"Social control activities may unintentionally generate functional alternatives.  The relationship between controllers and controlled may often be characterized as a movable equilibrium.  As in sports or any competitive endeavor, new strategies, techniques and resources may give one side a temporary advantage, but the other side tends to find ways to neutralize, avoid or counter them.  The action may become more sophisticated, practitioners more skilled, and the nature of the game may be altered - but the game does not stop.  A saying among Hong Kong drug dealers in response to periodic clampdowns captures this nicely:  'Shooting the singer is no way to stop the opera.'" (Marx 1993:13)

 

 

Wolfgang Herbert

 

The Yakuza and the Law

 

Introduction

 

In this paper I want to outline the interplay between the law, as represented by the police, and Japan’s underworld gangsters known as yakuza[1]. I will concentrate on the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's biggest yakuza syndicate.  My basic thesis is that the state and organized crime have developed an interaction that can be described as a supergame.  The players in this game are the public, politicians, the law, the police, the mass media, business leaders, and the yakuza.  The latter have to be seen as an enterprise purveying legal, semi-legal, and illegal goods and services.  Changes in attitudes or formal rules (laws) lead to a shifting in the balance of social power between the actors.  But it will not lead to the ‘eradication’ of the yakuza, an outcome the police repeatedly predict with a somewhat heroic optimism (in almost every White Paper, the respective term is kaimetsu, the destruction of the yakuza, most recently Keisatsuchô 1997:183).  Yakuza may renounce certain activities, but at the same time they occupy new economic niches (for above outlined perspective I owe much to Pascha 1993, who analyzes yakuza with an operational economic approach).  After some time a new informal social contract will come into existence.  If it is blatantly broken or one of the players feels particularly endangered or that they are losing the game, legal or other steps are taken.  I want to demonstrate this in reference to the new legislation against yakuza which came into effect on March 1, 1992.  However, this was not the first time that law enforcement agencies had tried to curb the activities of the yakuza, so I shall also give a short and concise outline of post-World War II developments, again focusing on the interplay between police action and yakuza re-action.

     In the immediate post-war period the existence of a huge black market and the lack of state control was an ideal breeding ground for organized crime and racketeering.  It was then that the ‘traditional’ yakuza groups of gamblers (bakuto) and peddlers (tekiya or yashi) moved into business areas previously foreign to them, e.g. prostitution, extortion or drug dealing (mainly amphetamines). They competed with aggressive groups of young delinquents ‘without tradition’, called gurentai. The lines between these groups began to blur, alignments and mergers occurred, and all of them were forced to diversify their businesses - a process which continues up to the present. They also fought against gangs of so-called sangokujin (Koreans, Chinese, and Taiwanese resident in Japan as a legacy of the colonial period, the term is derogatory) for control of the black market.  The yakuza finally broke up these or other gangs or absorbed them.  The economic resurgence during and after the Korean war led to a construction boom in Japan.  Yakuza profited widely from their growing involvement in the construction business.  In 1959 the Yomiuri Shinbun launched an anti-yakuza-campaign (mentioned in Raz 1996: 251) and in 1960 the Chûgoku Shinbun started to address the yakuza problem and published some courageous articles (Kitazawa 1988:57).

 

Researching the yakuza

 

     Here I have to make a brief comment about journalism covering the yakuza.  The serious national daily newspapers are heavily dependent on police (and public prosecutor) sources, which they usually reproduce without critical reflection (this is often condemned, e.g. by Yamaguchi 1990:102 or Katsura 1990: 39f.).  The dailies habitually support the police in their effort to disseminate a negative picture of the yakuza and to create a  repressive mood.  However, the yakuza have their spokesmen too:  gokudô-journalists[2].  These reporters almost exclusively write about yakuza, mostly in so-called jitsuwashi, magazines carrying stories about sex, crime and showbiz-gossip, which I have tried to characterize in Herbert 1992:85ff., see also Adachi 1987 and Raz 1996: 60ff.).  These journalists tend to present a ‘positive’ image of the yakuza, by quoting them extensively in their own argot and giving them the opportunity to make propaganda for their cause, ideology, and lifestyle.  Gokudô-journalists are well informed but are likely  to report only the official yakuza-version.  Some of them I use as sources myself, such as Yamada, Ino and Mizoguchi, but they have to be read carefully for possible bias.  Mizoguchi became more and more critical of the yakuza in the 1980s.  He paid for that when he was violently attacked and stabbed by yakuza in June 1990 (on this incident, the publication of a critical book on the Yamaguchi-gumi, and value changes in the yakuza world, see Herbert 1996b).  The serious press has an ambivalent role:  it does not simply publish items based on police-sources, but sometimes acts as a moral entrepreneur, putting pressure on the police to act tough on crime. 

