We drove to Mr. Greenriver’s condominium in a fancy part of Tokyo, parked the car, got past security, and took the elevator up to his place. Of course, Mr. Greenriver was in the middle of having crazy sex with one of his mistresses when we arrived, and we could hear it through the apartment door. So we knocked a couple of times, he grunted out a reply and we waited in the hall. He came out fifteen minutes later, looking very happy and smelling like a bottle of spilled Chanel No.5, sake and sweat.  He mumbled an apology, told a couple jokes, and we left.

The three of us got in the elevator and the door closed behind us.

And nothing happened.

Nobody moved.

Mochizuki-san had his back to the wall of the elevator.  I was to the left of the door, and Mr. Greenriver was standing close to the elevator button panel.

After about a minute, I cleared my throat.

Mochizuki-san perked up, as if he’d woken from his sleep, and said to Mr. Greenriver, “Hey, push the lobby floor button.”

Mr. Greenriver responded, “Oh, usually my bodyguard presses it for me. Forgot I’m on my own today.”

“Well, I’m not your bodyguard,” said Mochizuki.

“But I’m a yakuza boss and you’re not. Am I supposed to press the button?”

“That’s right, I’m not a yakuza boss. I’m a civilian, now,  so you should press the button.”

Mr. Greenriver frowned. “But you used to be a yakuza boss. So isn’t that different?”

“When I was a boss, I out-ranked you. And I’m older than you.”

Mr. Greenriver folded his arms and pondered the statement. The elevator still hadn’t moved.

So I pushed the button.

They both look a little shocked.  I had been totally forgotten.

“It’s okay,” I said, “I’m a gaijin. That makes me the lowest ranking person here.”

“Yeah, that’s right!” Mr. Greenriver seemed enormously relieved that the problem had been solved.

Most yakuza groups are very hierarchical  societies. Reach a certain level and you never drive your own car, never press the elevator button,  never open your own umbrella or carry your own belongings. You don’t even open the car door. So when a yakuza boss is left alone, there’s a tendency for him to just sort of stand there waiting for someone else to do what we would all do normally ourselves.

Here’s a way to understand the state of mind of a big boss: If you’ve lived in Japan long enough, you get used to taxi drivers automatically opening and closing the door for you, as is common here, with a push of the button near the driver’s wheel. In Japan, you almost never open the taxi door yourself or close it yourself. However, when you go back to the United States and get out of a taxi without bothering to close the door after you pay, you’ll find that taxi drivers get very angry. That’s probably the closest we’ll get to experience what it’s like to have been a yakuza boss and then no longer be one.  The things you expect others to do for you are not done and it can take some adjusting.

Yakuza bosses don’t retire very well.  Maybe, it’s very hard to get used to being ordinary again. The standard retirement plan still seems to be a bullet in the head, self-administered. Or at least made to look that way.  Pulling the trigger may be the last thing a yakuza boss is ever expected to do for themselves. Personally, I think I’d rather prefer to learn how to press buttons for myself but then again, I’m not a yakuza boss nor have ever been one.

Addendum to the Elevator Story:

All three of us got out the elevator together. Mochizuki-san, got out first, then Mr. Greenriver, then myself. However, Mr. Greenriver soon took the lead and walked at a brisk pace right into the glass door of the lobby, bumping into it, and almost falling over. He wasn’t upset; he just laughed. “Usually,” he said, “the foot-soliders open the door for me. Forgot about that.” At this point I was laughing and Mochizuki was laughing at him as well.

Of course, Mr. Greenriver then did not proceed to open the door. So I did. And then the car door for him and I got in last. It’s important to know your place in the vertical society.

Lisa Katayama of Tokyo Mango has whipped up a fantastic two-part interview with Jake for Boing Boing.

In part one (“Meet Jake Adelstein, a Jewish reporter who thinks like a Japanese gangster) we get taken through the general Q&A run, but with a little added flavor here and there. Part two (“The politics of yakuza“) answers all those nitty gritty yakuza questions that have been nagging at you, like “Do yakuza come from broken families?” and “Do yakuza kill random people?”

