 
The internet and bookstores and major telecommunication companies subscription services often sell “junior idol” photos and movies, and the sexual depictions in them have become more extreme in recent years. 

The term “child pornography” as used in  the Act on Punishment of Activities Relating to Child Prostitution and Child Pornography, and the Protection of Children bans photographs and recording media which depicts any pose of a child engaged in sexual intercourse or any conduct similar to sexual intercourse. Also, the Act terms child pornography as visual materials with any  pose of a child wholly or partially naked. 

Although many of the “junior idols” DVDs and photo books don’t directly violate the law, they are full of scenes introducing young school girls and boys, wearing revealing, skimpy bikinis, or wet t-shirts and or speedo briefs– or posing for sexual acts—and these scenes clearly made to arouse or stimulate the viewer’s sexuual desire.  There’s no one who sincerely doubts it’s pedophile junk food. 

Polaris Project Japan spent several months researching the photo albums and DVDs on major online store including Amazon Japan and made a list of 136 such DVDs and books with 8-17 year-old children depicted in sexually provocative poses and requested Amazon Japan to stop selling them.

Responding to the request, Amazon Japan removed 84 items from their online store this May. Polaris Project welcomes the initiative taken by Amazon Japan continues to advocate on this issue.

Author’s note: Japanese bookstores now regularly carry “junior idol” materials with sexual themes, text, and poses, and there are several pornographic magazines which include “junior idol” sections.  Japan is still one of the few countries where owning child pornography is legal. 

For more information about Amazon’s decision to remove the DVDs read the article on Sankei Shimbun on May 18, 2009:
http://sankei.jp.msn.com/affairs/crime/090518/crm0905180136001-n1.htm (in Japanese)

後藤元組長は最右翼として名を轟かせたこともあり、除籍されてもその思想を捨てるはずがないのです。しかし、関係者によると、後藤元組長は一部のマスコミ（文春・テレビ局）などに対して自らインタービューに応じ、妙な”日本人論”を披露してきました。（メモ・後藤元組長は４月１８日、インドネシアへ出発しています。現在、シンガポール滞在中という。４月２８日）

その要は①在日系ヤクザが山口組及びヤクザ全体を乗っ取っており、日本の安全と未来を脅かしています。②自分は純粋な日本であるからこそ、山口組上層部の在日系幹部らに追い出されました③彼の処分とは、在日系ヤクザが、日本人ヤクザを抑圧している証拠である。④後藤元組長が殺されたら、日本人ヤクザは全員が追われる身となる日が到来します。⑤社会貢献・起業したい若き日本人に資金提供するなどして応援する「後藤基金」を作りたいこと。それによって日本国家を再び繁盛させます。

つまり、後藤元組長は言おうとしているのが「私個人で処分されたというよりも、日本人ヤクザは除け者にされたのです。このままでいくと、ヤクザは韓国マフィアに乗っ取られるよ」という主張です。

ヤクザの中では、在日が多いとの話が公然の秘密です。しかし、その事実はタブーでした。元公安調査庁の幹部が以前、外国人特派員協会でヤクザについては「６０％が同和関係者、３０％が在日系の人々（北朝鮮系１０％）」と暴露しました。その数字は正確かどうか、不明です。だが、ヤクザの中には在日系人がいてもおかしくないのです。

それも当たり前です。どこの社会でも少数派は、差別されるため、犯罪組織に流れてしまいがちです。自己防衛の意味も含めて入団する人は少なくないのです。在日の人々は近年までは日本社会のはみだしもの扱いされ、就職できる稼業が限られていました。就職できても「ガラスの壁」にぶつかり、同僚ほど偉くならなかったケースも多かったそうです。大体、犯罪社会はある程度、平等主義です。稼ぐ奴は偉くなります。氏や人種も関係ないのです。多くの社会では、差別された少数派は犯罪組織で、金を得て身を守り、だんだん社会地位を確保してそして一般社会に溶け込んでいきます。アメリカのユダヤ人は好例です。多くのユダヤ人がアメリカへ移民してから、ユダヤ人マフィアを造りました。もはや、ユダヤ人マフィアもないのですが、ユダヤ人マフィアの幹部らが犯罪収益の一部を子孫に持たせたり、投資させたりしたうちに、みんなは合法的なしのぎにたどり着きました。