     The reader will find some scattered remarks pertaining to my sources in this paper. Let me quickly indicate some of the main points. Yakuza are by no means mysterious or unfathomable. The police presents long accounts of their activities and astonishingly precise statistics, surveys, and data in the annual police ‘White Paper’, the Keisatsu Hakusho. Lengthy studies of yakuza can regularly be found in the police research journal Keisatsugaku Ronshû. Journalists specializing in yakuza affairs report frequently on new developments, internal power shifts and yakuza rituals.

     The most important anthropological work remains that of Iwai (1963), though there is also an outstanding more recent account in Japanese by Raz (1996). A well-researched journalistic account is available in English by Kaplan and Dubro (1986). It covers the history of the underworld as well as recent changes up to the middle of the 1980s. The most recent comprehensive study is the dissertation by Peter Hill (2000).[3] Other books I have used are cited and discussed below.

     I also draw on an extended period of fieldwork in the late 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s. I had several yakuza contacts in Kamagasaki, the day laborer area of Osaka. The outstanding among them was a wakagashira hosa (‘assistant young leader’, cf. Kaplan and Dubro 1986:132) from a Yamaguchi-gumi affiliated syndicate. He took a fancy to me and took me along on his ‘evening tours’. I was able to observe various transactions first hand, such as cashing in protection money or troubleshooting. In return he showed me around as his ‘international asset’. This seemingly earned him further prestige and was his reward for disclosing stories and insider information to me. Yakuza tend to instrumentalize non-yakuza and also stage an impressive show for them. However, they loosen up over a longer period of contact, notably after a drink or two. In the late 1990s I happened to make some new acquaintances among younger low-ranking yakuza in Shikoku. They readily talked about recent hardships regarding the new law and corroborated the developments described in this paper. In particular the existence of front companies and the trend not to join the yakuza officially seem to be well established and strengthening. Usually I chose to conduct ‘soft interviews’ without interference from technology (tape recorders and the like) as a method of information gathering. Talks were always transcribed immediately after they were held.

     Let me also comment briefly on the terminology. Since the 1960s, the police – and consequently the press as well – have called the yakuza ‘bôryokudan’, which literally means ‘violent group’. As Bourdieu repeatedly notes, the categorization and labeling of a social phenomenon is a symbolic battle with consequences for the perception of what is conceived as social ‘reality’. The language of persons with authority (e. g. politicians) itself exerts power. They can even call things into existence by naming them in a particular manner (Bourdieu 1984:65-66). The labeling of the yakuza as a ‘violent group’ is as intentional as it is partly (un)just. It is unjust because it picks out one – admittedly important – element of the yakuza lifestyle, namely violence, and transforms it into a generic term. It therefore becomes a pseudo-explanatory, reductionist general label which functions like a stigma and overshadows the whole of the yakuza existence (Raz 1996:241-2). It is intentional in the sense that it is designed to deprive the yakuza of their romantic Robin Hood image. This is associated with the term ‘yakuza’ itself, which carries positive connotations of popular heroes and protectors of the weak. This heroic image can be found in popular culture from Kabuki, movies, and books to jitsuwashi journalism (Raz 1996:39-81).     

 

Controlling the yakuza

 

     In 1956 the police declared their intention to conduct more extensive investigations into the yakuza in order to obtain the intelligence necessary for systematic control. From 1958 onwards new departments for the investigation of yakuza were set up, beginning with one of the Metropolitan Police Headquarters (Keishichô) in Tokyo. Public concern about the yakuza was heightened and the annual number arrested rose from roughly 9,000 in the 1940s and '50s to over 58,000.  Despite these efforts the number of yakuza gangs (5,200) and their members (around 184,000) reached an all-time high in 1963 (Worm 1988:73). 

