Left Flank

Ken Worsley writes about how seemingly the Yakuza are becoming Japan's economic success story, and I recalled some posts Jodi at The Asia Pages did on a book review about the Yakuza.

Worsley observes on his blog, after reading this Japan Times article, that:

...the Yakuza have been trendsetters. On the one hand, they seemed to have devoted themselves to downsizing (in terms of payroll) at least half a decade earlier than their cousins in the corporate world. At the same time, Yakuza have brought about flexible business operations, a rarity in Japanese business, by allowing workers to get more work done in less time, and be involved with other activities.

The basis of this conclusion was statistics released by the National Police Agency (NPA):

Last year saw «part-time» yakuza outnumber their full-time mob counterparts for the first time ever, the National Police Agency, which has been keeping such statistics since 1958, said Thursday.

As of the end of December, the gangster population was estimated at 84,700, down about 1,600 from a year earlier.

Full-time yakuza numbered 41,500, while part-timers or semiregular members -- those not directly affiliated with the mob -- increased slightly to 43,200. In 1991, there were an estimated 63,800 full-time mobsters, and some 27,200 part-timers.

In reality, yakuza are appearing to detach themselves from full-time mob activity by engaging in business, political or social activities in a bid to camouflage their underworld affiliation, the NPA said.

«It is an urgent task to investigate the scope of the semiregular membership and to take action against companies providing funds to crime syndicates,» an NPA official said.

According to the NPA, semiregular yakuza help fund their underworld bases, and use the mob's clout to often engage in illegal activities.

Worsley is puzzled how the NPA can produce such stats. «This data is classic. First of all, we learn that it comes to us via the National Police Agency, which, â€ūhas been keeping such statistics since 1958.â€? This observer’s less cynical side assumes that it comes from high-ranking undercover agents who have infiltrated Japan’s crime syndicates in order to gather economic information. I could be wrong.»

This data must be the limits of what the NPA can do for, as Jodi passes on:

While there is a healthy section analyzing Japan’s law enforcement when it came to economic crimes of the bubble and post-bubble era, I found a particular portion of the analysis surprising.

To make a long story short, when it came to dealing with white-collar crime in the ’90s, the Japanese law enforcement basically didn’t know how to manage investigations.

It can be best summarized in the words of Wayne Drew who served two terms as the Tokyo attache for the Drug Enforcement Administration:

«There’s no national criminal intelligence database in this country[…] They don’t have any intelligence analysts. It’s incredible. You don’t get to where you want to be by being innovative. If the boss is not on the scene, without him around they cannot act. It’s better to do nothing than to make a mistake.»

I haven’t gotten beyond post-bubble Japan yet so unfortunately, I can’t tell say how things have changed or what the status-quo is now (according to the book).

According to these authors, however, while the Yakuza share many common traits with their Sicilian and American counterparts, they have managed to more successfully thrive in their elements. I suspect that this could be in part, due to Japan’s lack of preparation when it came to corporate crime in the 1990s.

So, I'm puzzled, too, about how this information was gathered.

But, at any rate, it's ironic to consider that the best businessmen in Japan might be gangsters, not only because of their «attitude», but for their «savvy».  When one considers the derision dripping from editorials in mainstream newspapers about neo-liberalism and American business culture as the «jungle», it's as if gangsters have the license to do what the «bad guys» in the West cannot, as long as they keep doing what they have to do to keep Japanese society harmonious.  In other words, the only way to deal with the fact, that society needs the less desirable aspects of capitalism to grow and prosper, is to shove it down into the underworld.