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Why the yakuza are not illegal
- anon4 11y agoWas expecting "because they control a lot of money", but got reasoning more in line with Ankh-Morpork's Patrician's view on the Guild of Thieves.
- BetaCygni 11y agoThieves' Guild - Formally the Guild of Thieves, Cutpurses and Allied Trades https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilds_of_Ankh-Morpork#Thieves.27_Guild https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilds_of_Ankh-Morpork#Thieves...
- wodenokoto 11y agoHow is this so much different than HA? It's not like their hangouts are unknown and unlisted and members make a big deal of showing where they belong.
- mirimir 11y agoWhat's "HA"? Edit: Never mind. Hell's Angels. Maybe if HA had been around since the 1600s, nothing ;)
- caf 11y agoI was going to say much the same thing - the same is true of all the 1%ers, as well as syndicates like the 'Ndrangheta.
- wodenokoto 11y agoHA = Hells Angels. Sorry about that.
- louhike 11y agoI think the main difference is that there is more tolerance in Japan from the autorities. They consider it better to have Yakuzas than less "disciplined" and more independant criminals.
- VLM 11y agoThey haven't monetized theater grade law enforcement like the US war on drugs. Its odd, because they probably could make make quite a few Yen by getting the population all wound up about a "war on yakuza" and militarize their police and build private prisons and flood their justice system with cases. Clearly, enormous amounts of money have been made by monetizing policing in the USA, so there must be some interesting cultural difference that prevents that toxic meme from infecting Japan. Whatever it is, we could use some of those antibodies here.
- pakled_engineer 11y agoAll they can do is prevent HA bikers from using their club logos for intimidation here, they couldn't win a case declaring the entire organization criminal. The large biker crews here start puppet gangs now to do all the criminal activity so "Angels of Hades MC" end up being declared a criminal org with all it's assets seized, then they just make a new puppet org "Satan's Wings MC" and repeat.
- peterwwillis 11y agoThey were historically a legitimate feudal organization, they have a strict code of honor, they provide aid to local people in the event of natural disasters, they have political ties, there's few Japanese laws specifically to help prosecute organized crime, some of the groups disdain certain activities like theft or drug trade, and they operate in a quasi-open fashion.
- mirimir 11y agoMore than "quasi-open"! Those tattoos say a lot about a member's place in the hierarchy.
- tsotha 11y agoAll that's changing, though. The younger guys eschew tattoos and finger chopping. Plus, they view drugs as an increasingly important part of the business. They're being driven slowly underground with changes in the law, and when that process is complete they'll probably be few in number but far more violent.
- IndianAstronaut 11y agoI have also heard the younger ones participate in quite a few scams for moneymaking such as intentional car accidents.
- hkmurakami 11y agoAlso human trafficking.
- digi_owl 11y ago> All that's changing, though. The younger guys eschew tattoos and finger chopping. Echoing a generational change in the nation in general. Damn it, it may be easy to forget but Japan was feudal until the 1800s (the last shogun stepped down in 1867). And their WW2 militarism was something of a last hurrah of that. Since then it seems to have been directed more inwards, in how they run businesses etc. The execs care for the workers, and in return the workers dedicate themselves to the company (or some such). As best i can tell, the core of most stories produced in Japan even today can be boiled down to the old samurai question of duty vs self-respect. Meaning that you will find a endless row of characters that spend time agonizing over following orders (or expectations) from their superiors, even though they personally find it wrong or offensive in some way. Looking for some escape clause that allow them to appease both.
- solidsnack9000 11y agoThe article does not really go into why.
- SixSigma 11y agoThe Internet irks me with this, time after time. Just when I think I have finished reading the introduction, the article comes to an end.
- caskance 11y agoIt assumes readers are already familiar with Discworld.
- pakled_engineer 11y agoThe why is that they have compartmentalized their organization enough so that law enforcement can't prosecute them. There's never any provable direct links to criminal activity so members can parade around in full view without worry about arrest. If you are a member of these orgs all you do is pass money between lawyers. Triads and Yakuza offer a package like SaaS. You pay them for all your various operational needs but they do not get involved in your business, so you are free to do whatever you want, so long as you keep paying them a monthly fee by using their laundering services, and you don't heat out the streets so much that it affects business. Everybody works with them because they have their own banks and financial networks built over decades with rules about not burning customers. No lesser gang will run the risk of rising up against them and there really is no reason to since they are not involved in your decision making they are just cleaning your illegal profits at 30% fee and offer capital to expand your criminal operations. They also have extensive prisoner services and since every gang member ends up doing a few months for being caught with an illegal handgun you need them to pay off rivals not to kill you inside, to pay your family money while incarcerated, to offer you credit when you come out to restart a drug business ect. Now you see where the myth of the Yakuza and Triads having millions of hitmen comes from, since all their customers are criminal street gangs it's trivial for them to organize mass violence by merely calling in all their favors through a proxy. Street gang X probably had members avoid jail with an expensive defense attorney the Yakuza provided, so being thugs they will jump at the chance to pay back the debt with violence since that's what they specialize in anyway.
