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Review: ミンボーの女 (Minbo: the Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion)

2012-03-19T01:55:27Z

Minbo is, all at the same time, a satire of modern yakuza, a laundry-list of Japanese mafia intimidation tactics, and a quick education on why Japanese anti-yakuza law works like it does (or at least did at the time). And if ever a movie was a direct response to the introduction of a new law, it’s this one. Somehow, on top of all of this, it manages to be a genuinely good movie.

Minbo centers around a large Japanese hotel trying to qualify for the privilege of holding an international political summit. The problem is that the staff has been kowtowing to yakuza for far too long and they’ve managed to infest the place. Executives appoint a rather frightened and unprepared man named Suzuki to face down these experienced criminals with the help of a bellhop, Wakasugi (is that a Jingi Naki Tatakai reference?). It doesn’t go very well and the two make mistake after mistake.

They try to pay the men off, first, letting the gang know that they’re willing to pay. Then they, at the behest of the yakuza themselves, show up at the gang headquarters, putting them in a situation surrounded from all sides by men with insane tattoos and missing fingers. In response to one incident, they even write a letter to the gang apologizing, giving the gang written proof that the hotel is taking responsibility. Later in the film, the gang even rolls out the speaker trucks – these big military-style vans covered in loudspeakers blaring whatever undesired information they like. Finally, it’s too much for Suzuki.

Suzuki is hiding under the table, contemplating the terrible left turn things have taken, when a strange women joins him and Wakasugi under the tablecloth. Mahiro Inoue is Minbo no Onna, which translates to something like “Civilian Crime Woman.” She’s an attorney who specializes in dealing with yakuza interaction with katagi, or regular citizens.

In 1991, Japan introduced a set of laws called Botaiho, or anti-yakuza countermeasures. The law differs from American and European laws regarding organized crime in that it is administrative rather than criminal. It deals specifically with the way yakuza work. The law basically makes implied threats and intimidation subject to regulation and injunction. It’s hard to cart someone off for veiled threats alone, but if someone feels threatened they can request an injunction against the threatening party. Then when the yakuza violates that injunction, they’ve violated a court order – sort of like someone violating a restraining order.

Ms. Inoue educates Suzuki and Wakasugi on the ins and outs of the Botaiho. It’s not quite as spelled out as that, but that’s pretty much what it amounts to. The movie is almost an advertisement for the new law. This is how yakuza work, and here’s what you can do, it suggests. Ms. Inoue helps the two men setup a space specifically for dealing with yakuza in the hotel with big chairs, an impressive table and gold lettering on the door; all little bits of ego-padding for the yakuza.

This new anti-yakuza trio stands up to the bellowing and table slamming of the yakuza, standing firm through blackmail attempts, extortion, and intimidation. It’s inspiring and, to a degree, educational.

When talking about Minbo, though, there’s one element not directly part of the film that absolutely must be addressed. Following the release of the film, the gang parodied and mocked in the film was not very happy. Their pride and image are their income and their way of life. Along comes this director doing an incredibly effective job of mocking them. Director Juzo Itami was beaten, his face slashed multiple times, within a week of release. Five years later, when Itami was preparing to make another yakuza film, he threw himself off the roof of an office building. Committed suicide, right. Journalist Jake Adelstein wrote in his book Tokyo Vice that an unnamed source let word leak that Itami was forced off the roof by a gang of five men.

Minbo hit the yakuza right where it hurts, attacking the samurai image yakuza have of themselves, and damaging their image with their “customers,” the business owners and citizens of Japan. A strictly educational film wouldn’t have left any kind of impact, but a well-written satire like Minbo can gather all kinds of momentum. Unfortunately for the men who harassed Juzo Itami, their revenge for his film might’ve made it it an instant classic in Japan and a must-watch for anyone interested in Japanese organized crime.

Yakuza Q. Public

2012-03-06T17:48:32Z

In many ways, Japanese organized crime is no different from other organized crime groups. As described in Peter Hill’s research, organized crime’s basic business is protection. The yakuza is no different. Just like the mafia, they protect their own ability to do business effectively, and also they have to protect their own customers or someone would move in and take over for them.

What’s been different about the yakuza for so long isn’t what they do, or even how they do it, but how people see them and how they present themselves.

For many years, the yakuza have had sort of a truce with Japanese society. For years they stuck to mostly “victimless” crimes and were left alone. Things like gambling and sokaiya (shareholder meeting disruption) were either not considered to directly impact the general public or in some cases were actually legal.