Also to supplement the interview and further our readers education into the world of organized crime in Japan, we’ve posted a list of all twenty-two officially designated yakuza (boryokudan aka violent groups) organizations with the symbols for each group and their office locations. Please do not go knocking on their doors or try and get an autograph; they don’t have a good sense of humor. Probably dangerous.  The point is to show that the yakuza are not hiding and that the police know exactly where they are. Materials taken from Japan’s National Police Agency 2008 White Paper on Crime.

Check out parts one and two of the Boing Boing interview.

Tonight I suddenly understood a mystery which had been eating at me for the last four years.

As a high school exchange student in Nagoya I witnessed an event which left me rattled.  I was returning from a field trip with my class. We were across the street from Nagoya-station, waiting to cross to the station’s entrance when all of a sudden a burly man came, and for lack of any artistic phrase, literally kidnapped a middle aged salary man standing in front of me, grabbing him and pulling him away. Nobody did anything. Everyone stood where they were. Mind you, there were at least 30 people watching all of  this; high school students and adults on their way to work.

As this was four years ago, I was not yet fluent and felt incapable of expressing my disbelief in anything but English. I am ashamed that I was also one of the people momentarily paralyzed. But thankfully the shock wore off within seconds. Unfortunately, by that time the man was hauling off that salary man down the sidewalk to an alleyway. A fellow student and I quickly yelled at our teacher (sensei)  to do something. She refused.  Just then we remembered there was a koban (police box) across the street in Nagoya station. We ran to the koban and tried to give as coherent an explanation as possible recounting what we had witnessed. The policewoman thanked us, but we never learned what happened.

Back at school  I was furious no one had done anything. I yelled at people and expressed my disgust at all that had transpired that morning. I then turned to my sensei and asked her why she did nothing. She said, “He was probably yakuza. I don’t want to get involved!” At that time I knew nothing other then yakuza were Japan’s equivilent of the mob. Moreover, I did not know just how powerful the yakuza were and what the roles they played in Japanese society were. I was ignorant at best. Therefore I could not comprehend her answer. I could only see her and the other adults at the crime scene as having failed as ethical people.  And even though I read your book back in December, my realization that my sensei had true fears of all too real consequences for getting involved did not occur to me until tonight when I read your January 27th blog entry.  To this day I am still rattled by these memories.

I never told my parents what had happened. What was I supposed to say? “Oh, the day was good, but by the way a man standing next to me was abducted, and no one did anything to stop it.” I suppose it is because I felt guilty of not having done more at the time. It’s a shame that has bored a hole into me which I do not know what to do with.

Personally, I think that Sam did far more than most people would do in a similar situation. It’s not a bright idea to play hero when a yakuza is beating the crap out of someone but going to the police or calling 110 (the Japanese equivalent of 911) is certainly worth doing.  Whether the police will do anything is another issue.

For many years in Japan, the yakuza could do whatever they wanted; they were above the law–they were, in a sense, invisible. In certain places, they still are. We have received several letters from people with similar stories. The worst of the yakuza are the ones that have no qualms about attacking civilians, although the unwritten rule has always been “we don’t bother ordinary people” (かたぎにめいわくをかけない／堅気に迷惑をかけない）.  And lately some factions  don’t seem to be afraid of the police either.

The Kodokai has always been the most belligerent of Yamaguchi-gumi factions. Traditionally, relations between the police and the yakuza were civil. Police detectives visited the offices of organized crime members and had reasonably polite exchanges of information. When major crimes occurred, the yakuza groups involved would  would turn over the criminal over someone to take the rap, or someone willing to take the fall for the crime, and the person would make a full confession.

Contrary to traditional patterns, the Kodokai will not let police into their offices, their members are ordered to not make confessions, thus they do not confess and do not cooperate with law enforcement in any way, and their antagonism to the police is abnormal for organized crime groups in Japan.

