January 2012 Archives

For a long time, the yakuza and right-wing politics have been deeply intertwined. It's faded somewhat in recent years, but without the relationship, it's likely that neither would be where they are today.

David Kaplan's Yaukza: Japan's Criminal Underworld, explores the relationship in great depth. I apologize to Mr. Kaplan if my summary is not entirely accurate. Even before the war, there was a relationship between those who live outside the law and those who believe themselves above the law. Yakuza tend strongly toward ultra-nationalist, and helped push the war effort in that direction.

After the war, it seems they picked up right where they left off, each group using the other for their purposes. While the yakuza often used right-wing organizations as fronts for less-legal and more-violent activity, the ultra-nationalist LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) would use the yakuza for their less-appealing needs. In the middle, the two mix, with yakuza occasionally becoming becoming politicians and LDP members attaining their seats through yakuza influence.

The godfather of this relationship is a man named Yoshio Kodama. Kodama worked for the ultra-nationalist Japanese government during the war moving supplies, eventually becoming involved in the drug trade going at the time, amassing a fortune in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Remember, this is taking place in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s. Kodama was jailed after the war as a Class A war criminal, but was let out shortly after to help fight against communism.

Kodama used his network to the benefit of the very conservative US occupation. Of course, the intelligence gathered helped his own ends as well. The strike-breaking efforts served both parties' quest against communism, and much of that strike-breaking was done by yakuza groups ordered in by Kodama when he was the Justice Minister of Japan. At one point, Kodama even attempted to unite the many smaller gangs of Eastern Japan into a single group called Kanto-kai (Kanto being the eastern section of the main island). He also helped create truces between some other major yakuza organizations.

Imagine those conspiracy theories where old guys in suits sit around and decide everything for us. Kodama and his colleagues were exactly that. They're referred to as - and referred to each other as - kuromaku. The word comes from Japanese theatre, where someone would manipulate the stage from behind the black curtain, or kuromaku.

Like I said, much of this was happening while he was in a position of real political power. Under his rule, the LDP flourished and so did the Yakuza.

Before I start getting into what I've learned about the Yakuza, I wanted to go into a few of my inspirations. I have a hard time calling myself a yakuza fan. That implies admiration for the people, beliefs, and actions. I'm curious about yakuza. The culture and people are intensely interesting and, well, pretty mysterious.

With the tight stranglehold the yakuza has on the media in Japan, much of what people see is what they want people to see. Movies, fiction, and films rarely depict yakuza negatively. Of course there are always villains, but there's more than one redeemable character. Hell, even the villains are often redeemed at some point.

So, I've been curious for a while about the organizations and everything surrounding them.

What really lit the fire was, of course, a video game. You know which one.

This guy here, with the awesome dragon tat, is my boy Kazuma Kiryu, the main protagonist of the Yakuza series. In Japan, Yakuza is called Ryu ga Gotoku (龍が如く), or Like a Dragon. Presumably because Kiryu is like a dragon in the way he acts and fights. The games, as you'd expect, depict the classic media image of the yakuza. The lonely anti-hero, the relentless badass. The loyal brother, bound by blood. There is literally no one on earth cooler than Kazuma Kiryu. I'll go deeper into the games in a later post. There are pages waiting for you. Pages.

Oddly, the Yakuza games lead directly to the next source of inspiration:

Mr. Jake Adelstein. (check out his site, Japan Subculture Research Center)

My first introduction to Jake Adelstein was his awesome review of Yakuza 3 - as reviewed by real yakuza. This blew my mind. From zero to legit in a few mouse-clicks.

Adelstein is, essentially, what I didn't know I wanted to be when I grew up. Adelstein applied to the Yomiuri Shimbun (a major Japanese newspaper) - via the standard Japanese route, not as an international reporter - and got in, becoming the first American to work as a Japanese-language reporter for a Japanese newspaper.

Adelstein was put on the police beat and over years, developed strong relationships with both police and yakuza. His autobiographical book, Tokyo Vice, was a huge inspiration to me as a former student of the Japanese language, a journalism graduate, AND as someone with an ongoing interest in yakuza culture.

Jake Adelstein is cooler than Kazuma Kiryu, by the way. In 2005, Adelstein uncovered information about one of the heads of Yamaguchi-gumi receiving a liver transplant in America. Investigating further and documenting his findings resulted in Adelstein receiving a notice from some intimidating men in dark suits: "Erase the story or be erased, your family too."

Not that having a contract out on you is cool in real life. It's having the balls to uncover and reveal the information that led to the contract and then maintaining that nerve when it's really tested. Standing up to a man who has potentially hundreds of men at his beck and call.

There have been other things over the years, too. Neuromancer and Shadowrun were many nerds' first introduction to Japanese organized crime. Beat Takeshi's many movies - Sonatine chief among them - are modern yakuza classics.

It isn't the men of the yakuza clans themselves that inspire me, but rather everything about them. How they got to where they are as a group, why they do what they do. Jake and the Yakuza games just helped lead me here.

This spring, I will be hosting a panel about the Yakuza at AnimeDetour (Specific date/time to come, con is from March 30 to April 1). Between now and then, I intend to use this blog largely to catalog and organize my findings and thoughts regarding the topic, so that when it comes time to plan the panel itself, I have extensive notes to come back to. I hope to post something daily, whether it is a list of books to read, a definition of a concept specific to the yakuza or to Japanese culture, or maybe a short profile of someone significant to the topic.

For those that don't know, the Yakuza is Japan's organized crime syndicate. Their version of the Mafia. They play much the same role in Japanese culture, but have a history and culture of their own.

So for the next few months, the video game posts may go into a bit of a winter hibernation while the Yakuza-related works takeover. Posts on the topic will be tagged as "yakuza."

So, welcome to... Tattoos and Pompadours.