Series ・ 10 parts

The Yakuza and Postwar Japan: An Economic History of the Underworld

The gamblers who gathered at early-modern gaming dens, the tekiya stallkeepers who set up at festival fairs. Born at the margins of the modern state, cloaking themselves in a self-image of chivalry, these groups lived off the gambling and entertainment trades. What were they really? Episode 1 traces the origins of the later yakuza, viewed coolly through the lens of institutions and money.

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01 Gamblers and Stallkeepers — The Origins of the Yakuza The gamblers who gathered at early-modern gaming dens, the tekiya stallkeepers who set up at festival fairs. Born at the margins of the modern state, cloaking themselves in a self-image of chivalry, these groups lived off the gambling and entertainment trades. What were they really? Episode 1 traces the origins of the later yakuza, viewed coolly through the lens of institutions and money.
02 Order in the Ruins — Postwar Chaos and the Black Markets Defeat in 1945. Goods ran short, rationing failed to function, and the reach of the police fell away. What filled that void were the black markets that overflowed the spaces in front of train stations. The tekiya who apportioned the stalls, the newly emerged gurentai. Episode 2 traces, through the lens of economics, how the illegal order that spread across the ruins where the law had stopped came to form the prototype of the postwar yakuza.
03 High Growth and Organization — In the Shadow of a Swelling Economy In the 1960s, behind the rapid growth of the Japanese economy, the violent gangs were transforming from local groups into nationwide organizations. Wide-area expansion and the building of hierarchies, recurring conflicts, and the police 'summit operations.' Within the bounds of the public record, we trace calmly the contours of an underworld that swelled in the shadow of growth.
04 The Flow of Money — Show Business, Construction, Finance What did the swollen organizations run on? Entertainment promotion, the brokering of construction labor, finance and debt collection, the sokaiya racketeers, and the mikajimeryo protection levy. We read calmly, as economic structure, the mechanisms for profiting while clinging to the boundary between the legal and the illegal—keeping the side of the victims in view.
05 Conflict and Social Unrest — Violence Seen from the Side That Gets Caught in It In the 1980s, the struggle over the top of the organizations spilled into the streets, and incidents in which uninvolved citizens were caught in the crossfire were reported. From the perspective of those who suffered the harm of this violence, this episode soberly traces society's anxiety and backlash, and the turning point toward stricter enforcement, within the bounds of publicly established fact.
06 The Bubble and the Shadows of the Economy — Land-Sharking and Bad Debt In the late 1980s, amid soaring land and stock prices, the underworld drew close to the heart of the economy through land-sharking and debt collection. And after the collapse, a vast mountain of bad debt gave rise to new spoils. This episode soberly traces the era when the economy and the crime groups came closest, and the price it exacted, within the bounds of publicly confirmed fact.
07 The Anti-Boryokudan Act — The State Strikes Back In 1992, the Anti-Boryokudan Act took effect. A new system of 'designated boryokudan groups,' restrictions on the demanding of protection money, and a mechanism that squeezed these groups through administrative orders rather than criminal punishment. The state set about reorganizing its relationship with organized crime from the ground up. We trace that structure calmly.
08 Exclusion Ordinances and the Age of Removal In 2010, Fukuoka enacted the nation's first boryokudan exclusion ordinance, and the following year it spread nationwide. Bank accounts, contracts, corporate activity — a mechanism for shutting organized crime out of every point of contact with society took shape. We trace the structure of an age of removal, in which the leading role in punishment shifted from the police to society itself.
09 The Hangure and a Transforming Underworld — Violence Made Invisible Cornered by the Anti-Boryokudan Law and the exclusion ordinances, the organized crime groups weakened and split apart again and again. Into that void stepped the hangure, who belonged to no group, and the anonymous, fluid collectives behind special fraud. We read the hard-to-see modern underworld as a structure, within the bounds of what has been reported.
10 The Fading Yakuza — The Underworld's Present and Future Membership has plummeted, and those who remain are aging. The hard problem of the former member who, even after washing his hands of it, cannot so much as open a bank account and cannot return to society. We look at the present of a fading yakuza through facts within the bounds of what has been reported, and quietly close all ten episodes — without glorifying or condemning — as a question about the underworld's future.