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| quote: | Originally posted by gOOD-tRiP
never heard of Yakuza... can i get more information about them instead that they are japanese, like what are they known for |
YAKUZA In Japan, organized crime and criminals come under the
general heading of Yakuza. According to tradition, the name is
derived from the worst possible score in a Japanese card game.
In this game, the last digit of a player's score determines the
outcome of the game. In a hand resulting in a score of 20, the
worst possible score, a player's final score would be zero.
Among the losing combinations, the phonetic sound of an 8-9-3
sequence is ya - ku - sa.
According to Fujita Goro, a modern bard of the native Japanese
criminal class, the Yakuza were itinerant gamblers, peddlers,
renegade warriors and roving bandits. They served shoguns and municipalities and their legend includes a distinct Robin Hood
quality that recently emerged during the recent Kobe Earthquake.
The Yamaguchi-gumi Yakuza clan quickly mobilized providing on the
scene assistance to Kobe's earthquake victims long before the
national government resolved to act.
Yakuza form a central theme in Japan's popular culture and trace
their origins to at least the 17th century. Therefore, among
the world's criminal organizations the Yakuza are older than
the Sicilian Mafia.
Yakuza strength rises and falls according to the tides of
Japanese society, with estimates of core membership ranging from
80,000 to more than 110,000 in the years from 1945 to 1996.
Some authorities believe Japan's National Police routinely
undercount the Yakuza, numbering only those names found in
confiscated membership rolls, or recorded from routine
police intelligence reports.
Like the Sicilian Mafia and other underworld organizations, the
Yakuza are formed into families, but in Japan other distinctions
emerge including that of the oyabun - kobun (father role - child
role) relationship, between Yakuza chiefs and their underlings.
The Yakuza evolved into their current form late in the
19th-century under figures like Toyama Mitsuru. This son of a
Samurai founded the Genyosha (Dark Ocean) Society, and later
Toyama's top aide Ryohei Uchida founded the Amur River Society
(Black Dragons). Like organized crime in other cultures, the
Yakuza began to control construction labor and dockside labor,
adding to traditional areas of enterprise in the vices,
prostitution, gambling, liquor distribution, and entertainment.
In the late 1960s or early 1970s the Yakuza moved into the
lucrative narcotics trade and in recent years have stepped up
their trade in firearms and other contraband. According to
various sources, Yakuza have formed alliances and working
relationships with Chinese Triads, Sicilian and American
Mafia, Columbian drug cartels, Jamaican Posses, and assorted
other criminal organizations throughout the world.
Because of their unique role in Japan's history and popular
culture, and their usefulness in providing muscle to control
labor unions, and providing anonymous services to the public
for a variety of typical underworld products in vice and
contraband -- accomodations between Yakuza, police,
ultranationalists, government, political parties, and secret
societies seems to be an accepted fact of life in Japan.
Yakuza are active worldwide, wherever criminal enterprises flourish.
In addition, Yakuza will be encountered in larger numbers and
wield greater influence wherever large communities of overseas
Japan reside for work and study. The Yakuza have been very skillful
in the employment of intermediaries and the absence of Japanese
within a community does not mean an absence of Yakuza.
___________________
" You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip
through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will-
ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert."
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