The Fading Yakuza — The Underworld's Present and Future

Last time, we looked at the weakening, splintering yakuza and at the hangure and anonymous, fluid collectives that appeared in their void. The underworld in the sense of vast organizations carrying signs has indeed thinned, and the machinery that causes harm has shifted into a less visible form.

This series began with the gamblers and street stallholders of the early modern era, and traced the black markets of the ruins, the organization of the high-growth years, the flow of money parasitic on entertainment and construction, the feuds and social unrest, the frenzy of the bubble, and the encirclement by the Anti-Boryokudan Law and the exclusion ordinances. In this final chapter we stand at that story’s present location. A yakuza sharply declining and surely aging. And the challenges borne by people who cannot fully return to society even after washing their hands of it. Where is the underworld headed? Without rushing the answer, we want to think quietly, within the range of the facts we can see.

Continuing to Decline, and Aging

The numbers calmly announce the end of an era. According to National Police Agency statistics, the combined force of full members and quasi-members of the yakuza was reported to stand at about 20,400 at the end of 2023, renewing the record low. Since it is said to have exceeded 180,000 in the early 1960s at its peak, it has shrunk to roughly a tenth over a little more than half a century.

Alongside the decline, aging is advancing. According to reporting, the average age of members has risen significantly from a decade earlier, said to exceed 50. While those 50 and older make up more than half the whole, the inflow of younger generations has thinned, and those under 20 are reported to be very few. Fewer new entrants, while those who remain grow older year by year. This means that an organization is becoming unable to pass itself on to the next generation. The number of those arrested was also reported to fall below 10,000 for two years running, and in terms of numbers, the yakuza is quietly deflating.

Washing Your Hands, Yet Unable to Return

Inside the shrinking organizations, a problem is quietly gaining weight. It is the wall faced by those who have left — former members who have washed their hands of it — as they try to return to society.

Leaving an organization does not necessarily mean an immediate move into ordinary life. The past becomes a wall when seeking work, and renting a home is far from easy. Most symbolic of all is the problem of bank accounts. To sever ties with the yakuza, many financial institutions have, it is reported, operated a policy of not opening accounts until a set period — often said to be five years — has passed since departure. This is the treatment commonly called the ‘five-year ex-gangster’ rule. Neither receiving a salary nor paying utility bills can function without an account. A person who has resolved to start over is held up at that very entrance. There has in fact been a reported case in which a former member filed suit against a financial institution, arguing that being unable to open an account even after more than five years since departure was unreasonable discrimination.

In recent years, responses to this challenge have also begun to move. The National Police Agency and the regional centers for promoting the movement to eliminate organized crime are reported to be advancing efforts to support leavers’ employment and account opening. The number of people supported in leaving is said to be around 600 a year, and the effort to open a path back, however narrow, continues alongside the effort to cut ties. How to reconcile shutting out with leaving a path back: that is what current underworld countermeasures are being asked.

Questions Surrounding the Underworld’s Future

So where will the underworld head from here? For those who have read this series this far, it may feel that not offering an easy prophecy is the honest way to close.

What is certain is several directions. The yakuza as vast organizations carrying signs continues to shrink, in both numbers and generations. On the other hand, crime forms without an organizational outline — like the hangure and the anonymous, fluid collectives — remain, and have if anything become harder to see. And the challenge of social reintegration for those who have washed their hands, a matter concerning human beings themselves, lies before us with a weight separate from the rise and fall of organizations. What declines, what changes shape, what persists — the underworld’s future lies amid the intertwining of these three currents.

The yakuza were neither chivalrous figures to be glorified, nor monsters to be lumped together and condemned and have done with. They are one structure that the society of postwar Japan produced, lived with for a long time, and is now letting go. As we see off its fading form, we want to avoid declarations. What has ended, and what remains — holding that question still, we close this story.

To all the readers who have read through to the very end, our heartfelt thanks. Thank you for accompanying us on this long journey.

【The Yakuza and Postwar Japan: An Economic History of the Underworld — End】