- Paul_S 11y agoI'd like to think it's because the cost of fighting them is higher than the cost of letting them operate. Sadly it might be more to do with social acceptance.
- taejo 11y agoBecause making membership of an organization illegal is a violation of freedom of association, as guaranteed by Article 21 of the Constitution of Japan?
- vinceguidry 11y agoFreedom of association does not typically disallow the government from designating certain organizations to be illegal and barring membership in them. Happens here in the US all the time. No freedom is absolute. What keeps them from abusing it here is checks and balances. For example, trade unions were considered an illegal restraint on trade until the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914. Also, certain forms of corporation have been made legal and illegal over the course of history.
- taejo 11y agoUnlike Japan, the USA doesn't have an explicit constitutional guarantee of freedom of association (though the Supreme Court - reasonably - starts to read such a right into the first amendment in the 50s). If I understand what I'm reading correctly, the pre-1914 trade union ban was not a ban on association (workers could still form professional associations, working-men's clubs, etc.) but on "cartel-like" behaviour: collective bargaining, strike action, etc.
- vinceguidry 11y agoI wouldn't read too much into it, Japan has a Western style constitution, and the idea of a universal right to free association didn't really start to coalesce until the mid-20th century. Japan's constitution happened to get ratified in 1947. If we had to do the US Constitution over, there would probably be freedom to associate codified.
- aaron695 11y agoIt's very scary that the world has become a place that people think it's normal to arrest people just because they are a member of a group without any evidence that person has committed a crime.
- gambiting 11y agoI think it's completely normal and I expect people to be arrested for belonging to neo-nazi organisations, especially since simply displaying any nazi symbols is illegal where I live(as it should be). Is that scary?
- xentronium 11y agoNazi symbols include e.g. swastikas which had long prior been traditional symbols in hinduism and other religions. Besides, how do you distinguish simply radical right-wing crackheads from neonazis using only their speeches/statements?
- gambiting 11y agoI live right next to the former Auschwitz concentration camp - If some idiot pulls out a swastika during a demonstration and walks with the nazi salute I really don't believe he's simply displaying his affection for hinduism, and I really expect the police to arrest him.
- xentronium 11y agoWell, to me it looks like a freedom of speech issue. As someone living in a state where freedom of speech is really oppressed, I'd rather have idiots throw nazi salutes than people getting real prison terms for something they said.
- ckozlowski 11y agoThe case of Germany is a bit special, and deserves some explanation. After the war, the Allies had a problem. The Nazi party was never a majority, but millions were members, some cohered to various degrees, some joining freely for various reasons, some of which were innocuous. But the party of National Socialism had advocated, then lead, the destruction of millions and called for a policy of war, and its continued existance was unacceptable. To imprison and punish every living member would have been completely unfeasible for numerous reasons, both moral and logistical. So a different solution had to be worked out. Those who had enough reason or evidence against them to bring charges were tried, but for everyone else (and remember, we're talking millions here), including members of the Wehrmacht, a sort of parole for the entire country was instituted. All of these men and women would live free, with no charges brought, under the condition that the Nazi party was never spoken of or promoted again. Ever. And this was enshrined in law. Those laws still exist. Now, whether or not you think they're still relevant, I cannot say. I'm an American expat in Germany, so I have my values on one side, and the stories surrounding me on the other. Here, in this country, it's a complicated and uncomfortable issue.
- barking 11y agoSummary: Probably not illegal because "Japan, it seems, prefers organised crime to the disorganised alternative."
- OliverJones 11y agoA gang war in the 1980s claimed "over two dozen lives," eh? Every murder is a terrible. But a toll of two dozen is typical of a WEEK in south Chicago. Maybe there's something to be said for the writer's conclusion that "organized" crime is better than the alternative.
