Latest / The Smart Cookies podcast / Why are the YAKUZA going extinct? With Jake Adelstein, author of TOKYO VICE

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Why are the YAKUZA going extinct? With Jake Adelstein, author of TOKYO VICE · The Smart Cookies podcast

• 0:00
  Jake Adelstein was a reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's largest newspaper, from
• 0:09
  1993 to 2005. He has also written for The Daily Beast, The Independent and The Guardian
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  and is a regular contributor to the Atlantic Wire. However, most of you will probably be
• 0:19
  familiar with the name from the hit TV series Tokyo Vice, which is based on Jake's memoir.
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  The second season of the show aired, I believe, last year with rave reviews. Since Tokyo Vice,
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  however, Jake has written two more books, The Last Yakuza Life and Death in the Japanese
• 0:34
  Underworld and Tokyo Noir, which is sort of a sequel to Tokyo Vice. Jake, welcome to the
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  show.
• 0:41
  Hi, nice to have you. I mean, sorry, nice to be on your show. Nice to have you.
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  In the very first episode of the first season of Tokyo Vice, there's this great scene, probably
• 0:53
  my favorite out of the entire show where you're studying for this insane Japanese exam. You
• 0:58
  have to pass to become a staff writer at the newspaper, I believe. And you're clearly the
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  only foreigner in the radius of about a dozen kilometers or something, much less in the
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  exam room. And I believe you said that the way they depicted that scene in the show was
• 1:10
  actually quite authentic. So I definitely want to talk about that. But before we do,
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  let's just explore the trajectory of your life a little bit. What made you want to be
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  not a journalist in the States where you're from, and not, let's say, an American correspondent
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  based in Japan reporting for Western media, but maxing out on the difficulty level and
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  actually wanting to become a foreign local journalist writing for a Japanese newspaper
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  in Japanese? I mean, just saying this out loud makes it seem kind of nuts, but also
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  kind of awesome.
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  Well, I mean, this is really kind of disappointing for aspiring journalists to hear. But the
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  truth is that I didn't really have ambitions of becoming a journalist in college. It was
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  more like this. In Japan, in your last year of college, it's really common to try and
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  find a job so that you, early, unlike your third year, it's shushoku katsudo. I mean,
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  everybody does it. So I had a job lined up at Sony. It's called a night tape. So it's
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  basically this agreement that we will hire you as soon as the official hiring season.
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  And with a year left in school and no real goal, I was like, wow, I really need to moan
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  up on my written and spoken Japanese. And I was writing for the school newspaper in
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  Japanese, which was more of, which was fun. I think my editor, Inu Kai, who actually later
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  went off to the my nichi shimbun, you know, this the student editor had to suffer through
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  my terrible, you know, written Japanese, but he, you know, he was very patient and he would
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  be like, this doesn't make sense. Like, you know, you're not writing literature, you're
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  writing a newspaper article. So on the job training in the sense. And my fellow members
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  of the Sophia newspaper, the Jochi Shimbun, they were, you know, studying for these exams.
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  And what are these exams like, like, oh, we're going to be, you want to be in the media or
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  you want to be newspaper reporters. And every single company has a different exam and they
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  have tests that you have to take. And, you know, and, you know, here are the parts of
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  the, the, of the test is like an essay test, whether it's an essay, there's a language
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  study, there's often translation, there's a section on current events and you can prepare
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  for them. So we're preparing for them. And I was like, okay, that's great. That's a great
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  goal. I will prepare for these tests and see how I do. So I joined a class at the local
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  culture center. Japan is like lots of culture centers where you can enroll in a little like,
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  but with adult education kind of where you can enroll in these classes. And sometimes
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  they're for college students as well. You know, so I could have done tea ceremony. So
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  I took like the mass communications, uh, examinations, countermeasures class. Um, that's my clumsy
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  translation of it. And then I took a class at, um, Kyoto newspaper on writing essays.
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  So I'm studying for these things for a year, right? And this is like my hobby. I'm someone
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  who likes to study. I like to have a goal. And, you know, someone asked me, I think like,
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  you know, uh, what are you doing? And I said, I'm studying for these newspaper examinations.