Police would, of course, make a show of hassling them. Police raids on gambling operations, interrogations, that sort of thing. Except that detectives would warn the group about the raids so they could clean up the important stuff and set out some nice souvenirs for the officers to take as proof of the raid. They’d usually warn them when they, you know, stopped by for tea.

The yakuza haven’t been without their benefits, either. As protectors, they have to protect. That means stopping random crime on their turf; punk kids, bosozoku gangs, drugs and whatever else wasn’t under their jurisdiction. For a long time, many yakuza stayed out of drug running as well, considering it below them.

Because of this public tolerance, yakuza have been able to do things the American mafia never could. For example, a family might have an office with their crest above the door. “Headquarters of Tojo-kai,” or something like that. Yakuza would come and go during the day, maybe stand and smoke outside. And you could tell a yakuza on-sight because they dress and walk differently than other people in Japanese society. In David Kaplan’s Yakuza, a customs officer relates from his work that it’s easy to tell a yakuza stepping off the plane from Japan versus other passengers. The fingers, pompadours and punch perms are one thing, but the real identifier, he said, was the walk. Yakuza strut. They walk with a swagger not usually seen in Japanese mannerism.

Aside from having offices and being quite obvious in mannerism, yakuza also carry business cards. Ryuji Goda, Omi-rengo. Sometimes they’d be left at a new restaurant so the owner would know where the protection money goes, or as an subtle notification that yakuza are involved in whatever dispute.

Speaking of disputes. Another way yakuza are part of daily society in Japan is that Japanese citizens see them as a viable business solution. When a dispute comes up that would involve painfully lengthy negotiation, the citizens- maybe small business owners, or someone who’d been in a crash trying to get money from their insurance company.

But times are changing. As the characters in Beat Takeshi’s Outrage are killed off one after another, one remarks that the days of the traditional yakuza are over.

The yakuza encroach more and more on daily life. They hassle innocent people, engage in human trafficking, or even murder. Police have been forced to crackdown as public tolerance for the criminal element recedes, leaving them more exposed. Businesses have been more-or-less forced to put up signs that say they won’t associate with yakuza in any way. The National Police Agency in Japan has put out a quota of 20 yakuza arrests minimum per month in per prefecture, according to an article from Jake Adelstein on JapanSubculture. Those warnings that preceded raids have stopped almost completely, the article states.

So are the yakuza going to fade away? No, of course not. They’re just going to resemble the American mafia that much more. Publicly visible offices will be replaced with more subtle bases. Business cards won’t be left lying around. Things will continue to move underground. The yakuza aren’t going anywhere, no matter what society says, and if anyone can adapt to change, it’s them.

Yubitsume

2012-03-02T07:41:28Z

“It was all fun and games until someone lost a pinky,” said the Kumi-cho. Or something like that. If the tattoos many yakuza wear are the most enduring image, the amputated pinky fingers they sport are a close second. I think this particular tradition is what causes writers to stick the yakuza into “secret society” books and the like. The yakuza call it yubitsume. The ritual of cutting a finger off at the first knuckle.

Like tattoos, yubitsume is also visual shorthand for a director, comic artist, or writer to say, “shit’s getting yakuza up in here.” Very few yakuza stories go by without someone lopping a knuckle off. One particularly memorable sequence takes place in Battles Without Honor and Humanity, when Shozo Hirono performs the ritual. In a moment of dark comedy, he pushes the blade down and looks, only to find the missing joint, well, missing. While HIrono groans in pain, his brothers scramble around the gravel looking for the stump, finding it in the nearby flowerbed.

Historically, the ritual had a direct consequence. Wielding a katana with skill requires all of a swordsman’s fingers and all the joints on those fingers. Cutting off a samurai’s finger took away fine sword control and made him more dependent on his superior. Cutting off your finger as an apology was serious business.

I mean, it still is. But not for quite the same reasons. Nowadays, according to Peter Hill’s The Japanese Mafia, the only thing it really affects is a yakuza’s golf swing. Quite often, it’s used as a preemptive apology. Even as a kid, you knew when you screwed up. My friend’s brother would go stand in the corner in hopes of suffering less at his parents’ hands later. If a member of the gang has done something that would cause trouble within the gang, cause loss of face for his oyabun, or worse, he might cut his finger off and deliver it, nicely packaged, to his boss as atonement.

While a yakuza’s golf game is quite important to him, his swing is probably the last thing on his mind when he’s getting ready to put his body-weight behind the blade.