在日系ヤクザは昔のユダヤ人マフィアのようなものです。

確かに山口組弘道会には在日系ヤクザが多いと言われています。逆に山口組山健組には同和系ヤクザが多いそうです。ヤクザ社会全体を「在日」「同和」「日本人」の三種で成しています。（中国系ヤクザもいるそうですが）。これまでにみんなが仲良く活動してきました。だが、一部の人は「在日ヤクザは北朝鮮　（また韓国）の操り人形」と言いふらして彼らの愛国心と忠実心をけなすなどしています。そのため、某在日系暴力団幹部らがわざわざと靖国神社を参拝して自分が日本人と同じ心境を持っていることを見せなくちゃならない状況となりました。

もちろん、私は外国人で、同和系ヤクザ・在日系ヤクザ・日本人ヤクザのいずれも同じものと思っています。生まれで極道の品格が決まるはずがありません。

しかし、人種差別という武器を使えば、三者の違いが大きくみえてきます。

後藤元組長の考えは賢いです。ヤクザを「日本人ヤクザ」と「在日系ヤクザ」に分裂させたら、後藤本人は「大和民族ヤクザの英雄」として復帰できるかもしれません。同和系ヤクザとも手をつないだら、過半数の勢力をしめます。少なくとも、山口組本部を惑わすことが可能で、時間稼ぎもできます。

しかし、案外に司法当局は後藤元組長の行動を歓迎しています。彼は「極道絶滅」の鍵を手渡しているようなものです。

後藤元組長の論議は、実際、警察にとってはヤクザ全体をつぶす口実となり得ます。彼が「日本人ヤクザが在日系ヤクザになめられている」「在日系ヤクザは愛国心がない」「山口組が在日マフィアに乗っ取られた」などと叫べばさけぶほど当局が喜ぶのです。某警察庁幹部はこう説明しています。

「日本人の中では、ヤクザが好きな人もかなりいます。ヤクザ映画のファンも多いし。日本人は基本的にヤクザに憧れるのです。だから、厳しく取り締まろうとしてもなかなか応援されません。一方、ミサイルの発射や拉致問題などで、北朝鮮に対する反感が強いのです。そこがポイントです。つまり、一般人の頭の中で「現代ヤクザは北朝鮮のギャング」という図式ができあがったら、極道丸つぶしは不可能ではないのです。警察は次のようにいえばいいんだ。『昔のヤクザは日本人だったが、今のヤクザは北朝鮮系ヤクザや在日系ヤクザに牛耳られています。つぶさないと、日本国家が危ない』。ヤクザつぶしに最高の口実です」と話します。

要するに、後藤組長の主張を利用すれば、司法当局が「ヤクザの存在」を「国家安全問題」として扱える可能性が出てきます。そうすると、一般人の支援も得ながらヤクザ組織そのものを禁止する法律さえ作って実行できるかもしれません。後藤元組長はその意図はないでしょうが、ヤクザ全体の分裂を図ることで、当局にもヤクザ全体をつぶす好機と口実を与えてます。まあ、本人は紙の上ではすでに「堅気」であるため、山口組および極道そのものが全滅しても痛くもかゆくもないはずです。後藤元組長さえ生き残ればよろしいでしょう

後藤組長が海外逃亡！？某政府幹部との密会？資金隠しの目的？　仏教の行脚ではないことが確か。（弘道会との和解が成立した証拠か？）

後藤忠政元組長の出家はつい海外旅行に化けてしまいました。お寺で修行しているはずの後藤さんはもう日本におりません。関係者の話によると、警察庁が最後に後藤さんの所在を確認したのが１８日前後。その後、東南アジア方面へ行ったことが判明した。ただし、泊まり先は不明。一部のヤクザも「後藤元組長と連絡取れない」とも騒いでいます。

一方、元公安庁幹部から面白い話も出てきました。信ぴょう性がわかりません。一応、その要を伝えます。後藤忠正組長は与党幹部を経由して英国系国の政府関係者に接触しております。後藤側からの申し入れは、２００１年に行ったFBIとの取引の二番煎じのようなものです。同国内の山口組フロント企業全社や同国在住の企業舎弟を同国連邦警察に教えるかわり、永住権を手にします。フロント企業だけでなく、シンガポールで山口組運営のファンドおよび投資会社の一覧表も手渡すとの約束も交わしています。同国にとってはシンガポールは「仲間」のようなもので、山口組の進出も気にしています。