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  And I think it was the mom of a friend of mine was like, ah, you'll never hire a foreigner
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  to do a Japanese person's job. You're crazy. No one, you'll never pass these things. And
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  I was like, and this is when I like the end of the nineties, this is the, this is like
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  1992, okay. 1992. And I'm like, and I'm like, you know, I'm like, I'm kind of thinking
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  mine was screw you, you know, like who you lady, like, you know, and nobody tells me
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  what I can and can't do. I'm a very contrarian person. I didn't think the odds were in my
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  favor. Um, so, you know, the day comes, I signed up for these, this seminar and keep
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  in mind the seminars are officially not for hiring practices. They're just like, they'll
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  learn about the paper and test your knowledge, but everyone knows that there are the backdoor
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  methods of being hired. So everybody's going to these things, you know, everybody in their
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  Navy blue suits and their, their ties and their, you know, uh, shoes shined and looking
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  nice. You know, if you're a, if you've had your hair dyed red or which was very popular
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  at the time. So you look like a juvenile delinquent, you dye it back black, you know, everybody's
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  everybody knows to look the part, right? You're not going to show up at this interview in
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  the yeah, in jeans and a t-shirt though. They might now. Um, so I mean, I remember it's
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  in the book too, is that I hadn't really, I didn't really own a very good suit. I had
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  some suits that I used for teaching English on the side, but I didn't own like a very
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  fancy suit. So I went to some suit place and I bought like, you know, what is called a
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  rave go, you know, and, you know, but what I ended up buying was actually a suit for
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  a funeral. So with like the black tie and everything. So, you know, people gave me a
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  lot of shit about it, but I was like, you know what, screw it. Like, this is the only
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  suit I got and I'm not going to get in this thing anyway. So I went to all my interviews
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  in my ref ago. Hmm. Looking very Yakus ask, you know, that was, those are the only people
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  who wear a black ties outside of funerals. Though of course, if you're a member of Japan's
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  organized crime, it probably makes sense to go to work in a black tie. Cause you know,
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  there's a lot of funerals in that business. Uh, and I did very well on, I thought I did
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  very well in the examination with Kyoto news, which is kind of like the associated press
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  of Japan. Um, they are still calling the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of Mexico, by the way,
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  respect doing that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, anyway, with the Yomiuri examination, um, which was
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  held like at a technical school. Cause the immunity Shimbun, uh, is a, is an empire.
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  I mean, you know, it has its travel agency. It has Yomiuri land, which is their amusement
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  park. They have the Yomiuri giants, which is the baseball team. And they had a technical
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  school, which they held the seminar at. So I went to the seminar, um, and you know, it's
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  just like in the thing was like, are you in the right place? And I'm like, yeah, I'm in
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  the right place. This is me. You know, there's the names match up and, um, uh, and the exam
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  went well, but just like in the, in the TV series, like I didn't realize there were
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  questions on the back page. Usually, you know, uh, in the West, usually, you know, you don't
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  turn over the back page. It's like, you know, you, you answer the tests and you're done.
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  So I missed maybe two questions, like two big, you know, I don't know how much of they
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  were, but they were questions that totally didn't answer them. Um, and I almost walked
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  out, I almost gave up. And one of these guys from the personnel department and those sons,
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  this little tiny guy with glasses, kind of a Beatles haircut. Um, he passed away years
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  ago from, I think, throat cancer, um, came up to me and he was like, Hey, you know, what
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  are you doing here? And I said, well, I, you know, taking this examination to see how much
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  to test my Japanese ability. I'm, I know I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I know that I'm
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  never going to be hired, but I thought, you know, why not try? And he was kind of like,
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  you know, and he looked at, so sort of flipped through the book. He's like, you're, you're,
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  you're doing pretty good. It's like, you should, you should think seriously about working for
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  us. You know, we are, we are trying to be more of an international presence. Um, and
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  then I was kind of like, it's like, you know, I've come this far. Like why, why go home?
