Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld
David E. KaplanSözler ve Alıntılar
Basically, elements in the Occupation were finding it expedient to go easy on the right side of the Japanese political spectrum. Among the components of the right were the yakuza gangs, many of which were tied to conservative politicians ranging from right-centrists to closet ultranationalists. The gangs were almost always thoroughgoing anti-Communists, and this, for some SCAP officials, was good enough. The fact that they made life miserable for a sizable section of the Japanese public was merely an unfortunate side effect.
Under the steady influence of the Americans, both during and after the Occupation, the yakuza began to assume some of the characteristics of their American gangster counterparts. The
kobun took to dressing in dark suits, dark shirts, and white ties. Sunglasses were de rigueur, and in the 1960s, yakuza affected crewcuts and kept them for a longer time perhaps than anyone else in the world. To match their outfit, they affected a leer and a swagger that set them apart from the ordinary citizens. Yakuza leaders also acquired a taste for an imported luxury that might seem ironic today - foreign (principally American) cars. Even today, yakuza leaders are among the few customers for large American sedans in Japan.
One of the world's largest banks, Sumitomo had been among the Bubble's most aggressive lenders. The bank had amassed over $ 10 billion in bad loans it was now anxious to clear, but apparently not all its customers agreed on the terms. Between February and May 1993, Sumitomo group companies were virtually under siege, with twenty-two incidents of shooting, blackmail, arson, and harassment. Molotov cocktails were thrown at the homes of the bank chairman, the bank vice president, the chairman of Sumitomo Real Estate, and the chairman of Sumitomo Corp. Two bank branches were shot at and a third firebombed. In September 1994, Sumitomo bank manager Kazufumi Hatanaka answered an early morning call at his condominium home. He was gunned down in his doorway, execution-style, with a bullet to the head.
A 1992 demonstration even featured yakuza wives and girlfriends, complete with placards and chants. Read one sign: "The husband may be a yakuza, but his wife and child are not criminals!" Groups from Japan's far right joined with those from the far left in a strange alliance against the law. Mobbed-up fronts like the Chivalrous Citizens' Union attended rallies and hearings with leftists like the Action Faction and the ultranationalist Issui-kai.
Perhaps no development has changed the face of global organized crime more than the rise of the Russian Mafia. From the rubble of the Soviet empire has sprung a far-reaching criminal class comprised of several thousand gangs, whose influence extends from major banks and businesses to the ruling councils of former Soviet republics. They have played key roles in stripping those countries of billions of dollars in currency, precious metal, natural resources, and more.
And it is not only the Russians at work, but a panoply of violent ethnic gangs: Georgians, Chechens, Ukrainians, and more. Former KGB and police agents are behind many of the gangs.
The billion dollar scandals, the pervasive corruption, the yakuza's constant harassment and bloody gang wars all had taken their toll. For nearly three centuries, the yakuza have existed in a kind of social contract with the Japanese peoplethey were allowed to ply their vice crimes and fight their gang wars, as long as the katagi no shu, the common people, were not too deeply affected. But it was clear the contract had broken down as the gangs had grown in political and economic power.
The ravages of Third World poverty in Thailand and Philippines, combined with the power of the Japanese yen, fostered the massive sex trade, possibly involving as many as 80 percent of the 1 million Japanese men traveling abroad each year during the late 1970s.