In 1964 the police drew up a new program for the control of yakuza (bôryokudan torishimari yôkô). They announced what they called "Strategy 65", a set of guidelines for countermeasures against the yakuza. Its two main pillars were: chôjô sakusen, i.e. the apprehension of bosses and executives (kanbu) and shikingen no kaimetsu, meaning destruction of the yakuza’s  sources of income (Asakura 1987:233). Since then the three basic declared aims of the police have been arrest of gang members, control of funds and seizure of weapons (e.g. Keisatsuchô 1978:38ff.).  This is repeated in police reports like a ritual incantation.  The slogans pertaining to this threefold strategy are periodically renewed. Yet another refers to the police clamp down on hito, kane, mono  = people, money and goods (Keisatsuchô 1989:71), more or less the same as the ‘Strategy 65’ guidelines. In the 1990s a similar list was condensed into: "3 L-katto"- katto standing for the English "cut" and L for "lifeline". This meant that the police were intent on cutting down on yakuza staff (= arrests), goods (= i. e. weapons) and income (Yamada et al. 1994:260).  Although since the late 1980s the police have undeniably taken a tougher line on the yakuza, it can still be argued that the police are not interested in the total ‘crushing’ of organized crime but rather in keeping it under control. 

     Earlier police efforts to clamp down have shown marked side-effects (for the following I rely on the account by Ino 1992).  Altogether there were three "summit strategies" (chôjô sakusen) launched in order to get hold of the top leaders of yakuza gangs.  The first was initiated in 1965-67 and resulted in mass arrests and the disbanding of big syndicates.  However it was only the form of coalition between gangs that was given up.  The coalition member organizations themselves were not dismantled.  Big horizontally connected syndicates such as the Kantô-kai, Honda-kai, Tôsei-kai, Sumiyoshi-kai, Matsuba-kai and others were officially declared dissolved.  But they were soon reorganized, especially once their leaders had been released from prison.  The main effect of the second chôjô sakusen , in 1969, was that small gangs which relied exclusively on traditional income sources - and which were therefore obsolete anyway - were broken up. The big surviving syndicates diversified their portfolios and consolidated their business.  A third concerted action to arrest gang members and their bosses in 1975,  mostly on charges of illegal weapon possession, resulted in the grouping of yakuza gangs into conglomerates (keiretsuka), an oligopolization of the underworld, and nationwide expansion by the three biggest syndicates.   One of the main side-effects was the introduction of a franchise system. The bosses are paid regular fees from all affiliated gangs and are therefore practically insulated from day-to-day activities - especially from "dirty" work.  This insulation of the top executives is a defensive measure against police attempts to arrest the bosses (this money flow from bottom to top is called jônôkin, I discuss it later in the chapter.)

 

The functions of organized crime

 

     In this rough outline one can already see that yakuza react quickly to moves by the police.  They do not just vanish because of intensified persecution and/or prosecution.  Organized crime exists due to structural preconditions in (almost) any given society.  At a micro-sociological level Raz suggests that yakuza represent a variation on the core traditional culture and values of the Japanese (Raz 1996:42).  In fact yakuza send out a set of signals both exclusive (‘we are outlaws’ etc.) and inclusive (‘we have the real Japanese spirit’ etc).  He vividly describes the obsession of yakuza with posing and performing, their way of ‘stigma-management’  (Raz 1992; cf. Goffman 1963).  Raz subscribes to a Durkheimian view of criminality as being functional for society: it fosters cohesion and (moral) solidarity among its members by defining (rather arbitrarily) the boundaries between ‘normal’ and ‘deviant’ behavior (Raz 1996:225f.).  A functionalist macro-sociological viewpoint also provides a possible interpretation of why the yakuza are an almost accepted institution in Japanese society, despite official condemnation.   They are deeply embedded in Japanese society, in which they function in several ways: economic, social, legal, and political. 

     The economic reason for the continued existence of the yakuza is obvious:  as a business they satisfy a demand among ‘ordinary’ people for illegal goods (e.g. drugs) and services (e.g. prostitution, loan sharking, debt collection).  

