Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) — Japan’s underworld can tell you a lot about what’s happening in the legitimate economy.

Gangsters are on the run as growth wanes and deflation worsens. Yet the oddest development by far involves yakuza members sitting for exams covering key aspects of their work.

If you think this is just a law-enforcement issue, think again. It’s a sign Japan’s funk will be longer than economists predict. That may surprise those betting Japan is recovering. Oddly, though, the plight of gangsters tells the story.

Huddled over legal texts and documents isn’t the popular image of Japan’s storied mobsters. When they aren’t collecting debts, shaking down shop owners, overseeing prostitution rings or rigging stocks, members of Japan’s biggest organized crime group, Yamaguchi-gumi, are studying for 12-page tests.

Yakuza’s Series 7 Exam Is Harbinger for Economy [via Bloomberg]

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 However, it seems they have been replaced by young Japanese teenage girls, many of them runaways or abused children.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.

The stories Jake Adelstein wrote as a crime reporter for a Japanese newspaper have earned him and his family a death threat from one of the country’s most notorious and influential yakuza. Writing a book about crime and criminal culture in Japan is likely to have further enraged the Tokyo uderworld. Adelstein never planned it this way.  

Adelstein, 39, from Missouri, became the first foreigner to be taken on as a staff writer for a Japanese-language newspaper when he joined the Yomiuri Shimbun in April 1993. He had experienced Japan as an exchange student – albeit one with interests in karate and Buddhism – and studied Japanese before passing a newspaper entrance exam and joining the Yomiuri. As with all cub reporters he landed on the police and organised-crime beat, which meant close contact with policemen and gangsters and eventually the material for the forthcoming Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan.     

 “It’s not all about the yakuza,” says Adelstein. “It’s about crime and criminal culture, including human trafficking, murder and serial rape in Japan and how the media here covers it. Consider it a primer of the dark side of Japan as seen through the eyes of a police reporter. It tells you a lot about the Japanese police as well.”

 The impression he initially built up was of Japan’s yakuza groups being similar to the officers charged with bringing them to book. But that has changed, he believes.

 “My impression was that both had their stringent codes of honour and duty and a grudging respect for each other,” he says. “Now, I think, with most yakuza, money trumps everything and the cops don’t have respect for them any more. I have a lot more respect for the cops since I now understand how difficult their job is. How the hell are they going to bust these organisations if they can’t wire-tap, can’t do undercover operations, can’t plea bargain and can’t offer witnesses any real protection? They are handicapped while the yakuza have a tactical advantage, politically and financially.

 “There was a time when the two sides had an uneasy truce,” he continues. “When there was a gang war and shooting was involved, the yakuza quickly offered up someone to the police. Not necessarily the real criminal, but someone. In the good old days the organised crime cops would drop by the yakuza offices, have a cup of tea and get updates on who was rising and falling in the organisation.”

 When Japan’s largest underworld group, the Osaka-based Yamaguchi-gumi, was smaller the police were able to play off various yakuza groups against each other. But that too has changed.

 “The Yamaguchi-gumi is the Wal-Mart of the Japanese mafia and they are driving all the little mom and pop yakuza out of business, efficiently and ruthlessly,” Adelstein says. “They don’t feel a need to get along with the police any more. Last year, allegedly, when a group of Aichi prefectural cops raided a Yamaguchi-gumi office, they found photos of themselves and their families tacked on the walls. The former taboos about attacking journalists are gone as well. Anyone is fair game.”

 Adelstein’s book took about 2½ years to write and was completed after he left the Yomiuri in 2005. Adelstein says he loved his job, built up good working relationships with police officers and was fascinated by Japan’s underworld. That fascination means his life – and those of his family – are now on the line.

 According to police statistics, there are 80,000 gang members in Japan and the Yamaguchi-gumi is without question the largest and most powerful. In Tokyo alone it has more than 800 front companies ranging from construction businesses to auditing firms to cake shops. It’s all a far cry from the traditional businesses of drugs, protection and prostitution on which underworld empires were previously built.

 His trawls though the underbelly of Japanese society also revealed links between organised crime and the political world, with lawmakers appearing in police organisational charts of the Yamaguchi-gumi and others accepting political donations from gang bosses.

 But the story that changed Adelstein’s life most came about on May 18, 2001, when the FBI arranged for Tadamasa Goto – the “John Gotti of Japan” – to travel to the US for a liver transplant. Goto is the head of the Goto-gumi, an offshoot of the Yamaguchi-gumi that was used by the Yamaguchigumi to expand its business interests into Tokyo. In return, Goto provided the US with information on yakuza moneylaundering operations and front businesses in the US, although it fell far short of what he had promised before the operation.

 The information led to a series of busts, as well as friction between law-enforcement authorities on the two sides of the Pacific Ocean about the sharing of information.

 In 2005 Goto discovered Adelstein had learned of the transplant and was planning to write a scoop. One of his associates unleashed an oblique threat, which was followed by a formal meeting with Goto’s representatives. The offer was clear, Adelstein recalls. He was told to “erase the story or be erased”. The same went for his wife and children.

 Adelstein took advice from a senior Japanese police officer, dropped the story and resigned from the newspaper. But instead of killing the story he planned to incorporate it into a book that, given Goto’s poor health, would be published after his death. Goto defied the odds, however, and is still alive. Unfortunately for Adelstein, the contents of the book were leaked and became common knowledge among Japan’s criminal fraternity.

 “I am very concerned,” he says. “Goto’s group does things like smash dump trucks into stores that won’t pay protection money, uses bombs, invades homes, beats people in front of their families … I’m certainly an enemy.”

 The FBI are keeping a close watch on Adelstein’s family in the US while local police are monitoring his well-being in Japan.

 “My wife is very angry with me; my kids are confused,” Adelstein says. “I’ve had to learn to shoot a rifle and I’m in constant touch with the police on both sides of the ocean. I’ve blown thousands of dollars to install security systems and to make sure I got my best source out of Japan and safe.

 “If the psycho would only have the decency to leave my family and friends out of it, that would be great. But he has no honour and no morals. He’s capable of doublecrossing the Yamaguchi-gumi and the FBI and he has lots of money.”

 Adelstein’s only glimmer of hope, he says, is if the Yamaguchigumi excommunicate Goto for betraying their business interests in the US. Even so, Goto has hundreds of loyal henchmen. “I have no idea what the hell to do,” Adelstein says. “I miss my family, but until things are settled every time I’m with them I put them in firing range.

 “I’m hoping that Shinobu Tsukasa, the honourable head of the Yamaguchi-gumi, sends me a thank you letter: ‘Mr Adelstein, we appreciate you pointing out this traitor in our midst. Go live in peace and continue to write. We will not kill you for the time being.’ That would be nice. You see, I still have a sense of humour.”

  ………………………………………………

 Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan

(to be published by Kodansha International in November)

The BBC’s International Radio Station did a story on Wednesday’s program on Jake Adelstein becoming an “accidentally intrepid” crime reporter.

The information on the July 16th Program can be found here.