6 ms·

The fact that organized crime in Japan is so open and blatant blows my mind. This type of behavior has no place in a modern society. So crazy.

SG- 12y ago
And what about biker gangs (Hells Angels) and Italian mafia in the US/Canada?
- jedrek 12y ago
  What about the Italian mafia in the US/Canada?
- cheeze 12y ago
  You mean the Mafia that has been heavily targeted by the FBI in the papst 20 years? I can't speak on biker gangs, but the mafia is under a very watchful eye.
- roel_v 12y ago
  In most jurisdictions they lost the vast majority of the power they once had, so what about them?
ekezi 12y ago
In the Philippines we also have this, we call it the "Government"
- tgbrfv 12y ago
  Nope, globalisation, its the same everywhere*, the variables here are methods and "marketing"/pr - there is a smooth transition between banks and big-co's, intelligence communities, governments and organised crime .. like terrorism and ngo's, oc is just another tool in the toolbox(there were even papers published on this topic - read the non-revised versions - but I'm not here for this kind of work sooo no links)
- unreal37 12y ago
  Fun fact: I once bribed a police officer in the Philippines. Had a customs officer at the airport try to get a bribe from me (and I pretended to be ignorant to what he was getting at). It is pretty open there.
  - viewer5 12y ago
    How did each of those conversations go?
    - unreal37 12y ago
      For the police incident, a taxi I was riding in got pulled over because I (as the front passenger) wasn't wearing my seatbelt. So from the start it was quite obvious what the officer wanted. He got the drivers' license, held it up to the sun to see if it was genuine, was checking the quality of the car tires, if the license plate was properly attached at the front and back. Made a big show of it. Then he asked the taxi driver to come around the corner and talk. When the taxi driver got back, we asked "how much" and repaid him the bribe he had to give. $5. The good news about rampant corruption is police can be bribed cheaply. For the customs officer, I was bringing a box of stuff into the country as gifts to family. He was reluctant to let me through. A lot of ums, hmms, and lengthy "thoughts". I knew his thinking would be quickened by a US $20, but eff that. I wasn't doing anything wrong, so no bribe for him. I eventually made it through.
deanclatworthy 12y ago
Why does it blow your mind? Have we learnt nothing about democracy in the last hundred years? Why do we still think modern society has no place for corruption. I am sure societies two hundred years ago were saying the same thing. In fact I would suggest that technology and the global economy we live in has made corruption more accessible to the masses. The fact is society has always been corrupt. It doesn't matter whether you are living in a democratic, socialist, communist country or dictatorship - there has and always will be corruption. It's human nature. You are never going to stop bad people doing bad things.
- Rapzid 12y ago
  "Why do we still think modern society has no place for corruption." What do you mean by that? Clearly corruption exists as you pointed out later but "has no place" usually means "unacceptable". I think the reason people believe that is because it's accurate.
- davidp 12y ago
  Your acceptance of this kind of corruption is the very thing that enables it to flourish.
  - deanclatworthy 12y ago
    This is the argument I hear every time, and completely glosses over my last sentence. People have been trying successfully for thousands of years to stamp out corruption. It's a part of human nature. In the case of FIFA (and reportedly) the IOC, delegates were given gifts. How do you suggest stopping the royal family of Qatar (who we have no jurisdiction or control over) giving a FIFA delegate a rolex? Short of putting an implant in everyone's head uploading everything they do, say or think to some giant all-seeing mainframe, I doubt we can track the actions of everyone and therefore stamp out corruption. It's not about accepting the practice of corruption, it should of course be punished when proven. It's about accepting that it's human nature. You're never going to stop murderers murdering, or robbers robbing. People have been doing these things since the dawn of our existence. I found some interesting reading around this subject [1]. > Earlier Enlightenment-era thinkers looked to society to bring structure and civilization in order to restrain naturally corrupted mankind from chaos. In 'The Confessions', as in his other works, Rousseau takes an opposing view. He asserts that man begins in a pristine, uncorrupted state at birth, and gradually becomes corrupted through the assertion of society upon the individual. The true state of nature, says Rousseau, is uncorrupted Whether you believe society corrupts the uncorrupted human mind, or that humans are born corrupted is up to you. I believe that no matter what, corruption is part of us, and part of being in a society. [1] http://www.academia.edu/1922627/Rousseau_on_the_Loss_of_Identity_and_the_Origin_of_Human_Corruption http://www.academia.edu/1922627/Rousseau_on_the_Loss_of_Iden...
sliverstorm 12y ago
From what I've heard about it, seems as simple as the big organizations got so powerful they can afford to be open & blatant. Why they are able to become so powerful is an interesting question, and seems to tie in to Japan's culture and the conduct of the yakuza.
veidr 12y ago
I'm not an expert on the topic; just a Tokyo resident. But it seems clear to me that there are advantages to this stance, too, which you may not be considering. It's not possible to eliminate organized crime entirely. Not anywhere, unless you go full police-state with cameras inside every home and business. (And probably not even then.) So keeping it semi-open and well-known makes it more manageable. It's a tradeoff. One reason we don't have much collateral violence from organized crime here, I think.
- willvarfar 12y ago
  Is it like Discworld where Ankh Morpork has a Guild of Thieves and a Guild for Assassins?
- maaku 12y ago
  Better the enemy you know...
vinceguidry 12y ago
It's not open and blatant. They have publicly visible infrastructure and operate legitimate businesses. (on the surface) This doesn't mean their criminality is blatant. They hide that behind a veil of operational security that makes it difficult to catch them. Think of how policing of organized crime works here. The authorities generally know who the leaders are, they may even interact with them semi-regularly. The leaders lead normal lives, and they lead criminal lives. Only the normal part 'shows'. Just because you know someone's a criminal doesn't make it any easier to prosecute them. You have to build up a case and make it stick. When crime is organized, criminals can afford a stiff defense against that sort of thing. So the authorities have to take their time and get their paperwork in order. Time they don't have to take when it's just a few idiots robbing liquor stores. So a known crime family in Japan can buy a big office building and staff it. It's not like they're hanging a sign out saying, "hey, lookie here, bad stuff going on in here. Come raid me pigs!" Do you know who owns all the office buildings in your city? It takes some journalist to make it publicly known. Open criminal activity is far more prevalent in the US than it is in Japan.
- mahranch 12y ago
  > It's not open and blatant. They have publicly visible infrastructure and operate legitimate businesses. (on the surface) This doesn't mean their criminality is blatant. This is exactly it. It's like someone seeing an ad on TV for the reality show "Mob Wives" and getting the impression that the Mafia is something that operates in the open in the U.S.

