Yakuza

public as well as the police, recent scandals involving billions of yen linked to yakuza-related firms or individuals have sounded alarms in Tokyo. There is increasing concern in some business and government quarters that the Japanese underworld is developing the sort of financial muscle that could threaten the economic order.

“The exotic appearance of yakuza members and their peculiar samurai-type rituals (the top of a gang member’s smallest digit is severed and presented to his leader as atonement for a grievous error) certainly distinguish the Japanese mob from underworld syndicates based in the United States and Europe. The yakuza in recent years have diversified their portfolio of illegal activities to include loan sharking, company racketeering and extortion-type intervention in civil disputes and real estate transactions.”

“Possibly buying into the yakuza’s Robin Hood image, ordinary Japanese citizens at times turn not to lawyers and the courts but to mobsters to help them resolve civil disputes that would be extremely difficult, time-consuming and expensive to pursue through the Japanese legal system. These disputes primarily concern private and commercial debts and personal injuries, although organized crime experts also believe that the mob is involved in the settlement of most automobile accident cases. While the yakuza in these instances may be regarded as filling a need created by the dearth of lawyers in Japan, gangsters — being outside the law — also have been known to initiate traffic accidents as one means of extorting money from people.”

The yakuza’s motives rarely are above reproach. One could argue that gangsters, in fact, have learned how to exploit effectively the Japanese tendency to utilize personal relations, rather than legal measures, to resolve disputes.

This is not to suggest that Japanese police completely look the other way when it comes to the mob. Over the years Japanese law enforcement officials, who have been admired the world over for their high standard of discipline, have staged numerous raids on various yakuza offices. These assaults have tended, however, to be more a show of police muscle than a genuine attempt to shut down gangster operations.

One of the main reasons that the yakuza can operate “aboveground” is because the groups are not illegal. There are no statutes in Japan comparable to this country’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970. RICO authorizes U.S. law enforcement officials to investigate and to ultimately arrest any individual, partnership, corporation, association or other legal entity as well as any union or group of individuals “associated in fact” for engaging in a pattern of criminal activities in furtherance of racketeering. Organized crime experts also note that weaknesses in Japan’s criminal law also have made it difficult to prosecute the perpetrators of bribery, extortion, money laundering or other yakuza lines of business.

Public Acceptance – Until recently there has been an unusually high degree of tolerance by the Japanese public for the yakuza. As long as mobsters did not prove too disruptive, the police, in particular, stayed out of their way. Some analysts attribute this acceptance to the yakuza’s skill at public relations and the fact that the public has come to rely on gangsters to satisfy certain economic, political, legal or societal needs that the government cannot, or will not, address.

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