Yakuza: A 400-Year History of the Japanese Underworld
Foreign Affairs · Elizabeth Economy ·
In Yakuza: A 400-Year History of the Japanese Underworld, an engaging history of Japan’s organized crime groups from the seventeenth century to the present, Andrew Rankin draws readers into the Yakuza’s world of full-body tattoos, severed pinky fingers, and larger-than-life crime bosses.
In his engaging history of Japan’s organized crime groups from the seventeenth century to the present, Rankin draws readers into the Yakuza’s world of full-body tattoos, severed pinky fingers, and larger-than-life crime bosses. He argues convincingly that the most important factor in the Yakuza’s longevity has been its usefulness to economic and political elites. Across centuries, members of criminal groups operated gambling dens and brothels and ran extortion rackets, but they also helped the police recover stolen goods, organized large-scale rat-eradication campaigns for municipal governments, and filled the ranks of local fire brigades. Businesses relied on them to deter blackmailers, and the national government enlisted them to suppress labor unrest and left-wing political movements, such as those in the early 1900s. Yet their fortunes rose and fell as the state’s needs evolved. Beginning in the 1980s, international concerns about the Yakuza’s presence in Japanese business deals and the expanding capabilities of the Japanese government steadily diminished the Yakuza’s influence. The creation of a national fire service, the processes of democratization and globalization, and the adoption of stronger laws against organized crime pushed the Yakuza from the center of Japanese public life to its margins, where today its members blend in with mainstream society while continuing to operate as fixers and extortionists underground.
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