• Fri. Apr 25th, 2025

Japan Subculture Research Center

A guide to the Japanese underworld, Japanese pop-culture, yakuza and everything dark under the sun.

Yakuza bosses take legal classes to evade strict new law

Japan's most powerful gangsters are mugging up on legal terminology in an attempt to skirt strict new laws that make them liable for crimes committed by their henchmen.

Silence Broken: The Plight Of The Comfort Women

Former Comfort Women Await Justice  Adair K. Fincher, September 25, 2008  (This is a well-researched article about the women who were forced to work as sexual slaves by the Japanese Army…

Living With The Mob: Yakuza Deeply Rooted In Japan

  YAKUZA WARS by David McNeill and Jake Adelstein A bloody dispute between two rival Yakuza groups in a southern Japanese city has led to a historic fight-back by local…

Akihabara Massacre: Preventable Tragedy?

The suspect, 25-year-old Tomohiro Kato from Shizuoka, testified that “I went to Akihabara to kill people. I’m tired of my life and the world has become terrible. Anyone would have been…

From The Guardian: Residents go to courts to evict yakuza

Residents of a city in western Japan this week became the first to turn to the courts for help in ridding their neighbourhood of organised crime, amid fears that they…

The town that took on the yakuza, from The Independent

Japan's mafia seemed untouchable – until a group of residents risked everything to launch a court fight to drive the gangsters out. By David McNeill in Kurume City

From the Times Online: Yakuza stalk Japanese markets as organised crime opens new front

From The Times August 28, 2008 By Leo Lewis, Asia Business Correspondent Japan’s powerful yakuza organised crime syndicates are mounting a widespread assault on the country’s financial markets that may…

Rainy Day Yakuza #10,001

I hate them. Most yakuza do. People get taken out when it rains -- the rain washes away the blood, the trace evidence, the footprints, everything. You can't hear a…

Tokyo Vice featured in South China Post Sunday Book Section

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…

Jake Adelstein Featured on BBC World Service

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…