ただし、某国側は米国連邦捜査局（FBI)の二の舞を演じたくありません。だから後藤側に対して厳しい条件を叩き付けています。まず、誠意の印として後藤側から企業リストなどの山口組幹部リストの提出を先に求めています。FBIとの取引では、後藤元組長が提供した情報は少なく、肝臓移植が成立してから、黙り込んだまま日本へ帰国しました。

　 また政府側は後藤元組長の申し入れについても難色を示しているところもあります。それは、後藤組長は自分の資産を無条件で全額を同国内の金融機関へ移したいということです。彼の資産は犯罪収益が含まれているそうです。従って後藤の資産の移入を認めることは資金洗浄を黙認するのも同然で、法的問題が出てきます。

一方、２度目の肝臓移植を狙っているそうですが、その取引には政府が「関知も援助もしない」ときっぱり断っています。だが、後藤元組長はすでに手を回している模様で、掛かり付けの医師（B先生）をアメリカから呼び寄せて私立病院で、手術を受ける準備を進めているそうです。入国ビザさえあれば準備万端らしいです。

今回の海外旅行で、後藤元組長が戒名を使って新しいパスポートを作成して出国したとの話もありますが、定かな話ではないです。アクセスジャーナルによると、出家自体というのは、山口組本部が、後藤元組長に下された厳罰。その背景に後藤元組長と弘道会の間で、手打ちが行われたからです。今回の海外旅行はその”手打ち”の証拠という声もあります。なぜかというと、後藤元組長が弘道会に命を狙われたら、海外にいる時、一番危ないです。だから、手打ちが成立したからこそ安心して旅に出たそうです。

しかし、旅の究極目的は何でしょうかか。某政府関係者との密会？第２の肝臓移植の準備？海外に隠された資金の移動？長男はすでに欧州（イタリアやドイツ）で”後藤マネー”を整理しているようですが。いずれにしても後藤先生は侮っては行けない存在です。豊富な財産と極秘情報を武器にして絶対生き残るタイプです。「絶縁処分」を「除籍」に変えさせることで、一回戦で山口組本部に事実上、優勝しました。二回戦は「警察との取引」との常套手段を駆使して「快復して」勝利へ向かいます。３回戦では、人種差別を悪用した新しい攻撃で逆転ホームランを目指しています。勝負はまだまだついていません。

 一方、後藤元組長が仏教の修行としてカンボジアなどで乞食の生活を送っているとの推測もあります。皮肉たっぷりの推測ですが、一読に値します。http://www.shihoujournal.co.jp/plaza/090423_2.html

予告！後藤元組長の反逆PART 2!　（４月２７日掲載予定）

「我が輩は最後の日本人ヤクザ！」と語り、在日系ヤクザを目の敵にして全国ヤクザの分裂を企てる究極作戦。すでに文春やテレビ局に妙な「日本人論」を語りまくる後藤元組長。その狙いは？

It’s a hand grenade! Pretty poetic, don’t you think? I heard the term last week when a cop was discussing a series of incidents in Fukuoka Prefecture in which the trucks of a landscape gardening company had grenades tossed inside them while the drivers were away, none of which exploded.
It seems like a very evocative word for those little instruments of mass destruction. Of course, I probably seemed like an idiot asking, “Why would yakuza throw fruit inside a truck? Does a pineapple have some sort of cultural significance?”
Sometimes a pineapple is just a pineapple; sometimes, it’s a grenade.

This is an interesting article from The Independent about “the John Gotti” of Japan turning over a new leaf.  Personally, I kind of wish I hadn’t made the remarks in the story at 5 am in the morning, but then again, they are kind of funny—in a black humor sort of way.  Maybe Goto really does regret his depraved life and is seeking spiritual salvation. It would be nice if took some of his ill-gotten gains and donated them to charity to show his “sincerity” but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.  At the very end of the story is a photo of what allegedly is the statement that Goto passed out at his Buddhist priest initiation ceremony.  I’m working on a rough translation although some of the words are fairly esoteric. 

Gangster boss who turned to God

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/gangster-boss-who-turned-to-god-1666851.html

One of Japan’s most feared yakuza has renounced violence and found Buddhism. A genuine conversion? Or a desperate attempt to avoid assassination at the hands of his enemies? David McNeill reports

Picture the scene: a fleet of black limousines crunches up the driveway of a Buddhist temple nestled in lush pine-carpeted mountains an hour west of Tokyo. The precious cargo of limousine one – a violent but ageing mob boss – steps out into the sun, surrounded by four sumo-sized bodyguards and is welcomed by a priest. As cherry blossom petals blow gently in the wind, the gangster enters the shrine and proceeds to be solemnly ordained into the Buddhist priesthood.

