The Japanese Yakuza

Author : David E. Kaplan,Alec Dubro
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 438 pages
File Size : 48,5 Mb
Release : 2003-02
Category : History
ISBN : 0520215613

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Yakuza by David E. Kaplan,Alec Dubro Pdf

"A fascinating study of how criminal enterprise can infect the very heart of modern capitalism. Here is the backstage world of political influence and organized crime in the world's second largest economy... by far the most detailed and even-handed study of this important and neglected subject."—John W. Dower, author of Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Reviews of original edition: "A superb study of Japan's underworld that is both entertaining and revealing. The authors miss none of the color and curious detail of the yakuza style, but at the same time go far beyond surface observations."—Far Eastern Economic Review "The book is laden with fascinating information, some of it heretofore unavailable in English."—Washington Post "Blend the Mafia with the Masons. Let them simmer a while, then fold in the Ku Klux Klan and you'll have the yakuza…. Important and timely…Yakuza will serve for years as the source document on Japanese organized crime."—San Jose Mercury News "State-of-the-art investigative reporting…must reading for those who consider themselves already highly conversant with yakuza activities…disturbing."—Journal of Asian Studies

Author : Peter B. E. Hill
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2003-09-04
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780191531491

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The Japanese Mafia by Peter B. E. Hill Pdf

The Japanese mafia - known collectively as yakuza - has had a considerable influence on Japanese society over the past fifty years. Based on extensive interviews with criminals, police officers, lawyers, journalists, and academics, this is the first academic analysis in English of Japan's criminal syndicates. Peter Hill argues that the essential characteristic of Japan's criminal syndicates is their provision of protection to consumers in Japan's under- and upper-worlds. In this respect they are analogous to the Sicilian Mafia, and the mafias of Russia, Hong Kong and the United States. Although the yakuza's protective mafia role has existed at least since the end of the Second World War, and arguably longer, their sources of income have not remained constant. The yakuza have undergone considerable change in their business activities over the last half-century. The two key factors driving this evolution have been the changes in the legal, and law-enforcement environment within which these groups must operate, and the economic opportunities available to them. This first factor demonstrates that the complex and ambiguous relationship between the yakuza and the state has always been more than purely symbiotic. With the introduction of the boryokudan (yakuza) countermeasures law in 1992, the relationship between the yakuza and the state has become more unambiguously antagonistic. Assessing the impact of this law is, however, problematic; the contemporaneous bursting of Japan's economic bubble at the beginning of the 1990s also profoundly and adversely influenced yakuza sources of income. It is impossible to completely disentangle the effects of these two events. By the end of the twentieth century, the outlook for the yakuza was bleak and offered no short-term prospect of amelioration. More profoundly, state-expropriation of protection markets formerly dominated by the yakuza suggests that the longer-term prospects for these groups are bleaker still: no longer, therefore, need the yakuza be seen as an inevitable and necessary evil.

Author : Dr. Junichi Saga
Publisher : Kodansha USA
Page : 187 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2010-08-05
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9784770050090

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Confessions of a Yakuza by Dr. Junichi Saga Pdf

This is the true story, as told to the doctor who looked after him just before he died, of the life of one of the last traditional yakuza in Japan. It wasn’t a "good" life, in either sense of the word, but it was an adventurous one; and the tale he has to tell presents an honest and oddly attractive picture of an insider in that separate, unofficial world. In his low, hoarse voice, he describes the random events that led the son of a prosperous country shopkeeper to become a member, and ultimately the leader, of a gang organizing illegal dice games in Tokyo's liveliest entertainment area. He talks about his first police raid, and the brutal interrogation and imprisonment that followed it. He remembers his first love affair, and the girl he ran away with, and the weeks they spent wandering about the countryside together. Briefly, and matter-of-factly, he describes how he cut off the little finger of his left hand as a ritual gesture of apology. He explains how the games were run and the profits spent; why the ties between members of "the brotherhood" were so important; and how he came to kill a man who worked for him. What emerges is a contradictory personality: tough but not unsentimental; stubborn yet willing to take life more or less as it comes; impulsive but careful to observe the rules of the business he had joined. And in the end, when his tale is finished, you feel you would probably have liked him if you'd met him in person. Fortunately, Dr. Saga's record of his long conversations with him provides a wonderful substitute for that meeting.

Author : Jake Adelstein
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 354 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2009-10-13
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780307378941

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Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein Pdf

NOW A MAX ORIGINAL SERIES. A riveting true-life tale of newspaper noir and Japanese organized crime from an American investigative journalist who "pulls the curtain back on ... [an] element of Japanese society that few Westerners ever see" (San Francisco Examiner). Jake Adelstein is the only American journalist ever to have been admitted to the insular Tokyo Metropolitan Police Press Club, where for twelve years he covered the dark side of Japan: extortion, murder, human trafficking, fiscal corruption, and of course, the yakuza. But when his final scoop exposed a scandal that reverberated all the way from the neon soaked streets of Tokyo to the polished Halls of the FBI and resulted in a death threat for him and his family, Adelstein decided to step down. Then, he fought back. In Tokyo Vice he delivers an unprecedented look at Japanese culture and searing memoir about his rise from cub reporter to seasoned journalist with a price on his head.