The real consequence of yubitsume is societal. Just like tattooing, cutting off your finger off is a permanent physical brand, a signal to all that you are a part of the underworld. Sporting a missing finger like that is a quick route to unemployment in modern society. Incidentally, my old boss at K-Mart would’ve had a tough time finding a real job.

Part of what makes yubitsume such a strong apology is that it is inherently limited. One can only genuinely apologize so many times before he can’t do the finger cutting himself anymore.

According to Hill, yubitsume is on the decline. Younger yakuza are preferring to pay fines. Yakuza with missing joints dropped, according to Hill, from 42% to 33% between 1971 and 1994. It still happens, though, and it isn’t rare. It’s a proud admission of sin and atonement within the crime family, and a sign to other that you are not to be messed with.

Atonement isn’t the only reason one might perform yubitsume, though. There’s also the weekly “half off” deal at the local ramen shop. Present a packaged joint for a free bowl of ramen!

No, no. Yubitsume for the purpose of apology is called “shinu yubi,” literally “dead finger.” The other kind is “iki yubi,” or “live finger.” An example of an iki yubi might be two bosses meeting to end a bloody war between their gangs. No one is apologizing, here. Rather, they’re expressing to the other members of their gang and the executives of the other gang their complete, unquestionable sincerity.

Go ahead. Talk to the hand. Just try it.

Tattoos

2012-02-27T22:21:33Z

Easily the most recognizable and dramatic visual associated with Japanese organized crime is the irezumi (Japanese traditional tattoo) many yakuza adorn their bodies with. These colorful, elaborate tattoos should be impressive to anyone who has ever been poked with a sharp stick, because that’s what happens thousands of times to make the tattoos materialize. In Peter B.E. Hill’s The Japanese Mafia, it is stated that in the 1970s and 1980s, 70% of yakuza had extensive tattooing, and that statistic held true regardless of rank within the group.

Irezumi is the traditional Japanese style, which is done by a trained tattoo artist (who previously apprenticed with a master), by hand. That means no buzzing needle machine-gun to speed things up, just manual tools. It’s quite painful compared to regular tattooing. While my life-goal of avoiding intentional contact with sharp things that leave permanent marks prevents me from getting a tattoo, I’d be curious to feel for myself just what it is so many men and women, yakuza or not, have taken part in. Large tattoos can take years of weekly visits and cost tens of thousands of dollars.

But why are they such a big deal for yakuza?

Much of it comes from the way Japanese culture views tattooing overall. For a long time, tattooing was a form of punishment in Japan. Convicted criminals were tattooed with rings on their arms to permanently mark them as such. Tattooing has even been outlawed at times in Japanese history, associating them directly with criminality.

Tattoos, for yakuza, serve a number of purposes. Such extensive tattooing shows a long-term commitment to the gang. If you’re willing to cover your body in ink, you’re in the yakuza life for the long-haul. It’s a pain-tolerance thing, too. Only a Real Man can tolerate the pain of traditional tattooing. Here’s a picture of a woman with extensive tattooing to balance out that silly statement (Shoko Tendo, author of autobiography Yakuza Moon).

The reasons for yakuza tattoos really aren’t that different from the tattoos associated with American gangs. Branding yourself as an outcast, tolerating the pain and spending the money to show commitment are part of the package in both cases.

Irezumi tattooing, though, does have the benefit of being a lot more artistic. While many American tattoos seem to inspire a bit of disgust, irezumi tattoos are awe-inspiring. Instead of gothic lettering or a photo-realistic face or something like that, Japanese culture, history, and myth provide the source material for irezumi tattoos. Imagery of samurai, geisha, dragons and more populate the backs of yakuza (and tattoo enthusiasts brave enough to take on the pain and ostracism should their secret come to light). The traditional imagery has its own meanings for the wearers. Power, good luck, wisdom, endurance and other lofty ideas can factor in. It matches up well with the traditional yakuza political stance of emperor-worship and reverence for their own (self-professed) history as noble outlaws descended from the men who protected townspeople from abusive samurai.

Despite the artistry and tradition of both the tattoo artists and the tattoos themselves, they still have that criminal association. As such, they aren’t something the “common folk” like seeing around their establishments. Japanese public baths have signs up specifically prohibiting customers with tattoos from entry. With the way Japanese police are cracking down on yakuza lately, yakuza might just heed those signs now.