It sounds like the opening of a terrible yakuza movie, but this is what took place in this picture-perfect setting when Tadamasa Goto, one of Japan’s most feared mob bosses, stepped out of the shadows this week and into the path of God.

Unsurprisingly, he was watched – at a safe distance – by a 40-strong media scrum. It was as if the infamous mafia don John Gotti, a man with whom Goto is sometimes compared, had ditched his dapper suits for priests’ robes at the local Catholic church.

Today, Goto reportedly spends his time praying and contemplating on long meditative trips into these mountains. Eventually, he could find himself comforting the sick and the bereaved, an odd occupation for a man who dealt in murder and mayhem for Japan’s largest yakuza syndicate, the Yamaguchi-gumi.

“I believe he has really turned away from his past life and wants to change,” says Jishu Tsukagoshi, one of the young priests at this temple, the Joganji. “But only time will really tell if that is true.”

Probably nobody except Goto himself knows why he decided to swop a pistol for an incense burner, though there is no shortage of theories. Most observers scoff, however, at the idea that the 66-year-old, known as one of the country’s most dangerous gangsters, had a genuine change of heart. The most popular theory is that he is on the run, hoping to escape assassination by former yakuza colleagues infuriated that he brought them one of the few things they genuinely fear: publicity.

Goto was splashed across the world’s newspapers last year after details emerged of a deal he had struck with the US authorities. In exchange for a queue-jumping transplant at the UCLA Medical Centre in Los Angeles, Goto reportedly agreed to become an FBI informer.

For the bureau, he was a rare prize: a high-ranking boss apparently willing to break the yakuza’s silence about its operations in America, and its drug and weapons connections with North Korea.

But Goto walked away from the deal with a new liver having reportedly given the FBI nothing that they could not read in a 400-yen (£2.70) Tokyo magazine. “He came to the States and got a liver and was laughing back to where he came from,” the former FBI chief Jim Stern told the LA Times. “It defies logic.”

That sleight of hand may have saved Goto from being saddled with the deadly tag of snitch, but not from mob concerns that he couldn’t keep his name out of the press.

Those fears were compounded last year when he invited five well-known popular enka singers to his birthday party outside Tokyo on 17 September, igniting a media scandal when it was aired in a popular weekly magazine. The leadership of the 40,000-strong Yamaguchi-gumi reacted furiously, officially banishing him from the group during a meeting at its headquarters in Kobe and declaring him persona non grata.

According to mob watchers, Goto took with him a faction of 1,200 men, a reputation for violence and a drastically reduced life expectancy.

“There are a lot of people that want to kill him these days,” says Jake Adelstein, the Japan-based journalist who broke the story of Goto’s liver transplant.

“There’s even kind of a bidding war between groups, and not just the Yamaguchi-gumi, because the bounty on his head is quite substantial.”

Observers believe that Goto took trips abroad and played a lot of golf before hew decided that his new life was, in the words of the weekly magazine Friday, “empty and lacking stimulation.”

The prospect of a gang war between his breakaway group and the Yamaguchi-gumi also caused him sleepless nights.

His ordination gives him the chance to appear remorseful, and hopefully stave off the chances of being whacked.

For the 400-year-old temple, however, the attractions of the arrangement are less clear. Its head priest, who has a two-decade relationship with the don, has taken a pounding in the media, which finds Goto’s sudden conversion to Tendai Buddhism a little hard to swallow.

How is a man who has wallowed in the demi-monde for most of his life supposed to achieve Buddha-hood this late in the piece?

Perhaps cash has helped smooth the way. Goto donated $100,000 (£68,000) to the LA hospital that performed his transplant, earning himself a commemorative plaque that reads: “In grateful recognition of the Goto Research Fund established through the generosity of Mr. Tadamasa Goto.”

The UCLA Medical Centre came under intense fire when it was revealed that Goto and three other yakuza had jumped over several hundred waiting patients to get their new livers. Those patients all died.

Joganji’s head priest is keeping mum about rumours of financial compensation. But he admitted in a magazine interview this week that the don’s epiphany was slow in coming. “At first, he appeared to have little interest in Buddhism but as he got older, it deepened.”

