Yakuza

• 1. Introduction

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  The yakuza, the members of Japan's organized crime syndicates, are named after a losing hand of cards. In the traditional game Oicho-Kabu, players try to draw three cards that add up to nine. A total of ten or more counts only by its second digit, so thirteen scores three. Draw an 8, a 9 and a 3, and the sum is twenty, which scores zero. In archaic Japanese those three numbers were pronounced ya, ku and za. The hand is one of the worst a player can be dealt. Today the word is commonly written in katakana. Japanese police and the media, at the request of the police, use a different term for these men, while the English equivalent is simply gangster. How did a name born at the card table end up attached to peddlers, gamblers and powerful syndicates? Why do the members organize themselves as fathers, sons and brothers? What do severed fingertips and full-body tattoos mean to them? And how did a world that once counted its members in six figures shrink so far, while the men who remain grow old?

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• 2. Peddlers and Gamblers

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  Two groups on the margins of Edo-period society supplied the ancestors of most modern yakuza. The Edo period ran from 1603 to 1868, and the groups emerged in its middle years. The tekiya peddled illicit, stolen or shoddy goods. The bakuto gambled. Historians remain uncertain about any single origin, but these two classes are the roots most modern groups trace.

  Tekiya ranked among the lowest social groups, yet they began to form organizations of their own. They took over commercial duties such as allocating stalls and protecting trade. At Shinto festivals, peddlers opened stalls, and each one paid rent in exchange for a spot and protection during the fair. Some members were hired as security.

  At the top of a tekiya group sat the oyabun, the boss. At the bottom were the kobun, the gang members. The arrangement echoed a family, with the oyabun regarded as a surrogate father and the kobun as surrogate children. The Edo government formally recognized the tekiya. It appointed oyabun as supervisors and granted them near-samurai status, which meant the dignity of a surname and two swords.

  The bakuto stood lower still. Gambling was illegal, so even traders looked down on them. Small gambling houses sprang up in abandoned temples and shrines at the edges of towns and villages all over Japan. Most ran loan-sharking businesses for their clients and kept their own security personnel. Society regarded the houses and the bakuto with disdain, and much of the yakuza's undesirable image descends from them.

  The economy of the mid-Edo period favored the merchant class. In that setting, the developing groups filled with misfits and delinquents who extorted customers in local markets by selling fake or shoddy goods.

  Shimizu Jirocho, who lived from 1820 to 1893, became Japan's most famous yakuza and a folk hero. He was born Chogoro Yamamoto and took a new name when he was adopted, a common Japanese practice. Sixteen films between 1911 and 1940 featured his life and exploits.

  The old roots have not vanished. Initiation ceremonies still borrow tekiya or bakuto rituals. A modern gang that earns its money mainly from illegal gambling may even call itself bakuto. The traditional forms declined during World War II, when the whole population was mobilised for the war effort under a strict military government. After the war, the yakuza adapted again.

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• 3. Family Ranks

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  A single cup of sake, shared between two men, seals the bond between oyabun and kobun. The ritual is not exclusive to the yakuza. It also appears in traditional Shinto weddings and may once have formed part of sworn brotherhood relationships. Members cut their real family ties and transfer their loyalty to the oyabun. They call one another by family terms, such as older brother and younger brother. Much later, a code developed in which loyalty and respect became a way of life.

  The structure is layered. The kobun of an oyabun can become oyabun themselves and run subsidiary organizations, whose own kobun may in turn do the same. A large syndicate such as the Yamaguchi-gumi has five or six such layers. The heads of subsidiaries are often executives of the parent organization.

  The head of a syndicate is usually called a kumicho or a kaicho. Directly below him is the wakagashira, his pseudo first son. The shatei are his pseudo younger brothers. They are generally older and hold higher nominal positions, but they have relatively little real authority. The day-to-day running of an organization falls to the wakagashira, the shateigashira and the honbucho. In the Yamaguchi-gumi pecking order as of 2024, the sequence is kumicho, wakagashira, shateigashira and honbucho.

  The yakuza are populated almost entirely by men. The very few women acknowledged are the wives of bosses. When Kazuo Taoka, the 3rd Yamaguchi-gumi boss, died in the early 1980s, his wife Fumiko took over as boss for a short time.

  By 2025, the Prefectural Public Safety Commissions had registered 25 syndicates as designated groups, meaning groups judged particularly harmful. Three have more than 1,000 regular members, eight have more than 100, and 14 have fewer than 100. Fukuoka Prefecture, on the island of Kyushu, holds five, the most of any prefecture. They are the Kudo-kai, the Taishu-kai, the Fukuhaku-kai, the Dojin-kai and the Namikawa-kai.