When  In 2009, it became widely known that the Kodokai was collecting information on the police officers and detectives assigned to investigate them–photographing their families, tailing them to their homes, and illegally obtaining records of their car registration. The National Police Agency decided that action was warranted. Since 2006, local police officers have known that the Kodokai engaged in such practices but the NPA did not make an issue of it until recently. In 2007, while speaking to the FBI and the National Police Agency as a guest lecturer at the FBI Seattle bureau office, I mentioned the Kodokai harassment of the police and caused several NPA officers to turn green as their FBI counterparts grilled them as to  ”Why the f*ck do you let those guys get away with it?”  The NPA representatives didn’t have a good answer.

On September 29th, 2009, the NPA sent out a directive to police headquarters nationwide to concentrate their efforts on dismantling and policing not the Yamaguchi-gumi itself, but specifically the Kodokai. In a meeting the same day of organized crime division chiefs from across Japan, Ando Takaharu, the Commissioner General of the NPA stated: “The Kodokai has powered up their antagonistic stance towards law enforcement. They are the driving force behind the Yamaguchi-gumi,”  and suggested that crippling them would weaken the Yamaguchi-gumi. This remains to be seen.

Since the NPA announcement, the Yamaguchi has begun trying to cultivate a more positive image, giving the media better access to their annual rice-cake making party at headquarters, and doing things like distributing cash gifts to the local neighborhood children in Kobe in late December of 2009 as “New Year’s gifts” (otoshidama) from “Uncle Takayama”. This has been reported with a mixture of scorn and bemusement by the mainstream press.  The police, in particular, have not been amused. For many people, when the yakuza commit violent crimes in front of them, they simply pretend not to see it. A legitimate fear of retaliation and the lack of a witness protection program helps keep the yakuza invisible and keep the public “blind.” But these days, for the police at least, the yakuza aren’t invisible anymore. It may take some time for the general public to see them as well.

“He who is present at a wrongdoing and does not lift a hand to prevent it–he is as guilty as the wrongdoers.” —Apache Indian saying.

You can light a cigarette with this bullet or just cause a heap of trouble.

20 minutes and five police cars later–a detective came up to the car, motioned the gang boss to get out. The detective had on white gloves and had the bullet in his hand.
“Mr. X, is this your bullet?”
“It’s not a bullet; it’s a lighter.”
“So you say.”
Mr. X noticed the white gloves the detective had on, which are usually only for crime scenes.
“What’s with the gloves?”

“Evidence. We don’t want to obscure your fingerprints on this bullet. You’re going down for violations of the Firearms and Ammunitions Law, pal…understand? Some serious jail time.”
Mr. X, says he was getting a little bit worried. The cop stared him in the face, and then the cop took a pack of Lark cigarettes out of his coat and handed a cigarette to Mr. X. Mr. X took the cigarette and put it in his mouth and the cop lit it with the bullet shaped lighter, laughing.
“Mr. X, pretty cool! I’ve never seen a lighter like this. Do you know where I can get one?”
“I could ask.”
“Yeah, let me know. By the way, you know we’re still going to seize this. Just to be sure. Gonna have to have forensics look at it.”
“Be my guest.”
And with that, Mr. X got back in his car and was allowed to leave.
Guns and weapons are taken very seriously in Japan, and bullet-shaped lighters are probably not a source of levity. When I heard this story, I thought I was going to have to go prostate myself in front of Mr. X again and was hoping not to hit my forehead too hard on the ground, but he told me he was more amused than upset. And he asked me to get him two more of the bullet-shaped lighters.

Once upon a time, a famous yakuza journalist named Mizoguchi Atsushi, wrote some articles about a Yamaguchigumi (Japan’s largest organized crime group) faction. They are known as the Yamakengumi. These articles made the Yamakengumi very angry. So some thugs were sent to dispatch him. They couldn’t find him, so they stabbed his son. The same thing happened in the past with a man in the Seijo area who angered the Goto-gumi and fled–in his absentia, his wife was stabbed so severely that it was a miracle she didn’t die.  It’s still an open case.