SG- 12y ago

And what about biker gangs (Hells Angels) and Italian mafia in the US/Canada?

jedrek 12y ago
What about the Italian mafia in the US/Canada?
cheeze 12y ago
You mean the Mafia that has been heavily targeted by the FBI in the papst 20 years? I can't speak on biker gangs, but the mafia is under a very watchful eye.
roel_v 12y ago
In most jurisdictions they lost the vast majority of the power they once had, so what about them?

ekezi 12y ago

In the Philippines we also have this, we call it the "Government"

tgbrfv 12y ago
Nope, globalisation, its the same everywhere*, the variables here are methods and "marketing"/pr - there is a smooth transition between banks and big-co's, intelligence communities, governments and organised crime .. like terrorism and ngo's, oc is just another tool in the toolbox(there were even papers published on this topic - read the non-revised versions - but I'm not here for this kind of work sooo no links)
unreal37 12y ago
Fun fact: I once bribed a police officer in the Philippines. Had a customs officer at the airport try to get a bribe from me (and I pretended to be ignorant to what he was getting at). It is pretty open there.
- viewer5 12y ago
  How did each of those conversations go?
  - unreal37 12y ago
    For the police incident, a taxi I was riding in got pulled over because I (as the front passenger) wasn't wearing my seatbelt. So from the start it was quite obvious what the officer wanted. He got the drivers' license, held it up to the sun to see if it was genuine, was checking the quality of the car tires, if the license plate was properly attached at the front and back. Made a big show of it. Then he asked the taxi driver to come around the corner and talk. When the taxi driver got back, we asked "how much" and repaid him the bribe he had to give. $5. The good news about rampant corruption is police can be bribed cheaply. For the customs officer, I was bringing a box of stuff into the country as gifts to family. He was reluctant to let me through. A lot of ums, hmms, and lengthy "thoughts". I knew his thinking would be quickened by a US $20, but eff that. I wasn't doing anything wrong, so no bribe for him. I eventually made it through.

deanclatworthy 12y ago

Why does it blow your mind? Have we learnt nothing about democracy in the last hundred years? Why do we still think modern society has no place for corruption. I am sure societies two hundred years ago were saying the same thing. In fact I would suggest that technology and the global economy we live in has made corruption more accessible to the masses. The fact is society has always been corrupt. It doesn't matter whether you are living in a democratic, socialist, communist country or dictatorship - there has and always will be corruption. It's human nature. You are never going to stop bad people doing bad things.

