yakuza

Japanese actor-director Takeshi Kitano, who brought the yakuza gangster genre to a global public, says he could have made his life in the underworld had it not been for his mother.

My company only calls when there is bad news so I was a little anxious. And you can probably get a feeling about the company’s ideas on professional development by the concern they show holding this feedback session over the phone while I’m still at work, there by limiting the amount of time that can be spent on it.

There Are No Small Promises

Japanese director Hideo Gosha (1929-1992) specialized in yakuza stories and samurai dramas, and while he isn’t quite as well known as, say, directors Kinji Fukasaku or Seijun Suzuki, his films are arguably superior. For one thing they tend to be much more polished and carefully crafted than Fukasaku’s and less distractingly pretentious than Suzuki’s.

Tokyo Vice is the autobiography of Jake Adelstein, an American who worked on the police beat at the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest newspaper, and tells the story of how he fearlessly exposed Japan’s human trafficking problem and went head to head with one of Japan’s most notorious yakuza.

It’s a real page turner, filled with drama, pathos, and even a bit of action.

The shocking revelation that Japanese yakuza gangsters received liver transplants in the U.S. over a four-year period might not have ever come to light had crime reporter Jake Adelstein accepted a six-figure compensation payment to kill the story, the writer said recently at a press luncheon.

Bankers have their exams, and now it seems the yakuza have theirs! In these tough economic times, yaks are getting their education on, hitting the books in an effort to more fully break into the greatest racket in the world… stocks! They even got a TEST!

The premier US TV news magazine, 60 Minutes, offers a 12-minute profile of the yakuza (mafia) in Japan. It focuses on the US reporter Jake Adelstein who exposed the scandal of Tadamasa Goto's illegal liver transplant at UCLA. Adelstein later wrote a book about the yakuza and continues to live and work in Tokyo despite threats against his life.

When they are not organising prostitution rings, collecting debts and shaking down bar owners for protection money, Japan's embattled gangsters are cramming for exams on how to beat the latest crackdown on their activities.

They made their money with sex, drugs and gambling but then invested much of it in high finance. Now Japan's yakuza have their back to the wall as the economic crisis takes aim.

Just like the legitimate businesses they have muscled into, Japan's mafia are being squeezed by the steepest economic downturn in decades, and as profits have plunged, management has been thinning out the ranks.

Tadamasa Goto, one of Japan's most notorious underworld bosses, is to enter the Buddhist priesthood less than a year after his volatile behaviour caused a rift in the country's biggest crime syndicate.

As leader of a yakuza – or Japanese mafia – gang, Goto amassed a fortune from prostitution, protection rackets and white-collar crime, while cultivating a reputation for extreme violence.

The yakuza invasion of Japan’s financial markets in recent years has been amazing and rapid.

now I'm not entirely certain we haven't reported this before - if so..well..just blame my tiny fish brain (The Fish Bowl Effect)..remora

Like most countries, Japan has its unsavory elements, including organized crime. Japan's version of the Italian mafia are the yakuza (YAH-koo-za), a name which literally means "8 9 3" and refers to a losing hand in a traditional Japanese card game.

“We couldn’t believe our ears,” says Spa! (Oct 28). The surprise came to its attention via a shady character who launders cell phones for a living, buying them en masse and selling them to organized crime figures and others whose business demands untraceable communication. The crux of his revelation is that the yakuza has begun tapping a once taboo revenue source: underage girls.