As a side note, I’d recommend that if you’re an American in Japan with heavy tattooing, consider covering it up. Wear long sleeves, turtlenecks, etc. where possible. It’ll make interactions with businesses and general people a little less tense.

There are also some interesting side effects to these massive tattoos. In Jake Adelstein’s Tokyo Vice, he writes about some of them. A woman who’d slept next to yakuza characterized the skin as being reptilian; pleasant to sleep next to in the summer, but chilling in the winter. Additionally, according to Adelstein, it seems that having such a huge portion of skin covered in ink, which affects sweating, also affects the liver. Because the body can’t get rid of toxins as efficiently, the liver has to work harder. Liver failure can apparently be linked to these tattoos. Peter Hill corroborates Adelstein’s claim; however, the liver damage is attributed to the pigments used by traditional irezumi artists, rather than difficulty sweating. I suspect both play their own roles.

For more information about irezumi, here are a few good resources worth checking out:

An interview with Horiyoshi III, one of the most well-known irezumi artists. Interestingly, he differentiates between tattoos and irezumi, which literally means tattoo. Important distinction, or old-fart grumping about kids?

Horiyoshi’s personal homepage, with an extensive gallery of his work.

The wikipedia page on irezumi, for some of the basics.

A basic guide on the meanings of some of the commonly-found symbols used in irezumi. I can’t vouch for these being 100% accurate but it’s pretty good overall for a topic that’s pretty hard to research in English.

If I missed anything notable, let me know. I’m always looking to expand articles like this one.

Book Review: Confessions of a Yakuza

2012-02-17T01:36:44Z

Despite the yakuza being one of the most open crime cultures in the world, its members are generally pretty tight-lipped. Detailed first-person narrative of a yakuza member’s experience isn’t terribly common in Japanese and less-so in English (though I’d love to read Goto-gumi boss Tadamasa Goto’s memoir, however accurate it may or may not be).

Confessions of a Yakuza is just that – a detailed first-person narrative of one yakuza’s experience as part of Japan’s underworld. However, it might not be quite what people are expecting. My first though was that I might’ve named it “A Gambler’s Life,” or something like that. Reading afterward, I discovered that the original English title was “A Gambler’s Tale,” and the Japanese title (浅草博徒一代) translates roughly to “Biography of an Asakusa Gambler.” Giving credit to the publisher, though, I might not have found it for my research under that title. The story comes from Dr. Junichi Saga’s conversations with Eiji Ichiji, a dying yakuza boss. Ichiji details his teenage years and entry into the yakuza through the war and up until his post-war retirement, covering about 50 years’ time.

The yakuza that Ichiji is a part of is the more traditional yakuza; the ones the movies put on pedestals. The yakuza of today aren’t so much like the guys of old. Ichiji and his group were traditional bakuto yakuza – gamblers. They ran gambling games and looked out for their district in Tokyo. Loansharking and other ventures were not only not in their wheelhouse, they were considered anathema. If you were a yakuza and you were shaking down civilians for money or selling meth, then you weren’t considered a yakuza at all.

The story isn’t exactly rife with dark shadows, either. There’s not a whole lot to confess. In fact, it’s more like a lesson in the Japanese concept of saving face. The games Ichiji ran were clean, because dirty games would ruin the group’s reputation with customers and attract attention from cops. Instead, if someone playing lost all their money, they might be sent away with enough money for a ride home and a small gift. Imagine a casino doing that, these days! When one of Ichiji’s men was caught urinating on shop signs, Ichiji would go around apologizing for it. The yakuza in those days performed a delicate balancing act that required a lot of humility when interacting with the towns, civilians, and law enforcement and a strong even hand when working with other yakuza.

The worst of it is really a few affairs on Ichiji’s part and being too close to some much shadier people. If Ichiji’s story is accurate, then he was a pretty nice guy considering he spent a fair portion of his life as a yakuza boss. The affairs, I think, were something more acceptable in his time and in some cases his wife at the time didn’t even seem to mind. Ichiji killed a man once, in self-defense, and had a few rounds in the Japanese prison system, more for just being in the wrong place at the right time than for anything truly terrible. Neither of his yubitsume (finger severing) had to do with anything within the yakuza, but rather for love of a woman.

It is interesting, though, to read about these traditional yakuza. Guys like Ichiji are the ones that the older yakuza of today still look up to. They lived outside society, but acted generally with honor and respect. While I would never describe yakuza of today as cool, I can see why someone might think this guy was. Ichiji, really, was on his way out just as the new yakuza were starting to pop up. Yakuza members picked up a lot of their fashion sense at the time from American gangster films in the 50s and 60s. Drug trafficking and real estate entered the scene in the 70s and 80s.