- ekianjo 11y agoWell Yakuza usually do not attack regular people and rather focus on businesses and corporations to get most of their revenues - and they own the sleazy businesses in town as well where people pay cash only.
- digi_owl 11y agoDunno why, but i have the impression that organized crime in USA operated similarly until the prohibition. Since then they figured out how lucrative it was to deal in illegal substances, and shit snowballed from there.
- douche 11y agoRoughly until that era, most of the hard drugs that street gangs deal in today were unregulated, so there wasn't a whole lot of margin in pushing cocaine, marijuana, or opiates. Anyone and their brother could just bottle up coca extract and laudanum and sell it as "Dr So-and-So's Magical Elixir" at the county fair.
- ohashi 11y agoMost things are purchased in cash in Japan
- unsignedint 11y ago
- smegel 11y ago> At least now they are regulated and subject to the law Even when they are breaking the law?
- ekianjo 11y agoThe police in Japan does not go against Yakuza unless they want to show off or make an impression. There is a clear understanding of each other's boundaries and most of the time there is no investigation going on with gangs' actions.
- brador 11y agoWhat if they didn't exist, would Japanese society be better? It looks like all the good points they have could be replaced by local community initiatives and collective planning. Imagine a society free of aggressive and predatory crime. It's possible with the technology we have today. What are we waiting for?
- kbutler 11y ago> Imagine a society free of aggressive and predatory crime. It's possible with the technology we have today. What are we waiting for? The concern is generally what else you give up in order to remove the crime. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia
- TeMPOraL 11y agoWe've been trained by the works of fiction to immediately pattern-match high-tech crime prevention with dystopia, but I think it might be good to stop for a minute and consider if the belief isn't seriously biased. It's incredibly hard to make an utopia that's not immediately boring - to be enjoyable, narratives require conflict. Even Star Trek, arguably the last popular sci-fi with positive outlook on the future, just took the conflict out of the utopian Earth and moved it somewhere else. So the reason crime-solving technology leads to dystopia is not a feature of the tech, it's just because an utopia would be boring.
- kbutler 11y agoNo, we've been trained by centuries of experience that the concentration of power invites abuse. Before we give the government the tools to monitor and control the populace, we need to make sure the populace has the tools to monitor and control the government. (I originally wrote "any organization", but any organization with such compulsory power becomes the de facto government...) A recent sci-fi with a positive view of hyper-tech civilization is "The Culture" (Iain Banks). However, the interesting stories there all occur on the borders, with the interaction of the Culture with non-Culture civilizations. "Player of Games" is a good starting point.
- kriro 11y ago"Should we outlaw this" vs "freedom" is an interesting and hard problem especially if you are generally inclined to mistrust the state and not see it as a great benefactor of humankind by default. I live in a country that is quicker to outlaw certain things which in the US would be considered a breach of freedom of speech (or religion). Nazi symbols is one example but 1%er symbols were also outlawed for a while until it got overturned. I'm favoring the "don't outlaw" stance but the other side has sensible arguments as well. Scientology is another good example. I can see the argument for "freedom of religion" but depending on your views about the state it has a certain obligation to protect citizens from their own idiocy. The borders in the sand are hard to draw. A very common case is that people who vehemently disagree with outlawing Scientology also strongly believe vaccination is a good idea. I think that's a fairly inconsistent stance but it is also completely reasonable (as in it protects the person and also others like their family in both cases). Political parties are also a good example. I think the stance of "never outlaw, society has to handle that and let the idiots be idiots" is perfectly reasonable but parties get tax money for various things and I can see how people have a problem with their tax money funding neo-nazi organizations. I used to be more radically pro freedom no questions asked but these days my stance is pro freedom by default but some deep thinking and gut check for individual cases. It bothers me a lot that I'm fairly inconsistent (since I am against maximum freedom in quite a few cases) but it's the most reasonable course of action for my value system.
- mlonkibjuyhv 11y agoThe ability to entertain conflicting views is the mark of wisdom. - someone, somewhere
- ckozlowski 11y agoHere ya go: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." -Aristotle
- zo1 11y agoIf you have conflicting views on a single-topic, then your philosophy is not universal because you're contradicting yourself or making exceptions. If more people learnt to rectify those inconsistencies and clarify their primitive beliefs (in reference to primitive types), we'd definitely live in a wonderful world (whatever that may be).
- digi_owl 11y agoBetter the gangsters you know,than the gangsters you don't?