Goto’s life of crime presumably left little time for the pursuit of enlightenment. Apart from drugs, fraud and prostitution, he has been linked most infamously to a vicious knife attack on Juzo Itami, a top director who angered the mob by portraying them as lowlife thugs in a hugely popular movie. Itami subsequently committed suicide in a death that has long been rumoured to have been a mob-hit in disguise.

In 2006, Goto and his oldest son Masato were arrested for real-estate fraud following the killing of a man who was trying to clear out Goto-gumi gangsters. He was acquitted but faces other charges.

Those court battles, his declining health and the prospect of war with probably the world’s largest organised crime outfit may all have played a part in his conversion, believes the temple priest Koji Tsukagoshi. Whatever the reason, he says Goto is a shadow of his former self. “He looks just like any man of that age, not scary at all, until you see the men he keeps around him.”

Goto offered few clues at his ordination, reportedly brushing off questions about his decision with a curt statement: “Buddha will make me his disciple and enable me to start a new life.” Adelstein, who went into hiding in fear for his life after his story was published, recommends that his tormentor fill out an organ donor card and give his liver to a “more deserving” person.

“It would be a good and final chance for him to achieve some absolution. Because I think that the odds are he’s going to be experiencing reincarnation first hand, a lot sooner than he expects.”

In the gang: The Yakuza

*The Yakuza, a loose alliance of Japanese criminal gangs, trace their origins back to a thoroughly romantic source: the machi-yokko, mercenaries who protected townsfolk from bandits in the 17th century. Others connect them to the kabuki-mono, masterless samurai who terrorised villages across the country.

*The violent gangs to whom the modern term refers emerged after the Second World War, when they asserted control of the black market. They conduct themselves with a veneer of honour and politesse, but the racket is a familiar one: smuggling, selling drugs, extortion, illegal gambling and prostitution rings.

*The Yakuza’s organisation follows a highly sentimentalised father-son structure, where relationships are cemented by the mutual drinking of sake in a ritual known as Sakazuki.

*In the gangs’ mythology, the archetypal Yakuza is an abandoned son taken in by a father figure; gang members cut all family ties to affirm their allegiance to their superiors.

*Dedicated Yakuza confirm their loyalties with ornate tattoos (left); if they err, they expect to lose their pinkies. With about $13bn (£9bn) flowing through their coffers each year, it is little wonder that 40 to 80,000 people are prepared to take the risk.

子ども性被害防止で相談ＨＰ

Note: I’ve been working with the Polaris Project Japan, a non-profit organization that combats human trafficking and sexual exploitation of women and children, since 2005 and recently agreed to be their temporary public relations director.  In the last year, a lot of the calls coming to Polaris Project Japan were concerning Japanese teenage women who appeared to have been forced into the sex industry–not foreign women.  It does seem that the Japanese government has been enforcing the anti-human trafficking laws to the point where there are significantly fewer non-Japanese women being made sex-slaves. However, it seems they have been replaced by young Japanese teenage girls, many of them runaways or abused children. 

Polaris Project Japan had the brilliant idea of reaching out directly to these girls by making a mobile-phone web-site aimed at them, that was user friendly, and could offer some good advice.  Young schoolgirls don’t read newspapers, don’t watch as much television as they did, and most of their communications is over cell-phones and social networking sites. Unfortunately, such sites have also becoming prime hunting grounds for pimps, low-life yakuza, and pedophiles who seek out fresh meat to use themselves or sell to others. 

A mobile phone web-site aimed at helping Japanese teenage victims

NHK, Japan’s answer to the BBC gave the website some good coverage this morning. 

The contents of the consultations that Polaris Project Japan and their partner organization Yukon have gotten are quite unpleasant. 

●　From Host Club Patron To Forced Prostitution 

　　 A male Host asked a young victim come visit his club without worrying about money. After his begging continued, she went to the club a few times. Then, a different man from the club asked her for a few hundred thousand yen (a few thousand dollars) for the food and drinks she had consumed. She received threatening phone calls and was even ambushed at her own home. The men kept pressuring the girl to pay the bill, coercing her to go and work in the sex industry. Around that time, she was put in touch with Polaris, and after consulting with the police, she is safe once again.  

