"One thing I noticed early on with [Yakuza] life was how subtle everything was."

[zerozero]

Steward Magazine | Steward Magazine Online

But photographer Anton Kusters says that, where the yakuza are concerned, some of those creaky tropes about loyalty and honor are true. Having spent two years documenting the life of a Tokyo yakuza gang, he was given unprecedented access to a criminal underworld steeped in ritual, nuance, and exploitation.

S: So what was that subculture like? What kind of values did they have?

AK: The values were almost comparable to general Japanese workplace values, actually. Most yakuza gangs actually have neighborhood offices, and the plaques they have on the door state core values like “respect your superiors,” “keep the office clean,” and so on.

One thing I noticed early on with gang life was how subtle everything was. Everything was unspoken, and will was expressed through group pressure. A pressure was constantly there. There was this innate understanding of form—if someone did something wrong, no one would say anything; he would simply be expected to apologize. And the fact everyone would be so silent about it made the pressure really intense.

S: One of the first things I think of when I hear “mob income” is violent extortion. How did the gang make its money if it avoided violence?

AK: They were involved in a lot of white-collar crime. In the past there had been violent turf wars, but Shoichiro, the street boss, told me “We can get the most money out of the economy.”

One of main sources of income they had was debt collection. They would actually go and buy entire loan databases and pay off the money people owed. Of course, after that happened, those debts were just transferred over to the yakuza.

Also, after Fukushima [the nuclear disaster], they helped rebuild some houses; only it wasn’t a simple philanthropic relationship. These people now owe the gang.

Here too there was unspoken pressure. For example, the first few times they would simply send a member over to the house of the person who owed. He wouldn’t mention the debt directly or anything, but there was no mistaking what he was there for. They were really skilled at unspoken intimidation.

 

[Ashtrey]

Them Yakuza's definitely bout that life

 

[zerozero]

Them Yakuza's definitely bout that life

yeah something I thought of when I read this is that you can't really compare across environments when deciding who's more "bout that life." Like Russian mafia dudes might wild out more or whatever, but if you're in Japan and these guy's neighborhoods you're pretty much food. So in the end power in crime as in anything else is more sociopolitical than about propensity for violence

You can get shot up with an AK in one part of the world, thrown off a roof in another, or just stabbed and left to bleed in yet another,
but if you're dead you're dead

 

[OG_StankBrefs]

Props.

 

[newworldafro]

funny I just heard this interview last week about them and Fukushima....here's an article talking about this.....

How the Yakuza and Japan's Nuclear Industry Learned to Love Each Other - Global - The Atlantic Wire

How the Yakuza and Japan's Nuclear Industry Learned to Love Each Other

TEPCO via Reuters Jake Adelstein 3,772 Views May 24, 2012

After the arrest of a yakuza boss for his alleged role in supplying workers to TEPCO’s Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Plant, we are learning the details of how Japan’s nuclear industry relied on organized crime. Since July of last year, a few months after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami resulted in a triple meltdown at the Fukushima plant, investigators have been probing possible yakuza links to TEPCO and the nuclear industry under the guidance of the National Police Agency.

“Yakuza involvement in the nuclear industry is believed to go back to 2007 or earlier," said a police source, "and the gangs involved were dispatching yakuza to nuclear sites all over Japan.”

The yakuza boss arrested has been identified as Makoto Owada, a high-ranking member of the Sumiyoshi-kai (住吉会) crime group, the second largest organized crime group in Japan with roughly 12,000 members. Owada is charged with illegally dispatching workers to the reconstruction site from May to July of last year. The Fukushima plant is located in Sumiyoshi-kai territory (in yakuza parlance nawabari). However, in his initial statements to the police at the time of his arrest, Owada admitted that he had dispatched workers, including his own yakuza soldiers, to nuclear power plant construction sites all over Japan from as early as 2007.

“If we didn’t do it, who would?” asked one mid-level yakuza boss, who defended the criminal groups’ involvement. He even praised the yakuza workers as heroes in the aftermath of the disaster. “When everyone else was running away as Fukushima melted down, our people stayed to avert disaster. We’re not the bad guys.”

Police suspect that Owada was also working with Japan’s largest crime group, the Yamaguchi-gumi, in providing labor to areas outside of the Sumiyoshi-kai turf in a “joint business venture.” Organized crime in Japan tends to be extremely organized. (At right is an issue of a yakuza fanzine that is dedicated to the Sumiyoshi-kai.) And, in fact, one of the business partners, Yamaguchi-gumi Oshuaizukaikka, which also calls Fukushima Prefecture home, has been praised for their fast and effective relief efforts after the quake—even providing hot food and security from possible looters at disaster shelters. The other business partner, the Yamaguchi-gumi Shimizu-ikka was founded by one of the four yakuza who received a liver transplant at UCLA under controversial circumstances.

