Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld
David E. KaplanYakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld Gönderileri
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While these criminal servants of the shogun -the hatamoto-yakko- might appear to be the true forebears of the Japanese underworld, today's yakuza identify not with them but with their historic enemies, the machiyakko, or servants of the town. These were bands of young townsmen who, as fear and resentment grew, formed to fend off the increasing attacks by hatamoto-yakko. At times they sported the same odd habits as their opponents, but their leaders were often of different stock-clerks, shopkeepers, innkeepers, artisans.
It was the Tokugawa era, the time of the shogunate. Centuries of civil war had come to a historic end when Ieyasu Tokugawa unified the island country in 1604, thereby becoming the first great shogun. But Japan was not yet stable. Peace in the nation meant that as many as 500,000 samurai were suddenly unemployed, workers whose best skills lay largely in soldiering and the martial arts.
The kabuki-mono -nearly all of them samurai of good standing- found themselves caught within a rigid medieval society about to enter a two-hundred-year period of self-imposed isolation, with few opportunities beyond those offered by street fighting, robbery, and terror.
For Fujita and his colleagues, the history of organized crime in Japan is an honorable one, filled with tales of yakuza Robin Hoods coming to the aid of the common people. The heroes of these stories are society's victims who made good, losers who finally won, men who lived the life of the outlaw with dignity.
There was the porno magazine cover story, featured in bold headlines: "First came the Japanese televisions, stereos and radios that flooded the American marketplace. Next was the invasion of Japanese-made autos that helped cripple our economy. Now an even greater threat to America has arrived-the Yakuza."
Several of the largest gangs publish their own newsletters or magazines, complete with feature articles, legal advice, and even poetry written by gang members. After gang wars, the feuding leaders have even called press conferences, announcing that the fighting has ended and apologizing to the public for any inconvenience they might have caused.
The figures cited were striking: 110,000 gangsters lived and worked in Japan, neatly organized into 2,500 "families" and federations. In the United States, with twice Japan's population, the justice Department estimated that there were only 20,000 members of the Mafia. It seemed a remarkable statistic for Japan, a country famous for its low crime rates.