Yakuza - the wonderful bastards of Japan, part 1
What do you really know about the Yakuza? Well, you might say, they are the Japanese Mafia who have a penchant for full-body tattoos and mutilating their hands. But you might be surprised to know that the Yakuza are responsible for a little more than the occasional protection racket and a body being dropped here and there. In fact, they are the world’s biggest crime organization with nearly 90 000 official members and have basically created modern Japan as we know it. I am talking about stuff like:
It’s hard to pin point the true origin of the Yakuza because a) the organization itself loves to maintain the romantic notion that they were a sort of city militia formed to protect society at large and b) no one dares to question them from fear of accidentally stepping into a bullet somewhere in the future. But what is fairly certain is that the modern Yakuza have some roots in the Gunrentai. The Gunrentai were very much a gang in the traditional “Hit you over the head with a baseball bat” sense of the word. A bunch of unruly thugs who majored in violence, with a minor in ultra-nationalism. For this particular talent they proved quite useful to the Japanese government who often used them to break up unions, beat up communists and even organize government support rallies. And as is often the case, when you commit a few murders for someone, a special bond starts to form between you. Being more or less the government’s go-to-guys whenever someone needed to be hit really hard, the Yakuza managed to position themselves near the Japanese conservative power structure. And when the militarists took over the country, the Yakuza were more than happy to go all ultra-far-right-wing with them, soon becoming indispensable members of the government secret organization known as the Black Dragon Society. Not only being one of the most badass named secret organizations in the world, the Black Dragons with the help of the Yakuza managed to set up an Asia wide spy net, perform countless assassinations and be more or less Japan’s shadow government before WWII. In the end, all of these fun activities bonded the government and the Yakuza better than any office party ever could. From then on the Japanese Mob kept growing in power and became a nationalist political force on its own. Some writers point out that the Yakuza had the power to actually appoint Prime Ministers, the highest government seat in Japan, as was allegedly the case with Noboru Takeshita, the last prime minister of the Showa period. Which is not that surprising seeing as historically the Yakuza have been linked to the Japanese Liberal-Democratic Party (bizarrely a center-right conservative organization) which have won almost ALL parliamentary elections since their founding in 1955. Other writers even suggest that the reason the government started to crack down on the Yakuza in the 60s was because Hayato Ikeda (then Prime Minister) feared they have gained too much political power and not because they were… you know, gangsters or anything.
Holding actual political influence over the country
Basically this
Murders, gambling and prostitution is one thing, but POLITICS? Something has to be done about this!
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