Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld

by David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro

Book Overview

Known for their striking full-body tattoos and severed fingertips, Japan's gangsters comprise a criminal class eighty thousand strong--more than four times the size of the American Mafia. Despite... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520274903
• ISBN13: 9780520274907
• Release Date: October 2012
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 440 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Portrait of a secret society

There aren't many non-fiction books in English about the Yakuza, and this one is the probably the best history of the secret society. The Yakuza is often compared to the Mafia, which can be misleading. Japanese gangsters are involved in different kinds of rackets and are more ingrained in mainstream Japanese life than the Mafia ever was in America. The authors do a good job explaining the history and customs of this group and showing why they are unique among criminal organizations. Highly recommended.

Solid Reference Work--Need Same for US

This is a solid reference work, and expands and updates on the earlier work that was itself a classic. It examines structured corruption in which organized crime, organized politics, and secretive corporate conglomerates, all help one another become wealthy at the expense of the public. There are a number of fine points across the book that merit emphasis here, and one of the earliest is that of how the CIA and the Army G-2 deliberately nurtured Japanese criminal organizations during the occupation, because they were "anti-communist." There is an excellent section of the book that focuses on how the US government fostering of political corruption in Japan in turn led to US corporate corruption, to include the funding of separate US corporate foreign policies anti-thetical to those Congress was trying to foster in the days before Congress abdicated its responsibilities.Lee Kuan Yew would like this book. He says the only antidote to organized crime is strong extended families--natural families whose kinship equates to ethics. The book documents the spread of crime in Japan to every aspect of life, and one can only be saddened to see how the concepts of samurai honor and loyalty have been turned upside down.Three ideas keep running through my mind as I read the book, two of them from the author and the third my own. First, the authors focused on the importance of following the money. He knew and wrote about this in the mid-1980's, but today the US Government is still marginally able to follow money, especially informal money that the FBI only discovered in the late 1990's with help from Dick Clarke (see my review of "Against All Enemies"). Following the money is *the* intelligence challenge of the 21st Century, and it is not something CIA can do--we have to find means of integrating all seven tribes, and especially business and banks as well as law enforcement at every level. Second, the author documents the weakness of Japanese law enforcement in a manner that highlights the weakness of US law enforcement at the state and local levels. Think of this book as traveling back in time to Japan, and then forward in time to the US, where we are now suffering many of the same problems. Finally, being a fan of Special Operations properly done, I realized that 21st Century warfare is going to be about man-hunts. It is going to be about tribal and criminal orders of battle, and about decapitating terrorist and criminal gangs without mercy. The book spends some time on how US forces overseas are in fact a major stimulant and catalyst for crime, especially drugs and trade in women and children. By sending our forces and their money into austere conditions, we have actually created 750 "crime magnets" all over the world. And if you think our secret bases overseas are secret from anyone other than the US public, think again--one has only to ask the prostitutes. There is another important aspect of GI (Government Issue) life overseas: too many of o

"Recommended Reading" by JPRI

The Japan Policy Research Institute has just added "Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld, Expanded Edition" to its recommended-reading list of twenty "Classics." Other titles on the list include Ruth Benedict's "The Crysanthemum and the Sword" and Takeo Doi's "The Anatomy of Dependence."

A Thorough and Excellent Study

I have been interested in the topic of transnational organized crime for about four years now. Most research on the topic that you will find today concentrates on the more sensational groups like the Russian (Eurasian) groups, the Colombian drug trafficking organizations, and of course the "traditional" OC groups from Sicily and mainland Italy. Very little work has focused exclusively on Asian groups, most especially the Yakuza. Kaplan and Dubro's work helps to fill that gap immensely. Their work is undoubtedly the best material on the Yakuza available. For a more comprehensive look at Asian OC in general, Bertil Lintner's "Blood Brothers" is excellent as well.

Excellent Book!

This book turned out to be very informative on the subject oforganized crime in Japan.The author has researched his subject matter as well as conducted interviews to give you the inside story on the underworld in Japan.The author gives you the wholestory on the crime enterprises that the Yakuza are involved in in Japan.You are also given the identities of some of the bigleaders in the Japanese underworld. The author also explains thesignificance of the traditional tatoos.You are also given the law enforcement side of this situation. This is a very good storyfor police buffs. Read this book. It is very informative as wellas well written.