Note: I covered incidents like this one as far back as 2000, when I was still a police reporter assigned to the 4th district. It’s a classic technique that yakuza or general low-lives use to force young women into the sex trade.  Host clubs seems to be the equivalent of trafficking recruitment centers in many parts of Japan. 

●　A 14-year-old farmed out as a prostitute by her classmates

　Her friends told her that she had a bad attitude, and forced her to apologize by paying money earned from prostitution. A few months later, through some website, she was introduced to a customer, and forced into prostitution. It had already been taken up as a case as a juvenile victim when she contacted this organization. She says, “I’m out of the situation, but I have nowhere to go. I always feel depressed.I let myself get picked up for casual sex, abuse my body, and start crying for no reason.” Polaris Project Japan provides  her regular counseling and the support she needs. 

Polaris Project Japan Launches a New Mobile Website:

To help victims of child/teen prostitution

and child pornography and prevent further exploitation

The Polaris Project Japan (PPJ) is the Japanese branch of Polaris Project in Washington DC.  PPJ has been operating a hot-line for human trafficking victims for several years In the last year, PPJ has been receiving more and more calls not just from the traditional human trafficking victims–foreign women ensnared in the sex industry–but Japanese teenage girls who have been lured or forced into the sex industry and can’t get out, and sometimes even been asked by their own parents to work in the industry to make money for their family members. 

Contrary to the popular picture of Japanese teenage prostitutes as clueless teenagers who just want to earn money to buy a designer bag–many of the girls now in the industry are there because of financial necessity and a lack of support for abused girls and boys who run away from home. 

Many of these victims are recruited over the internet and or/are sold over social networking sites by their pimps–like commodities. 

The National Police Agency reported in 2008 internet Profile sites and Social networking sites are the hotbeds of child sex crimes, surpassing the net dating sites (which were originally the hub of sex trafficking).

It is hard to measure the extent of the problem because no Japanese government agency has attempted a comprehensive survey, and the laws protecting children are administrated by many different government agencies and ministries that do not share information or work together.

To provide an effective and systematical intervention to prevent sexual exploitation of adolescents and help victims, Polaris Project is launching a website:

¨       To provide an environment to seek counseling in a safe and anonymous way.

¨       To give information to questions like “What happens if….”, rather than sending simple “Stop” or “Danger” signs.

¨       To eliminate the embarrassment and fear of seeking counseling face to face by allowing contacts via website and phone.

¨       To inform the victims of additional channels of help available.

Polaris Project will also be working with The Children’s Human Rights Committee of the Japan Lawyer’s Association, Prefectural Women’s Centers, and Children’s Shelters to make sure that the children calling receive the best care and advice possible. It will also advertise on sites popular with Japanese youth to make sure the message reaches those who are most vulnerable.

This was an interview I did with Ken Cukier at The Economist in February. The article he wrote about why the yakuza are still flourishing was very insightful and certainly took an unusual angle in explaining the situation.

If you know me, you may be surprised that I sound reasonably lucid in this interview. That’s those years of working in public radio finally coming in handy.

Jake Adelstein on the Yakuza

If the link doesn’t work try clicking below.

yakuza_final

I’ve been reading the book, Black Money （ブラックマネー）by Suda Shinichiro, which is a fairly good description of Japan’s nearly 20,000,000,000,000 yen underground economy.  Yes, those figures are correct, by the way.

A good book about the Economic Yakuza (Keizai Yakuza)

The yakuza invasion of Japan’s financial markets in recent years has been amazing and rapid.  Prime Minister Koizumi (who’s grandfather was a member of the Inagawa-kai crime group) , under encouragement from the Bush administration and with the advice of Miyauchi, the chairman of the Orix group, instituted a widespread relaxation of previous laws and regulations of the finance industry which made it possible for organized crime to get their foot in the door, and once they got inside the House Of Commerce, they decided to stay.

The modern yakuza, or the 成人ヤクザ, make their real money in loan-sharking, stock manipulation, real-estate speculation, and IPOs. They need a veneer of legitimacy to do this and that is usually done by creating a dummy corporation—front companies. 

One of the things I liked most about this book is the section where Suda discusses how the yakuza have changed over the years, and the very nature of the yakuza front company has changed as well.  Personally, I feel kind of nostalgic for the days when yakuza were idiots. They’d use their own gang offices as the company registration and put their own members on the board of directors. If you had a roster of yakuza names or a good database, it wasn’t hard to determine whether it was a front company or not.  Hell, you could to the office and watch the tattooed guys in bad suits come and go and pretty much figure it out instantly. 