     Socially, the yakuza offer an alternative career and avenues to success for members of Japanese society, who suffer from disadvantage and discrimination.  Among those with highly restricted opportunities are school drop-outs.  According to one police survey (Keisatsuchô 1989:38), 80% of novice yakuza did not complete junior high or high school  - whereas roughly 98% of the overall population graduates from high school.   Juvenile delinquents are another source of yakuza recruits:  more than 60% of recruits have a ‘history of delinquent behavior’, 46.2% of those have been involved in severe criminal acts like murder, assault, mayhem or intimidation (Hoshino 1980:43).  Residents of Korean heritage and hisabetsu burakumin[4] are also more likely than most to join the yakuza.  Although no reliable data exist, it is well known that the proportion of members of these two discriminated minorities are greatly over-represented in yakuza  syndicates, especially in Western Japan.  According to an unofficial police estimate, around 10% of Yamaguchi-gumi members are of Korean origin, while up to 70% of them have a burakumin  background (Kaplan and Dubro 1986:145). 

     The legal role of the yakuza has developed out of loopholes in the Japanese judicial system.  Not only is the number of lawyers hopelessly small, but also court proceedings take an enormous length of time until a judgment is handed down.  In the case of civil conflicts Yakuza are hired rather than lawyers in order to solve them.  The police also refuse to deal with civil disputes, and so yakuza are often hired instead of lawyers to solve them by negotiating out-of-court settlements (these cases, classified by the police as minji kainyû bôryoku, are described in more detail below). 

     The link between politicians and the yakuza at the national level became weaker after the uncovering of the involvement in the Lockheed-scandal (1976) of Kodama Yoshio (1911-1984), the great fixer and mediator between mainstream politicians, yakuza and ultranationalists.  In the 1960s and 1970s yakuza were mobilized for strike-breaking and as an ‘anti-communist force’ (for this story see Ino 1992).  On at least one occasion, the late Kanemaru Shin, at one time deputy prime minister of Japan, used yakuza to quell campaigns by rightists against himself (1990; Asahi Shimbun  November 6 1992).  Former prime minister Takeshita Noboru was also accused of using yakuza during an election campaign in 1987 (Asahi Shimbun  November 4 1992).  I do not have the space to discuss in detail the connections between conservative politics and the yakuza, who were once seen as a stabilizing factor within Japanese society.  But it can reasonably be argued that yakuza up to now have enjoyed a certain ‘political protection’  - even though it was usually (ultra-conservative) politicians who made use of the yakuza rather than the other way round (Ino 1992:259f.).  

     There may well be other factors as well behind the fact that the yakuza are a well-established institution in Japan.  As long as society as a whole does not change so drastically as to render the yakuza superfluous, law and law enforcement can only set boundaries to limit the activities of the yakuza, but they will not make them disappear.  It can well be argued that the existence of organized crime (complete with names and addresses as in the case of the yakuza) might be better for society than disorganized crime en masse.  I contend that this is also the tacit understanding of the authorities in Japan.  In the following I want to demonstrate the effects that lawmaking can have on organized crime in some detail, using the 1992 legislation as an example.

 

The effects of legislation

 

     The anti-yakuza law of 1992 is officially called bôryokudanin ni yoru futô na kôi nado no bôshi ni kansuru hôritsu ("Law Pertaining to Unjust Activities by Yakuza"), and it is also abbreviated to bôryokudan taisakuhô, or simply bôtaihô ("Yakuza Countermeasures Law").  The yakuza used to call it simply ‘the new law’ (shinpô).  In order to enact a new law, legitimation and some sort of moral enterprise is necessary.  The problems that were troubling the police in the years before the new law took effect can be seen from the annual Police White Paper (Keisatsu Hakusho) on public security (or insecurity) for 1991. One perceived threat was the invasion of the yakuza  into the lives of ordinary citizens and their inroads into the business community.  Rising figures for so-called ‘violent interventions in civil affairs’ (minji kainyû bôryoku) were presented, comprising things like debt-collecting, money-lending, bill-discounting, bankruptcy affairs, real estate disputes, and out-of-court settlement of traffic accidents etc. (see e.g. Keisatsuchô 1991:116).  Since the end of the eighties more than 20,000 such interventions had been coming to the attention of the police annually, though only an estimated one-tenth of them actually lead to an indictment (Yamada 1994:211). 

Another problem stressed in the White Paper is that of jiage deals. Jiage literally means ‘land raising’ and refers to the practice of forcing up prices of real estate and the forceful eviction of recalcitrant tenants from land or premises needed for new projects.  During the years of the bubble economy yakuza were often employed by real estate companies to intimidate occupants. Ample remuneration and acquisition of knowledge concerning land speculation enabled the yakuza to set up real estate firms themselves. 