  The Yamaguchi-gumi, headquartered in Kobe, is the largest family. In 2025 it counted 3,100 members and 3,200 quasi-members, which is 35.8 percent of all yakuza in Japan. Its current oyabun is Shinobu Tsukasa, also known as Kenichi Shinoda. He follows an expansionist policy and has increased operations in Tokyo, which was not traditionally Yamaguchi-gumi territory. One of its best-known bosses was Kazuo Taoka, nicknamed the Godfather of all Godfathers.

  The Sumiyoshi-kai is second, with an estimated 2,100 members and 1,100 quasi-members. It functions like a federation of smaller groups, with a more relaxed chain of command and leadership shared among several figures. Its head is Shuji Ogawa. The Inagawa-kai is third, with roughly 1,600 members and 1,000 quasi-members. It is based in the Tokyo-Yokohama area and was among the first families to expand outside Japan.

  The giants are not at peace. Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi split from the Yamaguchi-gumi in August 2015. Kizuna-kai split from Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi in April 2017, and Ikeda-gumi followed in July 2020. These four groups are fighting one another. Meanwhile, in April 2023, the Yamaguchi-gumi's second-in-command Kiyoshi Takayama, Shuji Ogawa of the Sumiyoshi-kai and Kazuya Uchibori of the Inagawa-kai held a social gathering, a sign of a loose alliance among the three largest.

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• 4. Finger and Ink

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  After a first offence, a yakuza transgressor must cut off the tip of his left little finger and hand the severed piece to his boss. The practice is called yubitsume, or otoshimae, and it works as penance or apology. Sometimes an underboss makes the offering himself, to spare a member of his own gang from further retaliation.

  The custom traces back to the way a Japanese sword is held. The bottom three fingers of each hand grip the blade tightly, while the thumb and index finger stay slightly loose. Removing digits, starting with the little finger and moving toward the index finger, progressively weakens the grip. A person with a weak grip must rely more on the group for protection, which reduces individual action.

  The practice has started to wane among younger members, because a missing fingertip is an easy identifier for police. In recent years, prosthetic fingertips have been developed to disguise the loss.

  The tattoos are called irezumi. Many yakuza have full-body designs, including the genitalia. They are often still hand-poked, with ink inserted beneath the skin using handheld tools tipped with sharpened bamboo or steel needles. The procedure is expensive and painful, and it can take years to finish.

  A tattoo is rarely shown. In public, members keep it hidden under long-sleeved, high-necked shirts. One of the few times they reveal it is when two yakuza play Oicho-Kabu together. They take off their shirts, or open them and drape them around the waist, so that each can display the full design to the other. New members are often required to remove their trousers as well, to show any tattoos on the lower body.

  Images of tattooed men in fundoshi loincloths, sometimes covered by a kimono, still dominate the popular picture. In more recent years the covering has often been a sharp Western-style suit.

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• 5. Rackets and Reach

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  In 2014, a swindle called tokushu sagi made up 10.4 percent of all yakuza arrests, passing theft at 10.2 percent for the first time. It mainly targets the elderly. Callers phone the homes of older people and beg for money while pretending to be their son. Other fraudsters visit in person, posing as employees of financial institutions. Of those who carried out tokushu sagi, 34.6 percent were yakuza and their associates. The damage identified in 2019 exceeded 30 billion yen. Yakuza made up just over 10 percent of the lowest-level members, such as cash receivers, but nearly 40 percent of the main perpetrators leading the schemes.

  Methamphetamine is the other great earner. The most common charge against yakuza and their associates arrested in 2014 was violating the law against importing, selling and using the drug, at 26.5 percent of arrests. Many syndicates, notably the Yamaguchi-gumi, officially forbid members from trafficking drugs. Others, such as the Dojin-kai, are heavily involved. Some groups also deal extensively in human trafficking. In the Philippines, they trick girls from impoverished villages with promises of respectable, well-paid jobs in Japan, then force them into sex work.

  The sokaiya is a distinctly Japanese form of extortion. A yakuza buys a small amount of stock to gain the right to attend a large company's stockholders' meeting, then physically intimidates the other stockholders. By 2024 there were only about 130 sokaiya, of whom 20 worked in groups and 110 alone.

  The jiageya specialize in pressuring owners of small properties to sell, clearing the way for developers. The bubble economy of the 1980s is often blamed on real estate speculation. After the property bubble collapsed, a manager of a major bank in Nagoya was assassinated, which fed speculation about links between banking and the underworld. In 1989, Susumu Ishii, oyabun of the Inagawa-kai, bought US$255 million worth of Tokyo Kyuko Electric Railway stock. Japan's Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission knows of more than 50 listed companies with ties to organized crime. In March 2008, the Osaka Securities Exchange decided to review all listed companies and expel those with yakuza ties.