There is a very good book, long since out of print, by Mizoguchi Atsushi, called Yakuza Front Company.  I think it was issued around 1992, or 1991. I don’t have a copy with me right now. In that book, he gave a very credible explanation of why the Yamaguchi-gumi, the Wal-Mart of organized crime in Japan, holds such a large number of front companies. Back in the day, when the Yamaguchi-gumi had agreed to stay out of Tokyo, they weren’t able to open gang offices. However, front companies were a different thing. It allowed them to operate in Tokyo but not necessarily as “the Yamaguchi-gumi.”  In many ways, the front companies paved the way for the Yamaguchi-gumi invasion of Tokyo with the “merger” between the Yamaguchi-gumi and the Kokusuikai （国粋会）in November of 2005.

Well, anyway, things used to be a lot simpler when I was a cub reporter. The basics of yakuza operations were gambling, prostitution, extortion, violence, blackmail and shakedowns. They certainly have diversified over the years.  I’m having to read books on finance and forensic accounting to keep up.  If you don’t understand the stock markets in Japan, you can’t understand the modern yakuza.  

Recently, I found a front company for a front company of a front company. In other words, it took me three layers of digging to find out the real company I was looking at and another layer to figure out which organized crime group was really running the show. It’s like peeling an onion and the onions keep getting bigger.

However, one yakuza boss did dispute my whining that yakuza money-earning activities （シノギ）had really changed in the last fifteen years. 

“The yakuza started at gamblers （博徒). Gambling was always a source of great revenue for us, whether we received protection money from the bakuchiba (博打場・ばくちば=casino）operating on our turf, or whether we actually ran the bakuchiba ourselves.  Yakuza, the word itself, refers to a losing hand in Japanese gambling. And when we run the casinos, we always set it up so that the house wins more often and wins bigger. The Japanese stock market–all it really is a virtual bakuchiba, and it’s not hard to rig. Nowadays they call it ‘insider trading’ but it’s really just a crooked card game of sorts. 如何様の博打に過ぎない.  We have the capital to play the game and win every time. Monthly dues to the organization alone from lower ranking factions are tremendous revenue. The Osaka Stock Exchange–might as well be Caesar’s Palace for some of us. The difference is that we’re not ordinary customers and we already have our own dealers on the inside. How could we lose?”

Indeed.

from http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/japan/090205/even-gangsters-get-the-blues

Even gangsters get the blues

As Japan’s economy weakens, what are 80,000 gang members to do?

By Justin McCurry 

Published: February 5, 2009 18:35 ET

TOKYO — Kazuhiro Yamada may describe himself as an innocent victim of the recession, but he is unlikely to win much sympathy.

Until he lost his job last year, Yamada, who prefers not to reveal his real name, was a member of the Sumiyoshi-kai, one of Japan’s most notorious crime syndicates, or yakuza.

As a mid-ranking mobster in greater Tokyo, his duties included shaking down businesses for protection money, chauffeuring his bosses around town and, on occasion, providing muscle when his gang’s relations with associates threatened to turn sour.

Then, at short notice, he was unceremoniously dumped for not paying his dues, a non-negotiable condition of yakuza membership from the lowliest mobster to the men at the very apex of their criminal careers.

“Without the organization behind me, what am I supposed to do? Who’s going to hire an old man covered in tattoos with a missing digit?” he says of his vanished pinkie, hacked off in a ritual act of penitence for a past misdeed he’d rather not discuss.

“I’m too old for construction work and I can’t see how I can learn to type with only nine fingers, so that pretty much rules out a white-collar job.”

Now only just the right side of 50, Yamada is just one of countless gang members feeling the pinch from the global economic downturn and stock market collapse.

After a year in which the Nikkei index shed almost 50 percent and Japan officially entered recession, the yakuza, like other market players, can only look on in horror as the world’s second-biggest economy teeters on the brink of meltdown.

In better times, yakuza foot soldiers bankrolled their hedonism – expensive cars, clothes and women – with a seemingly endless supply of profits from traditional cash cows such as gambling, prostitution, drugs, loan sharking and protection rackets.

It was a time when gangs proudly displayed their insignia at the entrance of their headquarters, swapped information with detectives over drinks in classy hostess bars and dined with senior politicians and wealthy construction magnates.