A further area of operation that is seen as dangerous was company racketeering, the operations of the infamous sôkaiya[5].  Police also spoke of a general intrusion into economic systems, of an ‘economic mafia’, and of illegal profiteering disguised as legal through so-called ‘front companies’.  The investment of yakuza income into legal spheres of business such as real estate and securities also made the police nervous.  The 1992 law can be seen in part as a response to this advance of the yakuza into the world of high finance.

Organized crime making inroads into legal business is a well-documented transnational tendency. It is described extensively by Arlacchi (1986) for the Italian mafia in general, and by Gambetta and Reuter (1995) for the Sicilian mafia and U.S. Cosa Nostra. Granting protection, settling disputes, and monopolizing some of the shadier areas of business are seen internationally as well-established features of organized crime. Reputations both individual and generic, and brand images suggested by names such as ‘mafia’, ‘yakuza’ or ‘Yamaguchi-gumi’ are the most important assets in this ‘industry of protection’ – the title of the first chapter of a compelling study of the mafia by Gambetta (1993).[6]  

     The Bôtaihô permits a Public Safety Commission to designate a yakuza gang as one subject to the measures contained in the Law when certain pre-conditions are met.  Members of the shitei bôryokudan (‘designated underworld gangs’) then become the ‘object’ of chûshi meirei, injunctions to stop certain ‘improper’ activities (futô na kôi) as specified in the Law.  In case of recidivism an order to prevent recurrence (saihatsu bôshi meirei) can be issued.  The activities that can thus be prohibited include demanding undue donations, protection or hush money, collecting debts at high interest rates, demanding the improper waiver of an obligation, private arrangements for compensation of traffic accidents, requests for improper loans, claims for money or goods on a false pretext, and so on.  One can easily see from this list that the ‘new’ areas of profiteering were the main target of the new legislation.  Besides these, coercion or enticement in recruitment of juveniles, hindering someone from leaving the gang, forcing someone to slice off his little finger (yubitsume, a common penalty or gesture of apology for blunders) have also become objects of the new law (for a detailed discussion of the Law see Endô 1992). 

Another widely discussed measure is the ban on the use of yakuza offices for three months (extendable to six) when gang wars break out.  This provision can be seen as a concession to pressure by the public to clamp down on yakuza more severely, especially in times of gang warfare.  A long feud broke out in 1985 after the murder of Takenaka Masahisa, the boss of the Yamaguchi-gumi, and the secession of a group calling itself the Ichiwa-kai.  It lasted until this latter group was ‘destroyed’ and Watanabe Yoshinori, the current Yamaguchi-gumi boss, was chosen in 1989. Several non-yakuza-bystanders were killed both during this feud and During this feud and during the attack on the Yamaguchi-gumi's so-called ‘Number Two’, Takumi Masaru, on 28 August 1997, and this cost the yakuza a lot of sympathy with the public ( a description of the backdrop to Takumi's murder and his biography can be found in Mizoguchi 1997).  Mizoguchi goes so far as to allege that the new law was drawn up with the Yamaguchi-gumi as its principal target (Mizoguchi 1992:246). 

     Just one year and one month after the Bôtaihô came into force, a revision of the law was enacted.  This shows how quickly legislators have to react to new developments and their need to constantly fine-tune their legal instruments.  In the revision a range of further ‘economic’ actions came under the scope of chûshi meirei, such as compensation for losses in securities, manipulation of shares, the loan business, remuneration for clearing real estate or premises, obstruction of auctions etc.  The stipulations concerning recruitment of juveniles became stricter: handing out of pocket money to juveniles or compelling them to get tattooed has also become liable to prosecution (Asahi Shimbun  February 27 1993).

     The latest revision took effect on October 1 1997.  Here, I believe, it can be clearly shown that legislation and police work is mainly reactive rather than proactive.  Chûshi meirei were up to this date only servable on individual (full-fledged) gang members.  This led to the practice of gang members working alternately on the same victim.  To prevent this dodging of ordinances, the new revision made them servable on the superior or boss.  They can also be served on non-yakuza if they are ‘associate members’ or if a non-yakuza is directed by a yakuza to commit acts forbidden by the Bôtaihô.  This is a reaction to the growing ‘periphery’ of yakuza syndicates, in which legal companies ‘fraternize’ with yakuza (so called kigyô shatei[7] or ‘corporate brothers’).  Debt collection was also made more difficult by the new provisions (BTHKS 1997).

