There are 25,900 members of the Yakuza somewhere in Japan, tattooed and suited. As a 50 billion dollar criminal syndicate with a strong grip on underworld businesses and illegal activities – loan sharking, dispute resolution, drug trafficking, gambling, arms trafficking, prostitution, human trafficking, extortion – as well as plenty of legal ones – nightclubs, construction, ramen, golf courses, stocks, real estate – it exists as both a product of and influence on Japanese society.
In 2011, the Yakuza had 70,300 members. The Yamaguchi-gumi, the largest Yakuza syndicate, had public offices, a website, and a large role in providing tsunami relief. Now, they are hidden, condemned, and hunted by police – in August, for the first time ever, a Yakuza boss was sentenced to death.
Their decline is a result of strict enforcement of organized crime legislation expedited by the COVID-19 pandemic and is inevitable due to their geriatric disposition. However, the Japanese government must scale down its punishments, as the loss of power for the Yakuza is lowering barriers of entry for new criminal actors that the state does not fully understand.
It is necessary to explore the origins of the Yakuza to understand their movement today. David Kaplan and Alec Dubro’s Yakuza remains the standard reference for Yakuza history. The Yakuza originated from Kabuki-mono, stray gangs of masterless samurai, who eventually evolved into Bakuto, gamblers, and Tekiya, nomadic merchant peddlers. They grew to have loyal organizations with feudal hierarchies that exhibited control over black markets.
Academics have largely preferred economic over typical sociological models to describe the origin of organized crime. The most influential framework is one by Diego Gambetta, whose work on the Sicilian Mafia classifies organized crime as an “Economic enterprise, an industry which produces, promotes and sells private protection” — essentially enforcement of private business laws — originating in a time of “weak government.” Organized crime groups then utilize the same force to extract economic rent, or surplus benefit, from owning an asset over actual production. Criminal organizations use force, their main asset, to further their wealth without contributing to the overall economy — for crime groups, it is mainly through extortion. This is known as rent-seeking, which is viewed negatively because of the market inefficiencies, decrease in competition, and income inequalities they cause. Crime organizations then use their illicit capital and power to expand into the markets they were protecting.
Following this model, the Bakuto and Tekiya used their underworld influence to establish protection rackets, evolving into the Yakuza. The Yakuza became a more efficient provider of dispute arbitration and contract enforcement to business owners than the powerless Japanese government, especially those who operated in gray-area businesses like nightclubs. The influence of the Yakuza made it so they could easily increase “protection” fees by will, allowing them to accumulate capital extracted from greater costs for businesses. Having a taste for money, they quickly expanded to trafficking women from Southeast Asia, smuggling guns from the US, and importing North Korean heroin. The Yakuza could operate and invest efficiently by seizing the brothel, restaurant, and even movie businesses that they were protecting and serving them as a conduit for money laundering.
However, Gambetta’s theory is limited by its European-based context. As criminologist Peng Wang notes, Eastern culture is structured upon saving “face” – a mix of reputation, respect, and honor built around complex social networks. As just one incident could destroy face for all nodes of a social network, Eastern cultures avoid social humiliation by avoiding disagreement; in organizations, this means strict adherence to conduct: to obey superiors, return gifts, and go above and beyond with apologies. Therefore, a politician finds it more difficult to refuse a “gift” from a Yakuza affiliate, and an underling will amputate his pinky to apologize to his boss.
Like saving face, the Japanese mob differs from the European Mafia in its emphasis on loyalty and chivalry. They structure themselves as families akin to the Italian Mafia to foster loyalty, however, they also feature a ritual kinship traditional to Japan called Oyabun-Kobun. An Oyabun, a paternal godfather, is paired with a Kobun, a filial underling. The Kobun does everything in their available power to preserve face of the Oyabun, even serving jail time for them – a loyalty-guaranteed relationship never seen anywhere else. Chivalry is fundamentally the face of the organization: the Yakuza literally call themselves Ninkyo Dantai, or chivalrous organization. Thousands of Yakuza movies, often made by the Yakuza themselves, depict the Yakuza romance of heroic gangsters in acts of chivalry. Their need to see themselves as “above” ordinary thugs led them to murder filmmakers who disagreed as a retaliation for losing face.
The systematic cultural differences between Eastern and Western criminal organizations explain the permeant entrenchment of Yakuza in Japanese society, especially in politics. As politicians would lose face if they refused gifts and introductions from their connections, ultranationalist secret societies easily brokered Yakuza-politician networking. They made deals to assassinate inconducive politicians, serve as a strikebreaking fist, and elect favored officials – even working with US generals during the Communist Scare. Nobusuke Kishi, the grandfather of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and founder of Japan’s predominant Liberal Democratic Party, rose to become Prime Minister with help from his Yakuza friends.
Not limited to just Japan, the Yakuza used their influence to work with the Korean Central Intelligence Agency to attempt to assassinate a rival politician, facilitate graft from foreign corporations such as Lockheed Martin, and even in 2009, pocket money from Lehman Brothers.
With Japan quickly becoming a center of commerce during the mid-twentieth century, large inflows of foreign capital pushed Yakuza into speculative investments, mainly real estate and equities. Yakuza became “economic gangsters” who bought large shares in companies on the stock market and then threatened their management to receive inflated returns through buyback funds, loans, and extortion fees. Susumu Ishii, head of the Inagawa-kai Yakuza, amassed a wealth of 2.3 billion USD at that time – only including corporate extortion money. The Yakuza continued to amass real estate, art, and golf companies globally, causing international concern; foreign governments found the Japanese police notoriously difficult to work with, only helping the Yakuza’s growth.