Rapzid 12y ago
"Why do we still think modern society has no place for corruption." What do you mean by that? Clearly corruption exists as you pointed out later but "has no place" usually means "unacceptable". I think the reason people believe that is because it's accurate.
davidp 12y ago
Your acceptance of this kind of corruption is the very thing that enables it to flourish.
- deanclatworthy 12y ago
  This is the argument I hear every time, and completely glosses over my last sentence. People have been trying successfully for thousands of years to stamp out corruption. It's a part of human nature. In the case of FIFA (and reportedly) the IOC, delegates were given gifts. How do you suggest stopping the royal family of Qatar (who we have no jurisdiction or control over) giving a FIFA delegate a rolex? Short of putting an implant in everyone's head uploading everything they do, say or think to some giant all-seeing mainframe, I doubt we can track the actions of everyone and therefore stamp out corruption. It's not about accepting the practice of corruption, it should of course be punished when proven. It's about accepting that it's human nature. You're never going to stop murderers murdering, or robbers robbing. People have been doing these things since the dawn of our existence. I found some interesting reading around this subject [1]. > Earlier Enlightenment-era thinkers looked to society to bring structure and civilization in order to restrain naturally corrupted mankind from chaos. In 'The Confessions', as in his other works, Rousseau takes an opposing view. He asserts that man begins in a pristine, uncorrupted state at birth, and gradually becomes corrupted through the assertion of society upon the individual. The true state of nature, says Rousseau, is uncorrupted Whether you believe society corrupts the uncorrupted human mind, or that humans are born corrupted is up to you. I believe that no matter what, corruption is part of us, and part of being in a society. [1] http://www.academia.edu/1922627/Rousseau_on_the_Loss_of_Identity_and_the_Origin_of_Human_Corruption http://www.academia.edu/1922627/Rousseau_on_the_Loss_of_Iden...

sliverstorm 12y ago

From what I've heard about it, seems as simple as the big organizations got so powerful they can afford to be open & blatant. Why they are able to become so powerful is an interesting question, and seems to tie in to Japan's culture and the conduct of the yakuza.

veidr 12y ago

I'm not an expert on the topic; just a Tokyo resident. But it seems clear to me that there are advantages to this stance, too, which you may not be considering. It's not possible to eliminate organized crime entirely. Not anywhere, unless you go full police-state with cameras inside every home and business. (And probably not even then.) So keeping it semi-open and well-known makes it more manageable. It's a tradeoff. One reason we don't have much collateral violence from organized crime here, I think.

willvarfar 12y ago
Is it like Discworld where Ankh Morpork has a Guild of Thieves and a Guild for Assassins?
maaku 12y ago
Better the enemy you know...

vinceguidry 12y ago

It's not open and blatant. They have publicly visible infrastructure and operate legitimate businesses. (on the surface) This doesn't mean their criminality is blatant. They hide that behind a veil of operational security that makes it difficult to catch them. Think of how policing of organized crime works here. The authorities generally know who the leaders are, they may even interact with them semi-regularly. The leaders lead normal lives, and they lead criminal lives. Only the normal part 'shows'. Just because you know someone's a criminal doesn't make it any easier to prosecute them. You have to build up a case and make it stick. When crime is organized, criminals can afford a stiff defense against that sort of thing. So the authorities have to take their time and get their paperwork in order. Time they don't have to take when it's just a few idiots robbing liquor stores. So a known crime family in Japan can buy a big office building and staff it. It's not like they're hanging a sign out saying, "hey, lookie here, bad stuff going on in here. Come raid me pigs!" Do you know who owns all the office buildings in your city? It takes some journalist to make it publicly known. Open criminal activity is far more prevalent in the US than it is in Japan.

mahranch 12y ago
> It's not open and blatant. They have publicly visible infrastructure and operate legitimate businesses. (on the surface) This doesn't mean their criminality is blatant. This is exactly it. It's like someone seeing an ad on TV for the reality show "Mob Wives" and getting the impression that the Mafia is something that operates in the open in the U.S.