 

The yakuza response

 

     But of course the yakuza also closely watch every step the law enforcement agencies take, and they react accordingly.  As soon as the debate on the new law started, the yakuza began to organize study meetings with lawyers in order to become familiar with it.  The Yamaguchi-gumi issued a circular to its directly affiliated gangs, ordering them to transform themselves into joint-stock companies.  By February 1992 half of them had achieved this goal.  Already in 1991 more than 1,000 Yamaguchi-gumi offices had had their emblems (daimon) dismantled, while many gangs had also removed their membership lists, their articles of association, photos of former oyabun (bosses) and other such paraphernalia.  All this was intended to help camouflage the fact that the premises were being used as yakuza offices.  Some smaller gangs at the lower end of the hierarchy simply moved to a new place where the police could not track them down.  There were internal notifications strictly forbidding fraternization with police officers, saying that visits by policemen should be declined and no information should be given, even in the case of arrest.  All this indicates a refusal to cooperate with police.  At the same time control of information within the Yamaguchi-gumi was tightened.  Important information was kept in the upper echelons of the hierarchy, contacts by fax were discouraged and public telephones recommended (Yamada 1994: 186ff., 210, 243 and 253). 

     The statistics of yakuza membership show some interesting characteristics.  Between 1991, the year before the Bôtaihô, and the end of 1996, total membership of the yakuza fell by 11,000. During these five years the number of formal members (kôseiin) fell by 27.9 percent, resulting in a rise of the ratio of associate members (junkôseiin) of the total yakuza force from roughly 30 to 42.4 percent in 1996.  Many full members retired, taking on the status of associate member, as which they were not covered by the Bôtaihô   - a trend which was countered by the Law’s revision of October 1997.  In 1996 there were 46,000 active members of 3,120 gangs, surrounded and aided by 33,900 ‘associate’ members, putting the total yakuza numbers at 79,900.  Around two-thirds of them were organized under the big three syndicates: the Yamaguchi-gumi, Sumiyoshi-kai and Inagawa-kai.  Twenty-four gangs are designated as shitei bôryokudan.

According to police an average of 220 gangs a year were being dissolved in the mid-1990s (the numbers are given in Bôzono 1998: 79f. and Keisatsuchô 1997:183).  Nevertheless this ‘decrease’ in the number of gangsters and gangs is still within the range of ‘natural’ fluctuations, given the poor overall economic situation.  As a matter of fact the Yamaguchi-gumi quickly banned more than 1,000 of its members in the year of the new law.  It tried to get rid of members who had become a burden, such as drug addicts, those in debt, and ‘under-performers’ who were not fulfilling their duties.  This is a reversal of a long-standing expansionist policy:  instead of expansion at all costs the new line stresses quality rather than quantity, the aim being to reduce overall members and "nurture an elite" (Yamada 1994: 258, 270).  The fall in the number of registered yakuza can therefore be interpreted as a rational decision by the management of an enterprise deciding to reduce staff during a period of economic recession, rather than as a glorious success for the police.

     The Yamaguchi-gumi has also been cutting down on expenses.  The internal money flow is restricted and the monthly burden of payments alleviated.  The Yamaguchi-gumi is organized in the form of a pyramid. At the top is the ‘boss of bosses’ with an executive committee and advisers, forming the governing board, which consists of some twenty bosses.  Watanabe, the Yamaguchi-gumi don, has about 100 ‘fictive children’ (kobun) or direct subordinates.  The board and the kobun form the mother organization and they are called chokkei kumichô (directly affiliated bosses).  They are at the same time the leaders of locally active organizations.  These groups in turn have further gangs affiliated to them in up to three further organizational tiers.  Money flows from the bottom to the top, i.e. the affiliated groups pay monthly royalties for the use of the name Yamaguchi-gumi,  a kind of licensing or franchising fee that is called jônôkin by the police.  Yakuza simply call it a ‘membership subscription’.  The groups at the lowest end pay some \10,000 a month.  The gangs of the kobun of Watanabe paid  \850,000 per month, the members of the board paid \1,050,000.  These subscriptions were lowered by \200,000 for the kobun  in the spring of 1994 and lowered again to a monthly fee of \500,000 with effect from January 1998.  From the beginning of 1998 the monthly dues of board members were also reduced, to \700,000 (Asahi Shimbun  December 19 1997).  These are austerity measures, so to speak.  It is also said that the Yamaguchi-gumi is trying to save money by holding simpler, less expensive ceremonies.  The bosses have also changed their ostentatious life-styles.  Watanabe is even said to be speaking about ‘honorable poverty’ as a new motto (Yamada et al. 1994:290 and 309).  This too can be perceived as an adaptation to economically bad times. 