It’s worth noting that Japan isn’t exactly a tell-all culture. It’s possible that, despite being on his deathbed and having nothing to lose, Ichiji whitewashed small or even large parts of his story. Making older yakuza look good or newer yakuza bad, or even just leaving out the ugly parts to keep himself from looking bad. It’s impossible to say, but worth thinking about.

One anecdote that sticks out, though, is a graphic (unusually so, for this book) description of a treatment for syphilis. It involves a spoon, let’s just say that.

Confessions of a Yakuza is interesting from a historical perspective, and helps put some perspective on where the yakuza today come from. It’s good, easy reading. I would even say pairing this with say, Battles Without Honor or Humanity, gives a good timeline of modern Yakuza. Romanticized, of course, but with many grains of truth throughout.

Review: 仁義なき戦い Battles Without Honor and Humanity

2012-02-16T16:31:25Z

Again, possible SPOILERS below.

There are many, many Japanese films about the yakuza, and it seems like all the notable ones break away from the norm in some way or another, instead of being just a really good genre film. Battles Without Honor and Humanity (Jingi Naki Tatakai, henceforth referred to as Battles) is considered by many to be the Japanese answer to Scorsese’s Godfather films. Battles is the first of five movies in the Yakuza Papers series directed by Kinji Fukusaku (Best known in recent years for Battle Royale).

Battles takes us back to 1947, just after the war. Shozo Hirono (Bunta Sugawara) is a recently demobilized soldier dumped into the chaotic world of post-war Japan. The country he was fighting for is in ruins; without the black market, there would be no market. After a run-in with US soldiers trying to rape a Japanese woman, and a very bloody encounter with some out-of-control gangsters, Hirono finds himself behind bars with a yakuza named Wakasugi from the Doi gang, with whom he exchanged blood vows, effectively joining the yakuza world. Wakasugi gets out with an intentionally botched suicide attempt and Hirono walks out the front gates a while later met by his old friends, who have now joined the Yamamori gang.

Things get complicated from here. Both Hirono’s gang and his blood brother Wakasugi’s gang are involved in a political battle that pits the gangs directly against each other. Hirono ends up in jail again and Wakasugi is betrayed. Hirono comes out of the slammer to a world of much cooler suits and bigger sunglasses. Gangs have gotten meaner and are starting to move out of the small worlds of gambling and water trade. Drugs like the ever-present Shabu (Meth) now account for a notable segment of yakuza income.

A conflict between Yamamori and one of his top men, Sakai, erupts when Yamamori forbids his men from selling drugs only to profit off drug sales himself. Hirono is caught in the middle between warring gang brothers as the body count rises.

Stylistically, Battles couldn’t be more different from the last film I talked about, Sonatine. Where Sonatine was a meditation on life and death, Battles is a faux-documentary of chaos. Violent, chaotic fights erupt left and right. Where death was sudden and powerful in Sonatine, it’s unavoidable and messy in Battles. Admittedly, the deaths can be a bit over-the-top. Blood is red as ketchup and weirdly unrealistic in a movie filmed like a documentary. Handheld cameras dive into the chaos and the death of a main character is followed by on-screen text displaying the victim’s name and year of death to further cement the documentary feel. The film is, after all based on a series of news articles about a real gangster, so a documentary style makes sense.

Battles is a bit closer thematically than Sonatine to the traditional yakuza film, I think. The main characters are noble outlaws and the antagonists are sniveling twits. In the end, the main character has to choose between duty to the gang and saving face for his dead blood brother, who is being given an “honorable yakuza funeral” after being dishonorably gunned down.

There’s a lot of great yakuza-related content to pick up on in the movie, though. The handling of the yubitsume (pinky cutting) ritual feels realistic in a darkly funny way when Hirono cuts his finger off and is dismayed to raise his hand and find the severed digit missing. The evolution of the yakuza from gamblers and right-wingers to drug dealers and boat race moguls is ripped right out of yakuza history as well. Philanthropist Ryoichi Sasakawa was, like Yoshio Kodama, a kuromaku and powerbroker. He basically created the motorboat racing business from smoke and even had laws passed (read: bribed them through parliament) allowing gambling related to the sport. While not quite a yakuza, he kept yakuza company and wasn’t far off himself.

