Hakki
>Notice, readers, that I asked for a simple figure, two bytes (I hope). I
still haven't got it ;-) Missing joints and prosthetics don't count. I hear
plastic fingers are going like hotcakes.<
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,9 1/2, 10!!!!
Italian Americans might sensitive about gangster jokes. As far as I know, my ancestors did legitimate work and hung out at the Knights of Columbus even though they weren't practicing Catholics (something to do with a bunch of Boston Presbyterian Progressive types helping the family out). I think an uncle or two ran numbers.
Hakki:
>OK I get it: The Yakuza are just doing >normal business, or they're only
>working on contract, or they're really >interested in Hawaii or Guam, they
>make ideal scapegoats, etc.
Scapegoats in bad times, but there is something else here, too. The Japanese too often believe themselves 'uniquely unique' (and so are shocked to find out things like Koreans and Polynesians eat raw seafood or that Tibetans eat fermented soybeans or that Americans are more politically conservative than they are!).
But in the western press the 'exoticism' of Japan is the only thing that sells copy. So the dumbass reporters find some sort of thread to interpret all of Japan and run with it. This latest one with the yakuza (a bunch of gangs who work any hole in the economy they can find to make money) fits the pattern. If you've ever lived in a crowded, developed country you soon find out that Japan is not altogether that exotic. Imagine if a reporter interpreted Turkey discussing whirling dervish rituals or something?
In Japan the next thing to look for might be an anti-Korean backlash. Afterall, they muscled the yakuza out of legal (and illegal) gambling, and they send money back to N. Korea, and they pool their money to invest in Japan in order to get rich. There are even 'Jewish' theories circulating in the popular press to explain it all.
Hakki:
>With all due allowances for the Swedes' permanent consternation at the
immorality beyond their borders, isn't the Western impression, however
tainted, that the Yakuza have their own political agenda and their own pols,
and possibly their own political party, not even a little bit true?<
They are linked with corrpution in the construction industry and in real estate, and they are known to support right wing groups (who for the most part look and act scary, but don't really have any set of coherent views about anything in order to appeal to much of anyone). Really, I can't see how they are much different from crime syndicates anywhere. It's them against the police, but when the police aren't around to referee, it's them against themselves.
Hakki:
> It's true the MOF is a dreaded dictatorship - it has been "scapegoated" by
the
West almost as much as the Yakuza, if writing about it is scapegoating - but
what about Japan's so-called democracy? Who exactly has the LDP been
representing all these years? <
No ministry is all powerful. That is another myth of western analysis of Japan. The naive reporter latches on to one ministry to explain all of what the government does or does not do. It never works. Back in the late 80s and 90s, as part of the surplus dollar recirculationg scheme, the Republicans in the US wanted Japan to undertake unprecedented construction projects and open them up to their interests, like Bechtel. So the Construction Ministry became very powerful because of all the planning and all the money. If any ministry has yakuza links it's this one.
The M of F is only one of a bunch of rival ministries that often don't cooperate on anything. I think the M of F thought they could steer Japan into the waters that the US has been opening up , so to speak, in globalization of banking, finance and insurance. They have been a disaster, with or without yakuza help.
As for the LDP, they are now dominated by a group or groups who think they can turn around Japan and center it on the apparent winners: Sony, Toyota, and the list keeps getting shorter, but two years ago Softbank.
People in Japan are more scared than anything I've seen (though when the Nikkei wiped out and the yen hit 79 to the dollar, everyone knew hard times were coming if these couldn't be corrected, and they weren't).
>My impression is that they're more deeply
connected to the Yakuza than the Italian CD were to the Mafia.<
Just as there was no unified Mafia, there is no unified yakuza. BTW, Japan finally got around to adopting a Giuliani-style unconstitutional anti-racketeering law, and this law, passed in the early 90s, might be one reason why the yakuza branched out into other things. The last story I heard about the yakuza in the news was a gunfight over Russian crabs on Hokkaido (don't worry, it was only Russians who died). Funnier than the stuff in the comic books actually.
>I agree 100% that Dubya's visit is a raid but weren't the Yakuza looting
the
place before Dubya got there?<
You can be sure Dubya and daddy's investment companies aren't interested in yakuza loans.
I think most banks and credit unions in Japan are quite legitimate and try to be well-run businesses. And there is also the postal savings system which is safe and well-run (though their higher ups did get caught up in trying to finance anti-Koizumi politicians, since Koizumi is so anti-Post).
I think much of the yakuza-jusen thing has been cleaned up, and they aren't looting anymore. This was the economic bubble and immediate aftermath. You also have to remember that one area where the yakuza were most active was the Kansai, and it was this region that got hit with a devastating earthquake back in 1995, an earthquake that killed far more people and caused far more damage to fixed assets than 9-11. So a lot of what the yakuza were into goes back to the chaos of that event. When markets fail, either the government has to step in or the gangsters will. In the case of Japan, it was both, but I'd bet the government is less popular in the Kansai than even the gangsters are.
>I guess it all boils down to the figures, which you may have (though I
doubt it bec money laundering isn't a crime and therefore isn't investigated
in Japan, supposing the police would want to investigate): What are the
Yakuza worth; how much money can they throw around? You know about how the
Yamaguchi-gumi fed and gave shelter to the Kobe victims. I recently came
across a story about a Yakuza boss buying 1 M shares of JAL. But perhaps
this story is more eloquent<
Well, the Yamaguchi-gumi is intimately connected with the rebuilding of Kobe, for better or worse. JAL common shares are almost junk by the way. Maybe he wants an airline for himself to fly to Hawaii.
About the article. O.K. the yakuza take and put money onto high tech bets. I haven't seen any huge rise in these companies stocks here. There was a bit of a yahoojapan softbank miniboom but that's done now, too.
Anyway, how does this hurt those companies anymore than Carlyle Group doing the same? It would seem they aren't disrupting these companies about dividends at yearly meetings because these companies don't pay any dividends. Your Swedes gave a figure of total yakuza assets coming to 11 billion dollars. Compare that to one venture equity fund out of the US.
Charles Jannuzi