The legal squeeze began in 1992 with the introduction of the toughest anti-yakuza laws to date, forcing them to conceal their telltale tattoos and swap their gaudy suits for bespoke Italian cloth, as organised crime went white collar.

The change in tactics paid off, but only as long as the economy stayed on its upward trajectory after the lean years of the “lost decade” of 1990s recession.

To stock price manipulation and property sales the yakuza have added wedding and funeral services, talent agencies, and even bakeries and flower shops to its portfolio. It is not for nothing that the Yamaguchi-gumi, by far the biggest of Japan’s 27 gangs, is known as a “Wal-Mart” of the yakuza.

Last year the National Police Agency [NPA], spooked by organised crime’s assault on the property and securities markets, warned that its involvement in the regular economy was “disease that will shake the foundations of the economy.”

Despite promises to take on the mob, the police have yet to make inroads into organized crime. Yakuza membership is not illegal and, unlike their FBI counterparts, Japanese investigators are banned from using wiretapping, witness protection and other tools that would bring the arrests they crave.

According to the NPA Japan is home to 80,000 gangsters, about half of whom belong to the Yamaguchi-gumi, with footholds in dozens of businesses in Japan and the United States, and increasingly, Russia and China.

Takashi Kadokura, the author of two popular books on Japan’s underground economy, estimates the yakuza’s illegal income amounts to as much as 1.6 trillion yen ($17.5 billion) a year. Its financial chicanery is so broad and complex that the size of its legal income will forever be a mystery.

The Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission has identified more than 50 listed firms with links to organized crime, and the Tokyo metropolitan police has listed about 1,000 yakuza front companies, about 20 percent of them involving real estate.

The public and police remained largely tolerant of the yakuza, which reciprocated by keeping violence to a minimum and ensuring civilians did not become the victims of stray bullets.

But now fears are growing that intense competition for dwindling financial spoils will spark an escalation of the violence.

The past two years have seen several shootings in Tokyo as the Yamaguchi-gumi, keen to expand beyond its western Japan base, attempts to seize control of lucrative parts of the capital such as Akasaka and Roppongi.

“The recession affects the yakuza just like everyone else,” says Jake Adelstein, an underworld authority and former crime reporter for the Japanese daily the Yomiuri Shimbun. “As the economy worsens the spoils will diminish, gang membership will fall and more squabbles and fights will break out.

“They are losing investments in real estate and that means losing jobs as well. The consolidation of businesses through mergers and acquisitions is also freezing them out. Just like the banks, they have loaned money to people who can no longer afford to pay them back.”

Denied their usual incomes, many gangsters are turning to the state for help. Last month officials admitted that hard-up yakuza members had claimed millions of dollars in unemployment and other benefits by producing fake letters of excommunication from their gang bosses.

Yamada, who is selling off his possessions to make ends meet, says he will soon be joining the ranks of the yakuza dispossessed.

“I’m going to go on welfare and then I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he says. “To be a yakuza used to be a job for life, but now we’re being treated like temporary workers or salesmen. You don’t “sell enough” and its goodbye.

“This is how it is now in the organization. The people at the top live well but everyone else is barely able to make a living. It’s the American business model transplanted to Japan … and it sucks.”

EDITOR COMMENT: At one point in life, I thought of all yakuza as being the scum of the earth. As time has gone by, I’ve come to reluctantly admit, that some of them are not bad people. And perhaps, at one time in the past, they performed a useful function. What is kind of sad is seeing the local mom-and-pop type of yakuza shops closed down, shut down, or forced out of business by the Wal-Mart of Japan, the Yamaguchi-gumi.  The Yamaguchi-gumi may be officially 40,000 members, but with a growing hold on the Inagawa-kai and a number of local yakuza under their thumbs in the form of an “alliance”–the actual number is probably closer to 55,000. Soon it’s going to be an all Yamaguchi-gumi world. The only gang still standing completely on its own is the Sumiyoshikai, which is primarily Tokyo based. I find myself sort of rooting for these thugs. Maybe, it’s because I like the underdog, or maybe it’s just Tokyo pride. 

I suspect that a lot of yakuza out of work and no longer able to pay their dues are just guys not able to compete with the ruthless efficiency of the Yamaguchi-gumi. If the Yamaguchi-gumi is Wal-Mart, then the Sumiyoshikai is pretty K-Mart at this point in time.