Author : Letizia Paoli
Publisher : Oxford Handbooks
Page : 713 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2014
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780199730445

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The Oxford Handbook of Organized Crime by Letizia Paoli Pdf

This handbook explores organized crime, which it divides into two main concepts and types: the first is a set of stable organizations illegal per se or whose members systematically engage in crime, and the second is a set of serious criminal activities that are typically carried out for monetary gain.

Author : Christopher Seymour
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 212 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 1996
Category : Crime
ISBN : 087113604X

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Yakuza Diary by Christopher Seymour Pdf

A writer who infiltrated the Yakuza, the Japanese organized crime syndicate, reveals their wealth and power, four-hundred-year-old code of conduct, and a cast of characters including bosses and underlings

Author : Cid A. Damon
Publisher : Page Publishing Inc
Page : 84 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2020-01-11
Category : True Crime
ISBN : 9781645447566

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Oyabun by Cid A. Damon Pdf

Cid, a Filipino musician who defied being away from a loving and protective family, dared to go to Japan during the time when the story of Maricris, a Filipina entertainer who was allegedly killed by a yakuza by plunging his sword to her vagina, was all over the news back home. He just wanted to work and earn his own money. What better way of doing it than to get paid doing what he enjoyed doing the most — singing." With another singer, Maria, they went to Japan as a duo and performed in cities from Tokyo to Chiba and Nagoya. Japan was flowing with money! The place had a way of entertaining you! The delicious foods, the drinks, the drugs (if you're into it), and of course, the tips! But without intending it, he got involved with Filipinas who had relations with yakuza. His life changed. He listened to stories told by another yakuza about his boss and his brothers. Every story left him with fear and the urge to get away as far as he could go. But he has to save Maria, who got herself involved with the boss. He won't be able to live with himself if he just left without taking her. But the task was not an easy one. How can a musician who hasn't learned any martial arts and instead spent his days playing his keyboard outsmart an evil man?

Author : Peter B. E. Hill,British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology Peter B E Hill
Publisher : Oxford University Press on Demand
Page : 336 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2003
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9780199257522

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The Japanese Mafia by Peter B. E. Hill,British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology Peter B E Hill Pdf

"The Japanese mafia - known collectively as yakuza - has had a considerable influence on Japanese society over the past fifty years. Based on extensive Japanese language source material and interviews with criminals, police officers, lawyers, journalists, and scholars, this is the first English language academic monograph to analyse Japan's criminal syndicates."--BOOK JACKET.

Author : David E. Kaplan,Alec Dubro
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 437 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2003-02
Category : History
ISBN : 9780520215610

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Yakuza by David E. Kaplan,Alec Dubro Pdf

"A fascinating study of how criminal enterprise can infect the very heart of modern capitalism. Here is the backstage world of political influence and organized crime in the world's second largest economy... by far the most detailed and even-handed study of this important and neglected subject."—John W. Dower, author of Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II Reviews of original edition: "A superb study of Japan's underworld that is both entertaining and revealing. The authors miss none of the color and curious detail of the yakuza style, but at the same time go far beyond surface observations."—Far Eastern Economic Review "The book is laden with fascinating information, some of it heretofore unavailable in English."—Washington Post "Blend the Mafia with the Masons. Let them simmer a while, then fold in the Ku Klux Klan and you'll have the yakuza…. Important and timely…Yakuza will serve for years as the source document on Japanese organized crime."—San Jose Mercury News "State-of-the-art investigative reporting…must reading for those who consider themselves already highly conversant with yakuza activities…disturbing."—Journal of Asian Studies

Author : Shoko Tendo
Publisher : Kodansha USA
Page : 216 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2010-07-15
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9784770050069

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Yakuza Moon by Shoko Tendo Pdf

Yakuza Moon is the shocking, yet intensely moving memoir of 37-yearold Shoko Tendo, who grew up the daughter of a yakuza boss. Tendo lived her life in luxury until the age of six, when her father was sent to prison, and her family fell into terrible debt. Bullied by classmates who called her "the yakuza girl," and terrorized at home by a father who became a drunken, violent monster after his release from prison, Tendo rebelled. A regular visitor to nightclubs at the age of 12, she soon became a drug addict and a member of a girl gang. By the age of 15 she found herself sentenced to eight months in a juvenile detention center. Adulthood brought big bucks and glamour when Tendo started working as a bar hostess during Japan’s booming bubble economy of the nineteen- eighties. But among her many rich and loyal patrons there were also abusive clients, one of whom beat her so badly that her face was left permanently scarred. When her mother died, Tendo plunged into such a deep depression that she tried to commit suicide twice. Tendo takes us through the bad times with warmth and candor, and gives a moving and inspiring account of how she overcame a lifetime of discrimination and hardship. Getting tattooed, from the base of her neck to the tips of her toes, with a design centered on a geisha with a dagger in her mouth, was an act that empowered her to start making changes in her life. She quit her job as a hostess. On her last day at the bar she looked up at the full moon, a sight she never forgot. The moon became a symbol of her struggle to become whole, and the title of the book she wrote as an epitaph for herself and her family.