However, it’s becoming apparent that yakuza involvement in Japan’s nuclear industry is not limited to the Sumiyoshi-kai and Yamaguchi-gumi. In January of this year, the Fukuoka Police Department arrested an executive at a front company for the Kyushu-based yakuza Kudo-kai, for her role in illegal labor contracts with the KEPCO (Kansai Electric Power Company) managed Ooi Nuclear Power Plant.

Police and underworld sources said that starting in late May of last year, Owada allegedly dispatched several people, including gang members, to the devastated Fukushima nuclear power plant where they did cleanup work and reconstruction of damaged areas. According to these sources, Owada did not directly dispatch workers to the nuclear power plant; he first sent them to an official TEPCO subcontractor in Tochigi Prefecture. These sources say the way the scheme worked is that Owada then received the extra hazard pay (危険手当) that TEPCO was giving to workers at the radioactive Fukushima site. Some of that money was allegedly kicked back to the Sumiyoshi-kai as “association dues.”

While most firms in Japan now have in place exclusionary clauses in all contracts that forbids the use of organized crime or affiliated companies, TEPCO has been fairly lax about taking similar measures. Last July, according to the National Police Agency and TEPCO, the firm began meeting regularly with officials from the National Police Agency to discuss rooting out organized crime influence at the company. Up until October 1, 2011, however, it was not necessarily illegal to employ yakuza at nuclear facilities or work with their front companies. It is now.The involvement of the yakuza in Japan’s nuclear industry has gone on long before last year’s disaster. According to Japanese government sources, Yakuza have been supplying labor to Japan’s nuclear industry since the late 90s. TEPCO and other firms have paid off yakuza groups in the past to remain silent about safety problems at their nuclear plants and other scandals. In 2003, the Japanese media reported that TEPCO had been making protection payments to a Sumiyoshi-kai front company for over ten years. The June 2005 issue of the political and news magazine, SEIKEI TOHOKU, had an in-depth expose of TEPCO pay-offs to a Yamaguchi-gumi boss. Police sources also confirmed that TEPCO ties to organized crime dated back to the late nineties.

“The yakuza provide the labor for a job no sane person would do considering the crappy working conditions,” said Tomohiko Suzuki, author of Yakuza and the Nuclear Industry: Diary of An Undercover Reporter Working at the Fukushima Plant (ヤクザと原発-福島第一潜入記-鈴木-智彦). “The only way to get the yakuza out of the atomic power business is probably to shutter all the reactors. Even then, like savvy vultures, the yakuza will be living off the cleanup work for years to come.”

Considering the intimate entanglements between organized crime and nuclear power in Japan, it would not be a shock if this investigation has a very short half-life. “The arrest of Owada is just the tip of the iceberg but how far the investigation will go or be allowed to go is difficult to say,” said the police source. “Things don’t change overnight.”

 

[88m3]

I've read some article over the years really interesting, and there's nothing better than a good yakuza film.


I think they've got their hands in everything and are even more deep than the Italian Mafia. Fortune 500 companies the whole thing. Because at the end of the day are you going to die over a company/career?

 

[The War Report]

I was with the kaichou when he got a second tattoo. The gang had just entered into an alliance with another family, so as a show of loyalty he had his original full-body tattoo burned off with hot coals and replaced with a new tattoo. It took 100 hours to complete. They called him “The Master of All Pains

Has anyone seen the outrage film?

 

[FaTaL]

All non-yakuza gangs with a presence in Japan only exist by the grace of the yakuza. In Kabuki-cho the Nigerian mob were ceded a certain amount of territory and not allowed to step outside their bounds. If they did they’d be beaten up. The gang had street cameras everywhere to make sure nothing disruptive was happening.

 

[TrueEpic08]

funny I just heard this interview last week about them and Fukushima....here's an article talking about this.....

Interestingly enough, Adelstein wrote an entire book about his life as a reporter in Japan called Tokyo Vice. His exposes got Yakuza so hot at him that he actually ended up with a price on his head and having to flee the country. Really funny and interesting read.

And here's a couple of articles on the fallout of that book getting major press:

Christal Smith: Jake Adelstein: Gaijin Justice

Christal Smith: JAKE ADELSTEIN: TOKYO VICE FALLOUT

 

[mbewane]

I don't know much about organized crime and all but from what I understand Yakuzas are the most powerful, I think they are deep in major japanese companies and shyt...and seems like they apply the whole "real gangsters move in silence" saying to the fullest...truth or myth?

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Was he using an iphone to take those pics?

 

[OsO]

All non-yakuza gangs with a presence in Japan only exist by the grace of the yakuza. In Kabuki-cho the Nigerian mob were ceded a certain amount of territory and not allowed to step outside their bounds. If they did they’d be beaten up. The gang had street cameras everywhere to make sure nothing disruptive was happening.

 

[Julius Skrrvin]

 

[SumBlackguyz]

dope

 

[Liu Kang]

Here an interesting movie/documentary about the Yakuza and their lifestyle.
You won't see much about the illegal side but it's more about the philosophy of the gang nowadays.

Young Yakuza