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  And then the essay was guy, Kokuji, which is the word for foreigner. And I had written
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  on this subject before, cause it's of course something that you're going to write about
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  in a class, you know? And so I wrote an essay, I rewrote actually an essay that I'd written
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  before and had kind of the corrected version in my head of, you know, how Japan's immigration
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  policy was exploitive. And they just kind of rotated between countries. Um, they would
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  give countries unconditional visas. They would let those workers in. Those workers would
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  become a problem as they tried to settle in or, you know, are didn't leave. And then,
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  and then Japan would kick them all out and then find another country to do the same thing
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  with. And, you know, I wrote that, you know, Japan needed an actual immigration apology
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  and just instead of revolving exploitation of foreign labor, um, something that is still
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  true today, pretty much. Um, they keep trying to reform the system, but they won't really,
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  uh, settle on like, let's actually set up a system where people could live here and
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  be integrated in the society and live here permanently. Um, anyway, that was, that was
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  easy. And then, uh, you know, the test results came back. Um, I think much later, actually,
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  I mean, I got one on whatever reason I went on to the interview process and, you know,
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  by the time we got to the last interview, I realized, wow, these people might actually
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  hire me. I mean, they seem quite serious about it. And there was this kind of question about,
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  you know, do the, I hear the Jews control the world economy. And I did joke like, yeah,
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  if we control the world economy, do you think I would be working for the salary you're offering?
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  Which was, it wasn't a bad salary. I mean, but compared to like Sony, it wasn't such
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  a great salary. Um, wait, why did they ask you that to see if you believe any sort of
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  conspiracy theories or was it just like to throw you off? I think it was just, you know,
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  I think, I think it might've been, one is that it is a conspiracy theory that was believed
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  in Japan and maybe the guy was just testing it for his own amusement. Or maybe they wanted
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  to see how would I deal with sort of, you know, uh, you know, racism or, you know, blatant
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  racism or subtle racism or ignorant racism. You know, what I lose my cool, what I keep
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  my sense of humor. And I was just like, you know, as they say in Japanese, like pissing
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  off a frog, it was just like, I was just like, boop, you know, that's, and, uh, that was
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  probably the right answer. They, they also asked me like, can you eat sushi? And I was
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  like, I can eat sushi. And they're like, and there was another question related to like,
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  you know, you are a Jewish background. Can you work on the Sabbath? And of course I've
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  never been really very particular about those things. So like, of course, you know, not
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  a problem. I'm not like, you know, I'm not like an Orthodox Jew. I'm not gonna, I don't
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  need the Sabbath off. I'll work, you know, I work whatever hours you ask me to work thinking
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  back on it. You know, maybe, maybe if I was sure that I was going to get hired, I could
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  have claimed the Sabbath off and then I could have actually had some vacation time. Um,
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  and then you pass and you actually become a journalist. I passed, I passed. Yeah. I
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  passed my, uh, my score on the translation section was very helpful. I think I got like
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  20 out of 20 from translating English into Japanese. And what still irks me is I got
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  19 out of 20 in translating Japanese to English. And I'm like, how can you take a point off
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  of my English? But maybe it, maybe I, maybe I mistranslated something. I don't know. I'd
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  have to go back and look at the test results. Um, uh, and by the way, the Yomideshim would
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  probably would still insert that, that like that those aren't real test results, you know,
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  because you know, it's a seminar. It's not, it's not a hiring thing, but, uh, they offered
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  me the job. Um, and I took it and I said, Sony, you know, uh, um, you know, sorry, thank
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  you very much for the job, but thank you, but no thanks. Which the irony is that I did
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  this podcast, um, for Sony. I've done two for them now. Um, the evaporated in 2022,
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  2023 about missing people in Japan and witnessed a night shift about a serial killer in my
• 13:05
  hometown at the hospital where my father worked. And so I, you know, 30, 30 some years later,
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  I actually ended up working for Sony. So here we are, full circle, you know, I'm not working
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  for the Omirian here. I'm working for Sony. Not that I regret my original decision, but
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  there is a delicious irony and ending up where you started. So the TV show obviously quickly
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  proceeds to the like juicy crime stuff, but I wanted to ask you about the less glamorous
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  stuff specifically about the daily grind at the newspaper as a newbie journalist. What
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  kind of tasks did you have to do? How did the colleagues treat you? How long were those
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  days? Tell me everything. Okay. So, you know, I would say that to the credit of the newspaper
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  is that everyone was treated horribly, regardless of their fair is fair, academic background,
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  ethnicity, preferences, uh, gender. We are all treated equally awful. Um, so the first
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  year you, you are referred to not by your name so often as like each didn't say like
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  the first year students. And like, I mean, it was like, am I known? I mean, I didn't
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  expect anyone to say it either the Stein, either the Stein, because that's a really
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  long name, right? Maybe jaker, you know, but, but a lot of times they just couldn't even
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  be bothered for the first couple of months. It'd be like each and it's it. And they'd
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  sort of like gesture at you, you know, so I said each and it's in, it'd be like three
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  of us in the room and we'd know like which one of us is, is being summoned for a terrible
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  task. So among the jobs that we had to do, um, we had to type up sports records. And
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  then these days before the computer, so, you know, typing sports records, very tedious
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  because you know, there's all these little leagues and stuff. They send you baseball,
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  baseball, football, volleyball, you can't screw it up. And then you have to, you know,
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  it's it actually becomes very complicated. And then even though you're not, you don't
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  want to work in sports journalism at all. Everybody has to do this kind of stuff. Yeah.