The saddest part about Battles is that it, along with the other Yakuza Papers films, is out of print. Hopefully some of these films will see re-release on Blu-ray, as they certainly deserve it.

Terms (minus Conditions)

2012-02-07T20:10:40Z

I added a page to my blog today of useful Yakuza-related words for anyone reading about or studying the yakuza. I tried to include both terms directly related and some of the words you might run into during reading. If you can think of a term I missed, let me know!

The Yakuza Glossary

Sonatine (1993) – Spoilers!

2012-02-07T06:35:19Z

SPOILERS FOR A 19-YEAR-OLD MOVIE BELOW.

If you want to get into Japanese film and especially yakuza movies, there’s hardly a better place to start than “Beat” Takeshi Kitano’s movies. He’s one of the most interesting directors to come out of Japan and one of the best.

Kitano’s 1993 film Sonatine is one of his best and the first one to hit US shores. Before Kitano’s take on the genre, most yakuza films-even the best ones-had followed a bit of a formula. They were always about a strong, manly hero choosing between his duty to his oyabun (boss/father-figure) and family, and doing the right thing as fits his personal code. This idea is called giri-ninjo, and it is the conceptual thread that connects most yakuza movies. With Sonatine (and to a degree, Violent Cop and Hana-bi), Kitano uses the yakuza characters as a way to stare death in the face. Sonatine is a stark film of bright light and absolute darkness with long, quite camera shots punctuated with sharp bursts of violence.

Sonatine introduces us to Murakawa (played by Kitano), a yakuza man who runs his neighborhood tightly and efficiently. In one of the first scenes, Murakawa and his cronies dip a man into Tokyo Bay for flippantly refusing to pay protection money. They look on casually as the man drowns. Murakawa’s neighborhood is profitable and his oyabun wants a piece of the action. Murakawa finds himself sent down south to Okinawa to help out another gang in a turf war going on. Murakawa knows it’s no good, but gang law obligates him to follow orders.

Having introduced us to Murakawa himself and to the basics of yakuza culture, Sonatine takes an interesting turn. The trip proves to be exactly what Murakawa already knew, and after losing a few of his men he and the survivors retreat to a beachside cabin in Okinawa to wait out the war and figure out what to do next. Knowing they’re in a no-win situation, though, the men actually relax. This part of the film feels a bit like “Yakuza Purgatory,” where the men aren’t dead but aren’t considered alive either.

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So they play. They play on the beach, with action figures, folded paper sumo. In one sequence they have a mock gang-war with fireworks. I get the impression, from watching movies like Blue Spring (Aoi Haru) and the documentary Young Yakuza (available online free!), that most men enter the yakuza as they finish high school. As the men in Sonatine play, they look more like boys. Practical jokes and simple childrens’ toys – albeit more dangerous versions of them – are the what they think of to entertain themselves. When yakuza are out of their element, with their guard taken down, do they become boys again? I think that’s what Sonatine suggests.

Much of the childishness has a dark tinge to it, though, and much of that darkness is contributed by the already-dead Murakawa. The men play rock-paper-scissors (janken) and Murakawa brings a revolver that supposedly has one round left. Again, the men are playing with fireworks-already dangerous enough-and there’s Murakawa firing pistol rounds. He never intends to hit anyone, but it still adds that same deadly flavor to the games.

Purgatory, even as bright green and blue as an Okinawan beach, doesn’t last forever. Someone sends a hitman to take care of the ones that made it out of the city. Murakawa explodes in the way only a Kitano character can, resulting in some of the most startling violence I’ve seen in a movie.

This is where we come back around to giri and ninjo. Except, I think, giri (the word for duty or obligation) and ninjo (the word for personal feelings/empathy) have merged here. Murakawa’s so-called family has betrayed him and left him to die, and his only duty is to his brothers in arms. With an American assault rifle in hand, Murakawa hits the lights and pays his oyabun-and a bunch of other bosses-a visit. Where earlier violence was vivid and graphic, the greatest outburst is viewed from outside, as the muzzle flashes reflect off the cars below the darkened picture floor-to-ceiling windows.

Once he’s taken care of business, there’s only one thing left for Murakawa to do.

Sonatine, despite being about a bunch of criminals, is a terribly sad, somber movie. It has plenty of laughs, but they come from that Yakuza Purgatory, and are all colored with the sadness that permeates the film.

Not only is Sonatine one of Kitano’s best, but in my opinion one of Japan’s best. I haven’t seen enough yakuza films to say it’s the best of those, but I have no doubt it stands near the top.