Let’s get back to Mizoguchi. According to someone who knows about these turn of events, Mizoguchi became frantically worried about his family. And he also became very worried that he was going to be killed himself.  A yakuza boss made an effort to reassure, telling him to calm down.  This is what he allegedly said to Mizoguchi. “Calm down. Be a  man. Don’t worry, nobody is going to kill you. Not now.  It would be too obvious. We’ll have to wait five, ten,maybe fifteen years before doing it. So relax. For the next five years at least–no one will touch you.” Somehow, I don’t think he found that reassuring.

In March of 2008, I was at the trial of Goto Tadamasa on property forgery related charges. He was found not guilty. The original investigation started with looking into the brutal murder in broad daylight of a real estate negotiator named Nozaki, if memory serves me well.  The Goto trial collapsed when the central witness for the defense balked at the last minute.  I knew one of the cops waiting outside in the hall, and asked him what he thought of the verdict.  He had the following to say:

“The guy who was going be on the witness stand–it’s a shame he backed down. Because in a year or two, when enough time has gone by–he’ll vanish. If he’d taken the stand, he probably would have ended up dead anyway, but at least it would have been death with honor.  You can’t outrun the yakuza–you just make them chase you even harder when you turn your back.  You probably won’t win if you fight them either. But you might have a better chance.”

If you piss off certain yakuza groups, you’re never going to win the war–you may win a battle.  But eventually, you’ll lose. The only way you could win is to drive so hard that the entire faction is disbanded and that someone at the top of the organization decides you’re more trouble than you’re worth. You have to be a huge troublemaker to get that kind of free pass.

I know an ex-yakuza who used to be a loan shark and a collector as well. His point of pride was that he never bothered the family of the debtor, never leaned on them to collect the interest, never called up the mark in the middle of the night and woke up his kids, never stuffed a dead animal in their mailbox, never kidnapped family members or lovers of the debtor–no matter how much money was owed. “A man’s debts are his own problem.  If he owes me and won’t pay, I’ll take it out on him–not innocent people. If you have a fight with your mistress, you don’t beat up her brother. I’m not saying you beat up the woman either, you know.  I’m saying it’s dishonorable to pick on people who aren’t involved. There are no fair fights, of course, but there are honorable fights. No real yakuza is going to go after the friends or family of their enemy. Collateral damage as is unacceptable.  That’s how it should be.”

Well, how things should be and how they are, are never the same.  Maybe the old-school yakuza lived up to those ideals of “an honorable fight” but if that time ever existed, it’s the ancient past for most of them. You might think you’re only risking your personal safety when you get in their way but that’s terribly naive. Because when they realize that you aren’t afraid to get hurt or maybe even killed for doing what you think is the right thing, they’ll look for different leverage.  Maybe, they’ll leave you alone for a while because they are afraid that hurting you will anger the cops–and turn public opinion against them. But they won’t forgive and forget.

I should state things a little better here.  I don’t really think there’s anyone who isn’t afraid of physical pain or death. I sure hell as am. But there are some people still crazy enough to take the risk.  That’s when you put people in danger.  Why do you think the Kodokai, the strongest faction of the Yamaguchi-gumi, follows detectives to their homes, takes down their license plate numbers, and photographs members of their family? The message is very simple. Here it is:

“Nothing is just business. Everything is personal. If you bring the war to us, we’ll bring the war to you–right where you live. So don’t fuck with us.”  And they only have to demonstrate that once for people to get the point.  Expose how they make their money,  get some of them arrested, pass on information to the police about their criminal activities–whether it’s human trafficking or  just illegal gambling–and you will quickly learn how intolerant the noble yakuza can be.

No matter how tough you imagine yourself to be, the intangible pain you’ll feel when someone is hurt because of what you did, even if you were doing the right thing, will hurt like nothing you can imagine. It feels like an internal injury and it doesn’t get better. Unless you’re a sociopath, and then you don’t care about anyone else but yourself.  Maybe sociopaths make the best journalists in the world in that sense. They certainly are well-adapted to be yakuza.  A yakuza doesn’t even have to lay a finger on you to hurt you, he just has to let you know that he’s willing to hurt the people you care about. That’s enough. Sometimes, the fear of that happening is worse than when it really does happen. It keeps you up at night—it makes you want to avoid close relationships, it makes you lonely as hell, and it makes you vulnerable.  It can also make you a little crazy.

