Monday, November 17, 2008

Japan: Two Factoids About the Yakuza

I confess to a certain fascination with the Yakuza, the Japanese mob, not so much for its place in the culture of tattoos as because of the way it seems to be semi-integrated into the larger society, perhaps performing functions the "government" cannot perform, or does not want to admit that performs.

In their exhaustive study of Yakuza culture, Kaplan and Dubro discuss the provenance of the gang culture. They betray skepticism as to the popular notion that Yakuza are descendants of the Samurai. Instead, they suggest two separate sources:
  • Tekiya, peddlers. They travel. They're rootless. They aren't subject to the kind of surveillance you would get from the home folks in a traditional village society. Not incidentally, the tekiya tended to attract alsop some of the barukumin, leather-workers and the tenders of dead bodies--outcastes, really, people who had no place and no future at home.
  • Bakuto, gamblers. Think of it this way. You're running an irrigation or construction project out in the middle of nowhere. You have to pay your workers, but it is intolerable that these worthless mugs get to keep all the money. What do you do? Why, you hire "a motley crew of outlaws, laborers, and farmers" to gamble the money away from them. Indeed a plausible folk etymology for the word "yakuza" traces it to the name of the worst possible score in a kind of Japanese blackjack--8-9-3, "ya-ku-sa," totaling 20, a wipe-out, crash-and-burn.
Source: David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro, Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld (Expanded edition 2003)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yakuza is not cool, though strangely many are fascinated by them. Movies are very stupid in their presentation. I met several made members (half pinky finger, full torso tattoos). Took a liking to me probably because I was the only white man they had ever met who could sing traditional enka well and had managed to drop into their club. They sat and poured whiskey on the house for me. Physically very restless, bold, loud, big gold and diamond rings and watches, ugly 50s style suits in big colors, coarse of tongue, not unintelligent, sort of touching this sentimental attraction to me in typical Japanese style. My friends were petrified. One fellow taught me how to say, in Osaka dialect, "You bastard, I'm going to crack your skull open!" I once said that out loud in the nightclub district while with friends and they all ran from me.