  Politics is another arena. Since the end of World War II, the yakuza have profited from black markets and funded conservative parties, including the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, in exchange for protection and favors. They controlled the construction industry that was vital for post-war rebuilding. They also took part in intelligence work against communist and leftist influence, together with the American Central Intelligence Agency. The most prominent intermediary between the Japanese government, the CIA and the underworld was Yoshio Kodama.

  The reach extends abroad. Since the 1960s, yakuza-linked individuals have become more common in the United States, especially in Hawaii. Hawaii serves as a midway station, where methamphetamine is smuggled in and firearms are smuggled back to Japan. Handguns made in the United States account for 33 percent of those seized in Japan. In 1990, a Smith & Wesson .38 caliber revolver that cost $275 in the US could sell for up to $4,000 in Tokyo.

  In California, the yakuza have allied with Korean gangs, Chinese triads and Vietnamese gangs. In New York City they appear to collect finder's fees for guiding Japanese tourists to gambling establishments. In 2001, the FBI's representative in Tokyo arranged for Tadamasa Goto, head of the Goto-gumi, to receive a liver transplant at the UCLA Medical Center. In return, Goto gave information about Yamaguchi-gumi operations in the US. The Japanese National Police Agency was not consulted first, and the journalist who uncovered the deal received threats from Goto.

  Brazil, home to the largest Japanese diaspora outside Japan, has had a significant yakuza presence since roughly the 1990s. In 2011-15 people allegedly connected to the yakuza were arrested in Sao Paulo, where they had also built an alliance with the drug cartel Primeiro Comando da Capital. Southeast Asia is where the yakuza are still most active, working in sex tourism and drug trafficking since the 1960s. In 2009, a yakuza named Yoshiaki Sawada was released from a North Korean prison after five years for trying to bribe an official and smuggle drugs.

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• 6. Outsiders Within

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  In a 2006 speech, Mitsuhiro Suganuma, a former officer of the Public Security Intelligence Agency, put numbers on the yakuza's makeup. He said around 60 percent of members come from the burakumin, about 30 percent are Japanese-born Koreans, and only 10 percent come from other Japanese and Chinese groups. Prospective members come from all walks of life, and romantic tales say the yakuza accept sons abandoned or exiled by their parents. Many begin in junior high or high school as street thugs or members of motorcycle gangs called bosozoku. Low-ranking youths may be called chinpira.

  The burakumin are a group that Japanese society has long discriminated against, and their recorded history reaches back to the Heian period, in the 11th century. They descend from outcast communities of the pre-modern and feudal eras. Their ancestors worked in occupations seen as tainted by death or ritual impurity, such as butchers, executioners, undertakers and leather workers. They traditionally lived in their own secluded hamlets and villages. According to the authors David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro, burakumin account for about 70 percent of the Yamaguchi-gumi.

  Ethnic Koreans make up only 0.5 percent of Japan's population, yet they are prominent among the yakuza. They face discrimination alongside the burakumin. In the early 1990s, 18 of the 90 top bosses of the Inagawa-kai were ethnic Koreans. The National Police Agency suggested Koreans made up 10 percent of the yakuza proper. Japanese-born people of Korean ancestry who keep South Korean nationality count as resident aliens. The yakuza embrace them precisely because they fit the group's outsider image.

  Notable yakuza of Korean ancestry include Hisayuki Machii, founder of the Tosei-kai, and Jiro Kiyota, head of the 5th-generation Inagawa-kai.

  The subject was once an untouchable taboo. Kaplan and Dubro's book Yakuza appeared in 1986, but its Japanese edition was not published until 1991. The Korean-related descriptions of the Yamaguchi-gumi were deleted first. Government statistics for 2024 show how the picture looks in prison. Among newly incarcerated yakuza that year, 576 were Japanese nationals, 8 were South Korean and 1 was American.

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• 7. Squeezed Out

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  In 1963, the yakuza reached a peak of 184,100 members and quasi-members. Police then launched mass arrests of yakuza leaders and executives between 1964 and 1965, called the First Operation Summit, answering public demands to banish the gangs. Arrests of yakuza fell from about 59,000 in 1964 to 38,000 in 1967. Organizations dropped from 5,216 in 1963 to 3,500 in 1969, and members from 184,091 to 139,089.

  From around 1970, imprisoned leaders were released and dissolved groups revived. Police ran a Second Operation Summit in 1970 and a Third in 1975. Between 1972 and 1979, organizations fell from 2,957 to 2,517 and members from 123,044 to 106,754. Small groups were forced to dissolve, and some members moved to the big ones. The Yamaguchi-gumi, Sumiyoshi-kai and Inagawa-kai grew. Japan was in recession after the 1970s energy crisis, so consolidation into large organizations with diverse or legal funding seemed inevitable.