     Ways of generating revenues are also being adjusted to the needs and necessities of the long recession.  Here some examples of how quickly the yakuza can adapt to new developments can be seen.  During the height of the so-called ‘bubble economy’, yakuza were involved in the overheated financial and real estate market, mostly in jiage-transactions.  This meant that they harassed landowners or tenants until they vacated the object of speculation they were occupying.  Ironically the yakuza are now increasingly involved in the opposite kind of activity.  It is they who occupy pieces of land, houses or business premises which are to be sold off because they were used as collateral for loans.  The borrower has defaulted, and in order to get its money back the bank or housing loan company wants to sell the collateral.  The yakuza are obstructing this action and disrupting foreclosure auctions, using the same means and the same savvy with which they formerly evicted tenants (for a case study see The Daily Yomiuri  May 27 1997, while a racy description of a case in which two rival yakuza gangs were involved can be found in Seymour 1996:82-88[8]). 

Another business opportunity - typical in times of recession - is intervention in the liquidation of bankrupt firms.  The police have established a special new task force to deal with debt collection - a field in which the yakuza have become increasingly conspicuous involved in recent years (Keisatsuchô 1997:184).  One can see here that yakuza are highly flexible, innovative, and aggressive entrepreneurs.  However it is mostly the big syndicates with their personnel, know-how, and capital, which can do big business.  Small gangs are still dependent on traditional income sources.  It seems that a polarization has developed between the business elite and the rank and file, or as an in-house police researcher put it: between the "kings and beggars" (Uchida 1990:41). 

Wether because of the recession or the impact of the new law, there has even been a rise in cases of burglaries and robberies involving yakuza (Asahi Shimbun  November 12 1997), kinds of crimes that they have traditionally despised.  Yakuza have also moved into fields that used to be spurned as insufficiently lucrative.  Since the 1990s they have become increasingly involved in human trafficking of Chinese nationals, most of them men.  The trafficking of women from South East Asian countries has been organized by yakuza since the 1960s, but cases of smuggling male (would-be) workers into Japan were rare even during the bubble era’ (Herbert 1996:28ff. and 64ff. where I underestimated the later involvement of yakuza).  The surge in cases of illegal alien smuggling also indicates closer ties between yakuza and Chinese gangs abroad as well as those operating in Japan (e.g. The Daily Yomiuri  January 21 1997). 

 

Conclusion: yakuza on the defensive

 

     Before and after the Bôtaihô was enacted the press launched an extensive information campaign, naturally with strong support from the police (cf. also the survey on the effects of the new law in its first year in Keisatsuchô 1993, which was extensively quoted in the mass media).  At the same time new centers for combating yakuza were founded all over the country.  These centers now handle around one third of the over 30,000 annual complaints and requests for advice stemming from the new law, the rest being dealt with by the police (the number of consultations is more than eight times higher than the number of chûshi meirei issued annually concerning unlawful activities prohibited by the Bôtaihô - an indication that only a fraction of complaints are actually met with sanctions).  One of the effects of the information campaign can be seen in the changed consciousness of the public.  Yakuza complain of fewer requests for their services from ordinary citizens: this is not only due to the recession, but also due to the fact that more people now think it is wrong to employ yakuza for their own purposes or to solve civil disputes.  The new law also encourages them to go to the police.  Owners of restaurants or bars refuse payment of protection money or resist being indirectly ‘taxed’ by yakuza through being forced to buy overpriced goods, e.g. New Year decorations (Yamada 1994: 275ff.).  The yakuza are therefore more isolated and cut off from their former clientele.  This trend, together with the tarnishing of their image, has been a blow to the yakuza.  It came as a shock and the ‘psychological effect’ of the Bôtaihô may be stronger than the actual legal procedures connected with it, as Yamanouchi Yukio, scriptwriter, lawyer, and former legal consultant to the Yamaguchi-gumi has suggested it in an interview I conducted with him on December 9 1997.  Another problem the yakuza face is that the average age of gang members is rapidly rising.  Recruiting has become more difficult (Hômu Sôgô Kenkyûsho 1989:349).  The image of yakuza has been tarnished and youngsters seem to avoid them because they see the job as too demanding, dirty and dangerous.  These trends can be summed up in the catch-phrase yakuza-banare (‘parting from the yakuza’), which Yamanouchi repeatedly used when I interviewed him.