*NOTE: Sonatine is now on Netflix Instant watch! Don’t miss it!

Book Review: Tokyo Vice

2012-02-06T07:19:35Z

Note: I read this book some months ago, so apologies to Mr. Adelstein and the readers for any inaccuracies in the text.

Compared to Yakuza: Japan’s Criminal Underworld, Jake Adelstein’s Tokyo Vice is no less factual, but it’s a lot more exciting and a great introduction to the yakuza culture through the eyes of an American reporter in Japan.

Not just any American reporter, though. Adelstein isn’t a correspondent for the Times or NBC or something like that. After studying abroad in Japan during college, Adelstein applied to one of Japan’s major newspapers, the Yomiuri Shimbun, not as an English-language writer but as a member of the Japanese staff. No-one had done this before, but that didn’t deter Adelstein, who passed all the entrance examinations and interviews (and even outperforming some of the Japanese-born applicants on the Japanese-language section!) and became a full employee of the paper.

Adelstein was assigned to the crime beat of the paper where he started to make valuable friends on both sides of the law. This is something I imagine could never happen in America. Sometimes documentaries get into a gang or some other group for a bit, but in a land where the criminal organizations have perfectly legal offices and business cards, it’s possible to make long-time friends with an individual here and there.

The book is interesting enough as a piece about a curiosity like Adelstein, but it really turns on when his reporting on the sex trade in Japan shines a bright light on the world of human trafficking by the Yakuza. Hostess bars, pink salons, strip clubs and whatever else get a good boost out of having a sexy, blonde white woman to advertise. Unfortunately, there aren’t as many willing to do the work as the owners might like, so ads indicating wealth and an easy life end up in front of the eyes of young women in eastern Europe and even, to a degree, America. The girls are flown to Japan on the agency’s bill only to find out that they’re expected to pay back the fee for the flight – and the hotel, food, paperwork, and whatever else – with interest.

The final twist, the big one for Jake, comes when he gets a tip about a yakuza boss getting an organ transplant in the United States. This kind of thing shouldn’t happen. As a criminal, a yakuza boss shouldn’t even be allowed in, let alone put at the top of the donor recipient list. Adelstein digs deeper and ends up sitting in a restaurant with two unhappy-looking men dressed in black and the very real knowledge that the lives of everyone close to him are now in danger along with his own.

Tokyo Vice is as exciting as any crime thriller you’ll find with the primary distinction being that it' is very, very real.

Book Review: Yakuza: Japan’s Criminal Underworld

2012-02-06T06:39:23Z

So you want to learn about the Japanese mob, huh? Well, you can’t do much better than David Kaplan’s Yakuza: Japan’s Criminal Underworld. Naming your book directly after its subject matter takes a bit of balls; it’d better be comprehensive and accurate. While I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the book (despite my many connections to the underworld), it is absolutely comprehensive.

Yakuza is primarily historical in perspective, taking us through the history of the yakuza in chronological order. The book starts with the beginnings of the yakuza as bakuto (gamblers) and tekiya (peddlers), and the groups they formed to survive. The rise of the ultra-nationalism that led to Japan’s colonizing of East Asia and its associations with the the criminal element follow. More interesting, though, is the association of the U.S. Occupation with that same group in the post-war era as an ally in the fight against Communism.

The book goes not into only the history of the yakuza, but also into their activities both at home and abroad. As the groups begin to modernize, financial crime becomes the order of the day. Groups calls sokaiya harass corporations at investor meetings to embarrass them (this is a big deal in Japan). They dig up dirt on company finances and organize them into “informational magazines” that they sell to the companies at ridiculous prices, something the company is willing to do to keep the information private.

Japan’s incredible bubble economy, of course, was ripe for exploitation by yakuza as they went into real estate in a big way, buying up golf courses and hotels left and right on bad loans obtained from banks with inconvenient secrets and bankers that maybe don’t ask enough questions.

The various groups venture abroad for drugs and guns, human trafficking, and financial fraud, finally bringing themselves to the attention of the U.S. government, taking us up through the first few years of the century.

As a factual research-based text, the book does a good job not judging the yakuza themselves one way or the other. There is minor commentary on some of the actions, though; I imagine it’s hard to read that much about human trafficking and not have anything to say.

Weighing in at 337 pages, the book is long enough to be comprehensive but not so long as to be difficult to read. Kaplan’s writing and the subject matter itself is interesting enough to keep things moving. The book also includes a comprehensive list of sources and a great index, as well as a short glossary worth checking out on its own.