If they back up what they say, they can force you into a position where you feel the responsible thing to do is kill yourself.  I knew one man who I think was goaded into doing it, for fear of what would happen to his little boy if he didn’t.  That works perfectly for them–get your enemy to kill himself and you’ll never go to jail for murder. A perfect crime.

Takeshita Saburo, one of the yakuza to receive a liver transplant at UCLA, used to have a signature line when he was shaking down a deadbeat. He’d beat on their door, of their home, in the middle of the night, and yell, “Time to pay up.  I’ll make you a deal.  Just bring down your little daughter so I can cut off her face. Then we’ll be even.” Sometimes, he’s tap a knife on the door, which would emphasize the point, especially if it was a metal door.  Metal on metal, especially if you scratch on it with a knife–it’s an unpleasant sound.

But here’s the corollary on this: almost everyone has someone they love. Even gangsters. So when push comes to shove, here’s what you have to do. You have to figure out who is the top dog, you have to find out who he loves, and you have to demonstrate him that those people are vulnerable. The more of them you know, the stronger your position. He can’t watch them all.  And you have to let him know that you are willing to hurt them, by any means possible, if it comes to that. You also need to be able to show that even if you’re obliterated, there are good odds someone else will do the job for you.  And the most difficult thing to do of all, is that you may have to demonstrate that. At least once. It isn’t a good feeling, so I’ve heard.  It hardens a person. It takes you down to there level. It makes you play God and do triage with other people’s lives. You have to decide, if that’s the case, “the pain of person X is less significant than the possible pain or death of my friend.”  So what do you do?

There are no rules to gokudo chess.  It’s a betting game.  You don’t have a choice in what you might lose–they often believe they do.  They expect that YOU will fight fair. Once you’ve sat down at the table with a dishonorable player, you’re locked in until you reach a stalemate or only one of you is left standing. There is a referee but you can’t count on him. You have to win at all costs and that requires excellent strategy, sometimes physical intimidation, psychological warfare, and sometimes you have to cheat. The best way to do that is to know what your opponent doesn’t want to lose. And if he doesn’t mind losing everything, then you need to know what he fears.  Fear is more powerful than love for some people.

I keep thinking my chess game is over but then just when I’m ready to walk away from the table, it seems like someone else wants to play. I never liked chess very much. And being forced to play, makes you think more and more about waiting until the referee leaves the room, and beating your opponent to death with the chess board. That would be a total victory.  No more rematches.

I’ve gotten some letters that lambaste me for putting people in danger, including my family, and a number of morally questionable things I did. Well,  I did what I had to do and I believe in my work as an investigative journalist and with some NGOs. Of course, I’m not happy to put people in uncomfortable situations.  But if everyone runs, than the whole world gets taken over by the bad guys.  And then nobody wins. There are people who deal with organized crime issues in Japan that move their families out of the country. They don’t quit their jobs. I admire that.  I might not be a great father but I don’t want to teach my kids that when the bullies of the world come calling that the honorable thing is to capitulate.

An honorable victory is the ideal. Sometimes that isn’t possible.  Hopefully, gentle reader, you’ll never find yourself in this position–but if you have to deal with someone willing to hurt your friends or lovers or family, because they can’t get at you–you have to show them that you can do the same thing–and that may stop them. And that’s an unpleasant lesson to learn.

Best to avoid that part of life’s education, when humanly possible.

For Atsushi Nakanishi, jobless since Christmas, home is a cubicle barely bigger than a coffin — one of dozens of berths stacked two units high in one of central Tokyo’s decrepit “capsule” hotels.

“It’s just a place to crawl into and sleep,” he said, rolling his neck and stroking his black suit — one of just two he owns after discarding the rest of his wardrobe for lack of space. “You get used to it.”