The 1990 Japanese recession brought down the bubble of inflated wealth the Yakuza possessed. Their capital shrunk, and the Yakuza prevented restructuring of companies who attempted to remove Yakuza influence by claiming equal rights under the law, something that makes Yakuza membership legal to this day. By doing so, they had claims to liens that allowed them to protest as shareholders and continue to extort from companies, prolonging the recession. The police, bound by restrictions created after the fear of the past government’s secret police, were restricted and outdated.
Nonetheless, with Japan’s economy crippled, the Yakuza all but ceased their international expansion planning and moved back underground, focusing on their bread-and-butter illegal activities. Their desperation for money led them to significantly shed notions of chivalry, breaking one of their cardinal rules – don’t involve civilians.
In 2009, Japan cracked down on the Yakuza amongst its dining monetary and political influence and progressively public and violent gang wars that killed several citizens. Policymakers introduced legislation in 2011 that punished businesses affiliated with the Yakuza and created stringent anti-corruption laws; the government passed ordinances that deprived Yakuza of many legal entitlements and prevented any citizen-Yakuza relationships; the police increased crackdowns that decimated assets and membership.
In addition, the release of Battles Without Honor and Humanity marked the change in trend of Yakuza media portrayal. Growingly unpopular was the established cinematic legacy of romantic, chivalrous Yakuza, and in its place, a new genre of grisly documentary-style films ran parallel to increasingly dishonorable public perception of the Yakuza.
The allure of the Yakuza is no more. With the aging population of Japan driven by low fertility and high life expectancy, the majority of Yakuza members are now 50 and older – youth are not attracted to the Yakuza, which was once a hotbed for recruiting delinquents and minorities. The combination of Yakuza disillusionment and stringency of new organized crime laws has reduced the pipeline of youth recruits. This was further accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, where many Yakuza- owned businesses lost profits and canceled meetings due to COVID-19’s threat to the majority geriatric Yakuza population. With the Japanese government exercising greater authority and improving its legal system and enforcement, the protection function of the Yakuza has diminished while its main business of extortion rackets has plummeted. Despite certain scandals implicating current politicians with Yakuza, the recent heightening of arrests indicates that whatever remains is a relic kept alive by old, customary relationships, not utility.
The effect of its decline has been, on the surface, beneficial for society. The Yakuza has created inefficient economic rent, damaged the sanctity of fair democratic principles, further contributed to the stagnation of the Japanese economy, and fueled suffering and human rights violations in its participation of and financial support to corruption and crime.
However, the Yakuza have been one of the main reasons for Japan’s extremely low violent crime rate, as scrappy hoodlums pose problems for their businesses, public perception, and relationship with police. The gradual weeding of Yakuza has been leaving a large vacuum of power, already starting to be pieced by Hangure, or half-hoodlum gangs. As Hangure members are linked based on personal relationships over outward membership, they do not fall under Japan’s organized crime laws. Because organized crime members cannot get credit cards, own homes, and are generally deprived of legal rights, young men prefer greater freedom as Hangure.
The younger nature of Hangure, who contain many college graduates, has given them greater flexibility and ability to take over tasks the older Yakuza can no longer do, even disaster relief – Hangure are bulk buying and selling masks. Unlike the Yakuza, they aim to make a profit from disaster relief; the new Hangure lack the desire for chivalry and loyalty, leading them to commit crimes that disturb civil society. The Yakuza are attempting to modernize, performing phone scams to exploit the elderly and using cryptocurrency to launder money. Yet, Hangure are more violent, more adept with technology, and their fractionalization makes them harder to track – they only continue to grow. The only impediment to their growth is the Yakuza.
At its peak, the Yakuza dominated the economy, government, and underworld. Now, it remains a relic of the ages, its decline contributing to the rise of more young, adept, and destructive gangs. Shown by the current pace of crackdowns, the Japanese government has a misperception of the reputational, economic, political, and social effects of removing the Yakuza.
The government has associated removing Yakuza with reducing underworld crime. This flaw only considers known actors, as Hangure, along with foreign syndicates, continue to move into the Yakuza's illicit markets. Because of the unclear legal status of these new mobs, their illicit operations are significantly harder to track and suspects harder to convict, especially as they now involve foreign capital inflows and outflows. It would be increasingly difficult to tell if a decrease in crime is nominal, as rather than showing a decline in actual crime, it could be due to greater underreporting – something common in Japan.
Furthermore, as the ruling Liberal Democratic Party has had a history of being associated with Yakuza, a word that has scarred Japanese society, it believes that there could be severe reputational damage if it failed to severely punish Yakuza – a threat to its future elections. However, despite the positive reputational contributions arresting Yakuza leaders had, the public, less exposed to the underworld, has largely reserved its dissent towards visible crimes rather than hidden, underworld harm. However, the long-term presence of the more openly disruptive Hangure, supported by Yakuza reduction in power, could hurt the LDP’s long-term popularity.
Japan has always reacted in a reactive, not proactive state. Bogged down by its bureaucracy and face-centered relationships, it acts only when public sentiment and political and economic necessity are aligned. With the Yakuza’s fall as its inflection, the Japanese government must act proactively. It must scale down its punishment, but not rules, for the Yakuza to stall the growth and evolution of new gangs.
The Yakuza is an organization well-understood and whose death is inevitable. The government is far from understanding the demographic, political, social, economic, and entrepreneurial compositions of Hangure and the effects of its intrusion. It needs time to comprehensively research, delimit, and legislate a robust legal framework that prosecutes new types of gangs and structures law enforcement to openly coordinate with other governments to study criminal trends, especially in the digital space.
Otherwise, it will suffer the consequences of playing the same game of cat and mouse.