  A landmark law passed in 1991 and took effect in 1992. It prohibited 27 acts by yakuza, including demanding hush money and collecting debts in an unjustified manner. It also banned mikajime-ryo, the so-called bouncer fees yakuza charged restaurants and bars in their territory. Some had threatened to ram dump trucks into businesses that refused. After the law, more businesses refused, and a main source of funding dried up. Membership fell from 63,800 in 1991 to about 56,600 in 1992, then to about 48,000 in 1994 and 43,100 in 2001.

  A 2008 amendment let prosecutors place blame for yakuza crimes on the bosses. The leader of the Yamaguchi-gumi was later forced to pay upwards of 85 million yen in damages. The yakuza began dismissing around 2,000 members per year, though some analysts see this as an attempt to improve their reputation. In 2009, police led by agency chief Takaharu Ando intensified their crackdown. Kiyoshi Takayama was arrested in late 2010, and Tadashi Irie followed in December 2010.

  The yakuza exclusion ordinances, enacted by all 47 prefectures between 2009 and 2011, changed everyday life. The older laws forbade yakuza from making unreasonable demands. These ordinances forbade businesses and citizens from giving them benefits. Companies can refuse to open bank accounts, sign phone or credit card contracts, or lease property. Osaka Gas ends contracts if a customer proves to be yakuza. A person can be treated as yakuza for five years after nominally leaving. Membership fell from 78,600 in 2010 to 25,900 in 2020. In 2011, a US executive order required financial institutions to freeze yakuza assets, and by 2013 about US$55,000 had been frozen, including two American Express cards.

  Bosses now face personal liability. On the 24th of August 2021, the Fukuoka District Court sentenced Satoru Nomura, fifth head of the Kudo-kai, to death. It was the first death sentence for a designated yakuza head. On the 12th of March 2024, the Fukuoka High Court reduced it to life imprisonment and found him not guilty of murder. In a civil case in 2021, the Tokyo High Court held the head of the Sumiyoshi-kai liable, and the group paid 652 million yen to victims, 35 million yen more than the damages.

  By 2025 the National Police Agency counted just 9,400 members and 8,200 quasi-members. At the end of 2022 the average member was 54 years old. Only 5 percent were in their 20s, 13 percent in their 30s, 26 percent in their 40s, 31 percent in their 50s, 13 percent in their 60s and 12 percent aged 70 or older. Legal jobs such as running bars can now pay better than gang life. In Kyushu, shop owners attacked at first, but business owners then banned known yakuza and posted warnings, and the region became stable.

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• 8. Heroes and Villains

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  On the 11th of March 2011, after the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, the yakuza sent hundreds of trucks carrying food, water, blankets and sanitary supplies to the affected areas. CNN Mexico said that although the yakuza work through extortion and violence, they acted swiftly and quietly to help those most in need. The pattern was not new. After the 1995 Kobe earthquake, the Yamaguchi-gumi, based in the area, mobilized relief services, including a helicopter. Media reports contrasted this with the much slower pace of official government relief.

  Such acts, and the way the yakuza keep rival criminal organizations out of their areas, have at times painted them in a fairly positive light. Gang wars and violence have lowered public approval. According to Jake Adelstein, one study found that 1 in 10 adults under the age of 40 believed the yakuza should be allowed to exist.

  Japanese cinema built a genre around them. Portrayals mostly fall into two archetypes, honorable and respectable men, or criminals who rule through fear. Battles Without Honor and Humanity and Dead or Alive dwell on the violence. Other films focus on the business side. The 1992 film Minbo satirized yakuza activities, and real gangsters attacked its director, Juzo Itami, shortly after its release. Western audiences met the yakuza in films such as The Yakuza in 1975 and Black Rain in 1989. Television followed with Giri/Haji from the BBC in 2019 and Tokyo Vice on HBO Max in 2022, which follows the American reporter Jake Adelstein.

  In comics and animation the yakuza turn up in comedy and romance. In the manga Stop!! Hibari-kun, a high school student moves in with a yakuza boss and his four children. In Gokusen, the heiress of a clan teaches a class of delinquents. In the anime Odd Taxi, a driver becomes entangled in a rivalry between kobun.

  Games have taken the subject further. In Grand Theft Auto III, a yakuza clan helps the protagonist and earns its income from a casino called Kenji's. The series Like a Dragon, known as Yakuza outside Japan, launched in 2005. It follows several ranking members, along with dirty cops and loan sharks, and explores violence, honor and syndicate politics. It has spawned sequels, spin-offs, a live-action movie and a web TV series.

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