When Capsule Hotel Shinjuku 510 opened nearly two decades ago, Japan was just beginning to pull back from its bubble economy, and the hotel’s tiny plastic cubicles offered a night’s refuge to salarymen who had missed the last train home.

Now, Hotel Shinjuku 510’s capsules, no larger than 6 1/2 feet long by 5 feet wide, and not tall enough to stand up in, have become an affordable option for some people with nowhere else to go as Japan endures its worst recession since World War II.

Read “For Some in Japan, Home Is a Tiny Plastic Bunk” [via The New York Times]

This looks to be a continuation of the ‘net cafe refugees‘ that the media picked up on in 2007 and early 2008, before the recession had even hit Japan. It’s undeniable now, walking around places like Shinjuku Station and Ueno Park, that the number of homeless have very apparently increased. During the day, rather normal looking, if not slightly disheveled, middle age and older men can be seen loitering about public spaces, while more and more folded-up cardboard boxes and carts wrapped in tarps — presumably holding belongings — can be spotted in the cracks and crevices between light posts, fences and buildings.

As cited in Tabuchi’s article, Prime Minister Hatoyama published a public service announcement on the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare’s YouTube channel, calling out for those who have found themselves in precarious living situations over the New Years holiday to call a special hotline to help the jobless make use of Hello Work and social welfare programs.

On the other hand, this trend of living in capsule hotels may be good for the businesses that may be finding themselves with new competition from neighboring love hotels, as the latter begin to strategically push themselves as inexpensive and convenient places to stay for businessmen and tourists.

I also feel that I should say I am not a hero. I’ve also apparently broken most of the major rules of journalism that most journalists in the west follow so please don’t see me as an example to emulate, to all you budding journalists out there.

However, personally, I still feel that really the four most important things in journalism are 1) get the the story anyway you can 2) write the truth 3) try to write something that makes the world a better place 4) protect your sources and your friends. I’ve always considered the fourth one to be the most important of them all. I have not always been able to keep that rule.

I appreciate the compliments but I’m deeply flawed as a person, I’ve been a lousy husband, and I could be a better father to my children. I’ve made moral compromises that I’m not proud of but in my defense I’ve tried to do what’s right and protect my sources, my family and my friends and innocent people victimized by the predators of our society. I’ve done some dark things to make sure those people were protected. I’d hate to see my karma score.

A number of people who read the book have pledged money and/or time to the Polaris Project and Polaris Project Japan, both of which fight modern day slavery, and I’m very grateful for their efforts. Thank you. It’s nice to see some good come out of the book.

Below is one letter that particularly moved me and made me contemplate a lot about what has happened in the last two years. It’s representative of many of the letters I’ve gotten and I think it’s good food for thought.

どうもありがとうございました。

NOTE: PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS LETTER IF YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED THE BOOK YET.

Jake-san, (Though after finishing your book, perhaps sama would be
more appropriate)

You certainly weren’t exaggerating when you said the book got progressively darker. Here I was initially thanking you for the entertainment and information your story provided me, but then… at the end…the death of Sekiguchi, Helena’s disappearance, the strains placed on your friends and family… I found myself skipping ahead just because I wanted to know that everything would be okay. I guess it should be expected though that in a story filled with questions of the ends justifying the means and the gray area between the moral and immoral that there’s no such thing as a truly happy ending.

I don’t know if i could ever do what you did in writing about all this. You put everything on the line for a cause you believed in and there’s no telling the amount of good you did just in tearing down the Goto-gumi let alone your continued work in the Polaris Project as noted on the book flap. I get the sense that if I were to call you a hero, or define your actions as heroic, you’d likely point out the ambiguity of some actions you had to take, as noted in one of your latter conversations with “Alien Cop”. But risking your life for the greater good…God bless you man.