If you’re interested in reading about the yakuza, this is an absolute must-read. Pick up Jake Adelstein’s Tokyo Vice first to get acquainted with the drama and excitement, and then Yakuza for the history and facts.

The Yakuza and the Right-Wing

2012-01-10T20:43:00Z

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.

My Inspirations

2012-01-10T07:49:26Z

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.

Tattoos and Pompadours: The Yakuza

2012-01-08T19:08:43Z

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.

Year-End Round-Up: Best Music

2011-12-30T20:10:44Z

I really like game soundtracks, but I’m also incredibly picky about which ones I like. As far back as Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill on PSone, I was already importing soundtracks.

Most games have what I would call workable soundtracks. They get by, convey the correct feeling, but are rarely memorable.

This year, two soundtracks have stuck with me – one movie and one game. The movie Drive’s soundtrack had a sort of ethereal ‘80s feel, augmented by the pink cursive text in the credits and the driver’s awesome jacket. The soundtrack completed the picture.

The same goes for Bastion, easily my favorite game soundtrack in years. While I wouldn’t call myself a country fan per se, I find myself drawn to the elements of country-esque music that conjure images of the Old West. One of my favorite bands is Calexico, and the Red Dead Redemption soundtrack is still in regular rotation on my list even today.

Bastion takes that old west feel and twists it to fit into a fantasy setting. Supergiant calls the music “Frontier Triphop.” The visual that conjures in my head matches Bastion’s setting and style perfectly. Everything has more twang to it than you’d expect. The music often sounds like it’s filtering through from Who Knows Where, taking on the same dream-like quality as those stages.

Bastion is worth checking out, if anything, just for the music. That it’s a fun game and a gorgeous game on top of that is bonus.

The soundtrack for Bastion can be picked up on Amazon (link above) or on the Supergiant Games’ site where' it’s available in FLAC format for you audio nerds.

Review: Yoostar on MTV for Kinect

2011-12-29T17:43:41Z

This review originally appears on GamesAreEvil.

Acquired via Developer

I don’t usually think I have a lot in common with Beavis and Butthead, but after playing Yoostar on MTV for Kinect, I know there’s at least one thing: We’ve all seen way more Jersey Shore than necessary.

The basic conceit of Yoostar – whether it’s on MTV or not – is simple and works pretty well; The Kinect captures an image of the player’s room, and then the player steps in and reenacts a scene of some kind. The game cuts the player’s shape out of their room and drops them into the clip: “Video Karaoke.” You can be any number of spikey-haired gentlemen, such as the Terminator, Edward Cullen, or in the case of Yoostar on MTV, The Situation. Like I said, it works pretty well. Yoostar does a great job of taking the player’s image out of their room in real-time and dropping it into whatever clip they’ve chosen.

Instead of going with the usual general pop-culture schtick, however, this iteration of Yoostar focuses specifically on, you guessed it, MTV. Modern MTV, that is; not MTV back when they still had music videos to play. You can be The Hills’ Spencer, and his creepy flesh-colored beard. You can be X-to-the-Z Xzibit on Pimp My Ride. The Situation might even ask you to jump on a grenade. As if it wasn’t enough to act like an idiot on camera (which I encourage), you get to act like an idiot on camera acting like an idiot on camera.

Most of the content on the disc is stuff I find entirely reprehensible. Yoostar on MTV is, largely not for me. There are people who like these shows and watch them religiously. Those people will LOVE the game. I think there must be a few older geeks on staff over at Yoostar, because some really weird stuff made it onto the disc. MTV’s The State and Human Giant, specifically! This was, far and away, the highlight of the disc. The State is an ancient show by TV standards, hailing from the early ‘90s, while Human Giant is a bit more modern (and one of the first shows to feature Aziz Ansari from NBC’s Parks & Recreation). Both shows are really funny and the clips chosen are great. Better yet, even more clips from the shows are on sale as downloadable content. Who’d think I’d be considering buying DLC for an MTV clip game?

There are also a number of music videos available for an experience a bit closer to tradition karaoke with artists like Lady Gaga (ba-ba-ba-ra), Weezer (Pork and Beans), Snoop Dogg (Drop It Like It’s Hot), LMAFO (Party Rock Anthem), and that 50 Cent guy.

Like I said, there’s so little for me here, and so little for anyone who isn’t a big fan of MTV’s recent and current programming. Yoostar on MTV is a perfect example of something made just for its fans.