A Land Without Guns: How Japan Has Virtually Eliminated Shooting Deaths

[HiPointDem]

66. I think this uncontextualized kind of factoid doesn't promote understanding. Yakuza are kind of

different from what we think of in the US as a 'gang' -- even different from mafia.

The Anti-Yakuza Law constrains and obstructs the yakuza, but does not ban them altogether. Yakuza membership is still not illegal. Unlike Sicilian mafia bosses and Mexican drug lords, yakuza bosses are not fugitives from the law. The addresses and telephone numbers of the major gang headquarters are publicly available. Underworld gossip is reported and analyzed in the popular Japanese press in much the same way as showbiz gossip. The legitimate status of Japan’s organized crime gangs continues to be one of their most distinctive features.

This legitimacy, together with some of the well-known peculiarities of yakuza culture, has earned the yakuza a high degree of international recognition that is arguably disproportionate to the scale of their activities today... A recent study of transnational organized crime devotes a chapter each to the Columbian drug cartels, the Italian Mafia, the Russian Mob, the Japanese yakuza, and the Chinese triads.10

But another distinctive feature of the yakuza is their insularity. Unlike those other organizations the yakuza have not established vast transnational criminal networks; they do not export drugs to the world, or sell weapons to terrorist groups, or threaten national security with anarchic violence. Though they have adjusted their methods and operations with great inventiveness over the decades, essentially the yakuza remain localized extortionists and enforcers, their rackets confined almost entirely to Japan.

http://www.japanfocus.org/-Andrew-Rankin/3688