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  Yeah. Okay. Everybody has to do this. And yeah, because, because, because these are
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  the like, they sort of task you have to do. Yeah. Uh, other things you had to do is like
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  waga yado Osama. So people would send in photos of their, of their newborn baby, like a baby
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  announcement. And they would send it like the photo of the baby and then some text written
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  in the first person voice of the child. Right. And often this was handwritten and I would
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  be, and I would be like, like, what, why can't read this? I didn't, reading handwritten Japanese
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  is very hard if you're, if you don't grow up in Japan. I mean, uh, so you would have
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  to write up these baby announcements and, and, and you would, you know, you could kind
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  of edit it, but you couldn't edit it too much. And you'd kind of be like, like, you know,
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  it's, you know, and you don't want to complain, but you have to do it. And, you know, you
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  would also have to do things like, you know, the senior staff would be like up late and
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  smoking cigarettes and drinking beer and they'd go home and it was like, okay, you're empty
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  the ashtrays, you, you know, you, you wash the beer glasses, you put those things away.
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  We had to cover high school baseball. So I would have loved to put this into the TV series
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  or even in the book, um, had to cover high school baseball and, uh, cause high school
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  baseball is a big thing in Japan. And so you're, I'm in a local office, right? But I don't
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  understand baseball because you laugh. I'm an American, but I'm like, you know, they
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  were like, this should be easy for you because you know, you're an American and I'm like,
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  no, you're Japanese. Can you explain to me what happened to the sumo match? Can you tell
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  me every move? Can you explain who won and why, you know, what the rules are, what are
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  not the rules, why this is exceptional? Well, you know, what just happened? What's the difference
• 16:46
  between Oshidashi and, you know, Nagi, Nagi was a, they were like, you know, not impressed
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  with my, my comeback. And so, you know, I had to learn to keep score. So you have to
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  keep score while watching the game and then write up a summary of what happens. Now this
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  is not so hard early on in the season where you're basically writing like very short lines,
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  like, you know, the, you know, the, you know, the Saitama Sentinels, you know, uh, drubbed
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  the Tokurozawa Angels, you know, by 10 to one, you know, Tokurozawa Angels, you know,
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  it's just score one point in the third inning. Um, but weren't up to the task, right? You
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  know, just kind of standard stuff. But then you get into these more and more complicated
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  ones. And I got yelled at all the time because it'd be like, that wasn't a three, you know,
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  a three base hit. That was like, you know, like a Nihonda or what it would be. And we
• 17:47
  need, and the Japanese has their own terms for these things. And I'd be like, you know,
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  I was getting yelled at all the time. Um, and, you know, so, and it was really, really
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  high pressure cause you're, you, you have to talk to people in the stands. You have
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  to write like a little article of something interesting happening with the fans and the
• 18:06
  actual game and keep score, um, and take pictures. And, you know, I was drowning. And then because
• 18:14
  we were using actual film, we had, uh, like a, one of the schools provided a, like a,
• 18:22
  you know, free of charge, this little like, you know, no freshly shaved, like skinhead
• 18:28
  baseball playing kid from like, you know, from one of the teams, right? I think Takashi
• 18:32
  kun was the one I remember. And he would take the film to the, to the, you know, he would
• 18:38
  take the film to the office so they could get it developed so we could have our articles
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  in on time. Cause sometimes the games would go really late. And, uh, I realized like,
• 18:47
  I don't, you know, like I'm like, I'm dying here. So I'd be like, Hey, you know, so I
• 18:50
  was like, Hey, Takashi kun, like I'll give you a thousand yen, like basically like 10
• 18:55
  bucks a day to read my articles before I send them in and make sure they're not mistaken.