     The yakuza are on the defensive right now, but they are also restructuring their organizations and adopting counter-measures.  The biggest gangs for instance hold so called ‘gokudô-summits’ in order to avoid conflicts and especially open gang warfare, because this would damage their image in the eyes of the public and consequently also damage business.  Almost all concerted police actions against yakuza have been made in direct or indirect response to some long-lasting gang feud or other.  In the case of the Bôtaihô the unprecedented scale of the war between the Yamaguchi-gumi and the Ichiwa-kai was described as the main motive for the new legislation by a representative of the police (Iwahashi 1998:2).  Yakuza know this and there have been several Yamaguchi-gumi internal notifications seeking to stop unnecessary disputes (Yamada 1994:254ff.).  These moves are also reactions to the new public mood.  Maybe it can be generally said that the yakuza have been cut down to their pre-bubble-status.  They will adjust to the new situation and the result will be a new equilibrium.  But it is hard to assess which has actually hit the yakuza worse: the new legislation, or the recession.  When the latter is over, it will be seen how far the yakuza will recover.  They will certainly not just vanish: there are still too many reasons for their existence.  The mere rewriting of laws will not remove organized crime from Japan - for this it is far too pervasive, evasive, and innovative. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Published in:

Eades, Jerry S., Tom Gill and Harumi Befu (eds.)

Globalization and Social Change in Contemporary Japan. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Pr. 2000, 143-158



[1]Yakuza here signifies the individual mobster as well as Japanese-style organized crime.

[2]Gokudô is a term popular among yakuza to denote themselves.

[3] I am grateful to the author for allowing me to read this excellent study prior to publication, as well as for insights and ideas.

[4]Burakumin are ethnically Japanese and were are pariah-like caste in the feudal class system, which was abolished after the Meiji-restauration (1868).  They were assigned jobs that were considered "impure" like slaughtering of animals or leather processing.  Discrimination against people with burakumin-heritage is still rampant.  An estimated 3 million Japanese are of burakumin-origin.

[5] Sôkaiya are racketeers who blackmail corporations by threatening to disrupt the annual shareholders meetings by asking awkward questions, though conversely they are also used by the corporations to manage these meetings in some cases (Kaplan and Dubro 1986:170-1)

[6] Gambetta applies economic theory most cogently to explain the emergence and prevalence of mafia firms in Sicily. He makes several references to the yakuza and it would be a rewarding task to apply his theoretical framework to them, though this is beyond the scope of this paper. Structural analogies between Mafiosi and yakuza abound, but so do cultural and other differences, which a more detailed study would have to take carefully into account.

[7]The police prefers the term "front company" (furonto kigyô).  They are managed by relatives of yakuza or ex-yakuza or merely sponsored by yakuza and used for money laundering. During the last five years well over 200 furonto  per annum have been uncovered by police, through arrests resulting from legal infringements (Keisatsuchô 1997:186).

[8]Seymour presents a lively, witty account of a three month period spent hanging out with yakuza.  He witnessed a remarkeble range of activities including an ammunition transaction, nocturnal shooting practice, traditional gambling, even the rare import of cocaine and some ugly violent beatings.  However, some linguistic blunders of a very fundamental nature cast a shadow of doubt on the credibility of his study and the accuracy of his rendering of dialogues and stories, e.g. hari-maki  instead of haramaki (26) Shimizu no Jirôchô is made into Jinrochô (26 and in the rest of the book), des  is given instead of desu  (172), shinjinue  instead of shinjinrui (181ff.), Setaguya instead of Setagaya (192) and sensai instead of sensei (198ff.)