Though questions come to mind about some of your cases, I won’t take up your time with them. I did however want to offer up two thoughts. Firstly, in your epilogue when one of Goto’s mistresses compared you to Goto himself. I reflected back to a moment recently in my life. A couple months ago there was the national news story about the “Craigslist Killer” who mugged three women and killing one of them in the Massachusetts area. The alleged killer, Phil Markoff was a friend of mine through high school, and we were both very similar in personality. For a while I questioned what separates him from me, under what circumstances could I have become what he allegedly is? It took a good friend to remind me that I could never find happiness in hurting others, I’d only find guilt. And if the chips were really down, I’d rather suffer myself than inflict it upon others. So regardless of whatever you had to do, you apparently stuck to your efforts, and the world is a better place because of you. Thank you.

Second, and finally, in reading your epilogue, I too don’t know how much I believe in karma and reincarnation, (raised Baptist, now more spiritual than anything) but I do believe in the immortality of the human soul. From the experiences in my life and my studying of various religions I don’t believe the departed ever leave us entirely. So for what it’s worth, from one amateur theologian’s perspective, wherever Sekiguchi and Helena are, I’m sure they’re proud of what you have accomplished for the betterment of others. Keep on fighting the good fight; I’m already planning my donation to the Polaris Project.

So, you want to become a Gokudokisha 極道記者, or rather, a journalist who writes about the yakuza? Then you should now there are some unwritten rules you will be expected to follow. (Read more about yazuka fan magazines here.)

1) No writing about ongoing criminal ventures or front companies.

2) When writing about yakuza arrested for extortion, assault and other crimes, the tone must be neutral.

3) Yakuza who are arrested for crimes such as theft and armed robbery should be treated as heretics, since those are, presumably, two crimes yakuza don’t commit. Street crimes, such as muggings, are off limits as well.

Read the rest here: Bonus Material: Be Nice to the Yakuza, Or Else!

The Japanese mafia, better known as the yakuza, has been the subject of fan magazines for decades. These magazines serve as de-facto trade periodicals for a world of vicious, autocratic thugs, men who are handy with swords and guns, sport full-body tattoos, deal in illegal contraband and laundered money, and rip off the general public; all the while funneling money and power to their families and kigyoshatei (corporate blood brothers). What may be even more surprising is how easy the yakuza fan magazines are to find: they are readily available at newsstands, convenience stores, bookstores, public libraries and even some government offices.

It isn’t a shock that this happens in Japan, where yakuza are viewed as legal entities, and they operate under the cover of being fraternal organizations “dedicated to the preservation of traditional values,” much like the Rotary Club or the Boy Scouts are in the United States. According to the National Police Agency, there are 22 such recognized yakuza groups, claiming a total of 86,000 members. They have their own office buildings or, in the case of the Yamaguchi-gumi, which has emerged as the largest yakuza group in the country and claims 50,000 members and affiliates, a compound/headquarters in Kobe that takes up almost an entire city block.

Many Japanese people, including some police officers, have great awe and admiration for these tattooed gangsters. They are seen by some as lovable outlaws, a necessary evil (必要悪) keeping the streets safe from “evil foreign criminals.” And in the eyes of the middle-aged salaryman, the yakuza are real men living the ideal life, one filled with an excess of money, booze, excitement, and beautiful women (as well as retirement packages that are better than those of Japan’s leading automakers).  It is little wonder, then, that the beaten down office worker turns to the yakuza fan magazines as a way to escape and fantasize about a better, more glamorous life.

Read the rest here: The Strange World of Yakuza Fan Magazines

NAGOYA, Japan — When Kayoko Isogai got the call from high-ranking officials at the Democratic Party of Japan asking her to stand for a seat in the national parliament, she was shocked.

It was just two weeks before the Aug. 30 election; she had spent most of the previous five years unemployed and taking care of her terminally ill parents; and she had no political or governing experience whatsoever.

“Impossible, impossible, impossible, impossible, impossible,” Isogai said recently, recalling her reaction to the offer. “I said it five times.”

But Isogai, 43, reconsidered and put her name on the DPJ ticket. Then, she watched in surprise as the party’s historic, landslide victory over the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party swept her into the House of Representatives of the Japanese Diet.

Politics meets porn in Japan [via Global Post]