Author : Frank Jacob
Publisher : Büchner-Verlag
Page : 162 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2021-10-15
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783963178054

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The Yakuza in Popular Media by Frank Jacob Pdf

The yakuza, Japan's traditional gangsters, are famous, especially outside Japan, where the country's criminal underworld ranks next to sushi or Godzilla when it comes to their respective fame and popularity. However, in popular media the images of the Japanese gangster vary, ranging from chivalrous Robin Hood-like characters, to violent mobsters without honor and dignity. The present volume addresses these differences, i.e. the way yakuza are presented in Japanese and Western popular media. Films and autobiographical novels, inspired by historical events or personal experiences, but also by existent and sometimes even expected stereotypes, therefore often already represent a specific image of the Japanese mafia that is more like an artificial construct than actual reality. The contributions in this book consequently intend to discuss the images of the Japanese yakuza in popular media to offer a first insight into a very important yet so far understudied topic related to the history of and existent narratives within Japan's popular culture.

Author : Eiko Maruko Siniawer
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 392 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2015-03-19
Category : History
ISBN : 9780801454363

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Ruffians, Yakuza, Nationalists by Eiko Maruko Siniawer Pdf

Violence and democracy may seem fundamentally incompatible, but the two have often been intimately and inextricably linked. In Ruffians, Yakuza, Nationalists, Eiko Maruko Siniawer argues that violence has been embedded in the practice of modern Japanese politics from the very inception of the country's experiment with democracy. As soon as the parliament opened its doors in 1890, brawls, fistfights, vandalism, threats, and intimidation quickly became a fixture in Japanese politics, from campaigns and elections to legislative debates. Most of this physical force was wielded by what Siniawer calls "violence specialists": ruffians and yakuza. Their systemic and enduring political violence-in the streets, in the halls of parliament, during popular protests, and amid labor strife-ultimately compromised party politics in Japan and contributed to the rise of militarism in the 1930s. For the post-World War II years, Siniawer illustrates how the Japanese developed a preference for money over violence as a political tool of choice. This change in tactics signaled a political shift, but not necessarily an evolution, as corruption and bribery were in some ways more insidious, exclusionary, and undemocratic than violence. Siniawer demonstrates that the practice of politics in Japan has been dangerous, chaotic, and far more violent than previously thought. Additionally, crime has been more political. Throughout the book, Siniawer makes clear that certain yakuza groups were ideological in nature, contrary to the common understanding of organized crime as nonideological. Ruffians, Yakuza, Nationalists is essential reading for anyone wanting to comprehend the role of violence in the formation of modern nation-states and its place in both democratic and fascist movements.

Author : C.M. Johnson
Publisher : Triangle Interactive, Inc.
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2017-12-13
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN : 9781684442171

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The Japanese Yakuza by C.M. Johnson Pdf

Read Along or Enhanced eBook: Each Origins: Whodunnit: Organized Crime eShort is a single chapter from the full Origins: Whodunnit: Organized Crime title, packaged as a mini eBook. Origins: Whodunnit: Organized Crime eShorts include The Red Mafia, Triads, The Japanese Yakuza, and The Italian Mafia.

Author : David E. Kaplan,Alec Dubro
Publisher : Sphere
Page : 414 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 1986
Category : Organized crime
ISBN : 0708835732

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Yakuza by David E. Kaplan,Alec Dubro Pdf

Author : Robert Whiting
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 402 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2010-09-29
Category : History
ISBN : 9780307765178

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Tokyo Underworld by Robert Whiting Pdf

A riveting account of the role of Americans in the evolution of the Tokyo underworld in the years since 1945. In the ashes of postwar Japan lay a gold mine for certain opportunistic, expatriate Americans. Addicted to the volatile energy of Tokyo's freewheeling underworld, they formed ever-shifting but ever-profitable alliances with warring Japanese and Korean gangsters. At the center of this world was Nick Zappetti, an ex-marine from New York City who arrived in Tokyo in 1945, and whose restaurant soon became the rage throughout the city and the chief watering hole for celebrities, diplomats, sports figures, and mobsters. Tokyo Underworld chronicles the half-century rise and fall of the fortunes of Zappetti and his comrades, drawing parallels to the great shift of wealth from America to Japan in the late 1980s and the changes in Japanese society and U.S.-Japan relations that resulted. In doing so, Whiting exposes Japan's extraordinary "underground empire": a web of powerful alliances among crime bosses, corporate chairmen, leading politicians, and public figures. It is an amazing story told with a galvanizing blend of history and reportage.