Yakuza

Yakuza is the name given to organized criminal gangs in Japan. They are a collection of separate gangs or clans comparable to the American mafia and using similar operations to prove their power. Yakuza members are considered to be criminals whose violence and existence has affected many aspects of Japanese life from illegal gambling and prostitution rackets to high-level political and financial organizations. They numbered about 20,400 members in 2023.

The name yakuza comes from a Japanese card game, Oicho-Kabu, the equivalent of the more familiar Black Jack; it is the worst possible score in the game. The general difference between the card games is that in Oicho-Kabu, a winning total of the cards is nineteen instead of twenty-one. Among the possible losing combinations, the phonetic sound of an 8-9-3 sequence is ya - ku – sa, and it refers to a totally worthless hand. Thus, the name yakuza came to mean without worth to society, i.e., someone that somehow does not fit in with the society.

There is no one defining characteristic of a Yakuza member. They are all from different backgrounds and origins, and some claim to trace their personal lineage to the Ronin, samurai warriors who found themselves on their own, following a period of political upheaval in seventeenth-century Japan. The yakuza liken themselves to "do-gooders" such as Robin Hood who defended villages in England and elsewhere from roving thieves and bandits. They pride themselves on their strict codes of conduct and their organized nature. Yakuza activities are constantly covered in the Japanese media.

Similar to the Sicilian mafia and other underworld organizations, the yakuza are grouped into families, but there are other distinctions that come into play such as the father-child relationship. What also makes them different from other mafias is that they do not hide themselves from law enforcement. Rather, they make themselves very visible by doing good deeds such as providing music and other services to the public for any number of cultural and political events.

This positive face to the public is called omote by the Japanese, which means the surface, or façade, the demeanor, or the front. Behind it, a variety of both illegal and legal deals and deeds are organized. Along with charity work and youth basketball tournaments, yakuza are involved in drugs, guns, gambling, human trafficking, import/export, shipping, and other criminal activities.

Yakuza groups are nationalistic, but that doesn’t stop them from being active worldwide. They are known to have formed alliances and working relationships with American and Sicilian mafia, Columbian drug cartels, Chinese Triads, Jamaican Posses, and assorted other criminal organizations throughout the world.

Brief History

The yakuza can trace its origins back to 1612, when people known as kabuki-mono ("crazy ones") appeared as if out of nowhere. They attracted attention with their odd clothing, strange haircuts, wild behavior, and long swords, which they carried at their sides. Kabuki-mono enjoyed annoying and terrorizing anyone at any time, even to the point of killing someone just for fun. They were eccentric samurai, used shocking names for their groups, and spoke mostly in slang. But their loyalty to one another was admirable, and they were extremely protective of each other and especially of their families. The groups were large, sometimes numbering 500,000 samurai, and they were without any leaders.

The yakuza of today do not consider the hatamoto-yakko as their forbearers. Rather, they follow the machi-yokko, or "servants of the town," who took it upon themselves to defend the villages and towns from the hatamoto-yokko.

The early yakuza appeared in the middle to late 1700s and consisted of gamblers and street peddlers. Everyone in these groups came from the same background: poor, landless, delinquents, and loners.

It was these gamblers—or bakutos—that began using the term yakuza (see explanation below) and introduced yakuza's traditional "finger-cutting," whereby the top joint of the little finger is ceremoniously severed, signifying a weakening of the hand as the gambler could not hold his sword firmly with only four fingers.

The bakuto also introduced the use of tattoos all over their bodies, which were often accompanied by a black ring around an arm for each offense committed. The tattoos were both a test of strength—it took over one hundred hours to complete a back tattoo—and a mark of being a nonconformist—someone unwilling to adapt himself to society.

The nineteenth century brought an industrial change to Japan and along with newly formed political parties and a parliament, the yakuza also began to modernize. They recruited members from construction jobs and dock workers and began to control the rickshaw business. Gambling continued covertly while they worked their way into the political scene, cooperating with the government, so they could remain unhindered in their activities.

The government used the yakuza for their ultra-nationalistic purposes, but they were no longer needed after Pearl Harbor was bombed, and they were thought to have been eliminated by the post-war American occupation. However, they survived and between 1958 and 1963, the number of members of yakuza rose to 184,000 (over 150 percent), more members than the Japanese army. In the late 1960s or early 1970s, they moved into narcotics trading and eventually increased their trade in firearms and other contraband. Since prostitution is illegal, there are many "spas" or men’s clubs with "working girls." Some 5,200 gangs operated throughout Japan, and bloody and violent wars began to break out between the different yakuza groups.

By 1996, core yakuza membership fell to 110,000. In the early twenty-first century, and wars between the nation's largest yakuza crime syndicates—the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi and the Yamaguchi-gumi—continued. There were seventy-seven skirmishes involving members of the two rival groups in 2016 with shoot-outs and killings reminiscent of those carried out by the Chicago mafia in the 1930s.

Yakuza Today

According to Japan's National Police Agency, yakuza membership declined between the 2000s and 2020s, falling to 20,400 in 2023. The agency linked the declining yakuza membership to anti-organized crime legislation, including stricter gun control, stronger anti-racketeering laws, and restrictions on banking accounts, rental apartments, cell phones, and insurance for yakuza members. In addition, membership has also shrunk as members have aged.

Instead of joining the yakuza, younger generations of gangsters in Japan have joined unorganized, loosely connected groups that the police call tokuryu. Though tokuryu are not yakuza members, they often collaborate. Police have found tokuryu to be elusive and difficult to catch because they remain anonymous, are hired via social media to perform a specific, often remote task, and form and disband repeatedly. The National Police Agency allege that tokuryu have been linked to social media scams, illegal betting, prostitution, identification card forgery, and trade in illegal drugs.

Bibliography

Boyd, John. "Japan’s Yakuza Crime Group Split Spikes Gang War Fears." Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera Media Network, 29 Oct. 2015.

Boyle, Adam. "10 Odd Facts About the Yakuza." Listverse.com, ListVerse Ltd, 23 Oct. 2013.

"Behind the Japanese Mafia: Dinner With a Yakuza Mob Boss." Business Insider, Business Insider, Inc., 2016.

Grabianowski, Ed. "How the Yakuza Works." HowStuffWorksCulture, HowStuffWorks, 2016.

"Yakuza War Engulfs 10 Japan Prefectures, Official Says." RT Question More, RT, 22 Mar. 2016.

"Yakuza Wars: Is Japan on Verge of New Wave of Gang Fighting?" Sputnick International, Sputnick, 4 Apr. 2016.

Yamaguchi, Mari. "As Japan's Yakuza Weakens, Police Focus Shifts to Unorganized Crime Hired Via Social Media." AP, 17 May 2024, apnews.com/article/japan-gangsters-yakuza-crime-fdb57ffd2325fb3aba8c211a30b6c861. Accessed 24 Mar. 2025.