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  And so, you know, at first, you know, he was, you know, and he was, you know, he was really
• 19:04
  grateful cause he's not getting paid anything to do this, but as time went on and his, he
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  became confident in his, his, his, his writing ability. And of course he understands what's
• 19:15
  happening in the game. Uh, I think on the very like last day, like he just shoved me
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  a shy, like I wrote something. He's like, he's like Jake, and he's like, move. And he
• 19:23
  just got on the keyboard and like wrote the article and he's like, here. And I was like,
• 19:29
  thank you. You saved my life. And so I think that I ended up being like $200, you know,
• 19:36
  I spent like $200 to keep my job and, and, and pay Takashi kun to be my, my essentially
• 19:42
  my ghostwriter slash editor on that. So that was money well spent. Yeah. Money was spent.
• 19:49
  When did the fascination with crime and the Yakuza begin then? Well, the, you know, my
• 19:56
  father is a medical examiner. So I've always grown up hearing about, um, crime and murder
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  and mayhem and stuff. That's just, it's always been the family conversation, right? Like,
• 20:07
  like, Hey, you know, there's a hunting accident today may not have been a hunting accident.
• 20:14
  Let me like, here's the trajectory of the wound. And he says like, you know, unless
• 20:17
  this guy was like looking up at a bird in the sky and he's hunting deer, I don't think
• 20:21
  the bullet could have entered from that angle. This is, but I don't know, you know, I mean,
• 20:25
  if I would be like, you know, but I don't know, you know, like if you want to kill someone
• 20:27
  in Missouri, hunting accident, you know, very hard to prove, you know, we went into the
• 20:32
  woods, I shot something, he died. I know, I had no idea he was sleeping with my wife.
• 20:37
  Really? No, not at all. Um, anyway, so I mean, I was always, you know, that was my bread
• 20:44
  and butter. I was always interested in it. Um, and I think I went like, like all through,
• 20:49
  like every kid, I went through a period of time, like you're reading James Bond novels,
• 20:51
  you're reading Batman comic books, you know, you're reading mystery novels. Um, but, but
• 20:59
  then I wasn't fascinated with the Yakuza. I mean, I wasn't, it was kind of like part
• 21:03
  of the job. The first year we had to cover this case of a husband and wife serial killer.
• 21:10
  And one of their victims was a Yakuza boss and his, um, driver. Um, so basically husband
• 21:18
  and wife were running a pet shop. Sometimes they'd rip off the cuffs in Tokyo, in Saitama,
• 21:25
  which is like the New Jersey of Japan. Right. Sekine again, his wife, Hidoko, running a
• 21:31
  pet shop, selling exotic pets for outlandish prices, kind of sort of the animal version
• 21:39
  of Bitcoin, you know, or a cryptocurrency. Um, and they would rip off their customers.
• 21:45
  They'd sell them a sick dog or, um, the dog wasn't able to produce, you know, puppies.
• 21:52
  And when they would complain, uh, they would kill the individual and then chop up the body
• 21:59
  and, um, move on. And they did this to probably to 10 people over a 10 year period of time.
• 22:06
  So there were about four people that disappeared. Um, and we knew the Saitama police were investigating
• 22:12
  and we also knew that there was a Yakuza boss, um, Endo and his driver who had close connections
• 22:19
  to this pet shop owner. Um, and they had disappeared. And as we knew that the Saitama police were
• 22:25
  investigating, you know, basically the boss summons us all to the room and says, okay,
• 22:30
  we've got these four missing people here, the suspects, we know the Saitama police are
• 22:34
  investigating it. Everybody's going to get assigned to find out everything you can about
• 22:40
  these missing people and their connection to the pet shop owner. And what was their
• 22:44
  last day on earth? So when the body show up, we're ready to go. We're going to, you know,
• 22:49
  we're going to be prepared. We're going to have like sort of obituaries written for these
• 22:52
  people. We're going to be able to, we want to know what's happening so we can be on top
• 22:56
  of the investigation, be on top of the story. Cause in Japan, it's still very competitive
• 23:00
  for these kinds of scoops. Um, so I got assigned the organized crime boss and his driver. It's
• 23:06
  like, okay, Edelson, you're in charge of that, which meant, so, you know, an addition to
• 23:11
  my other daily duties, I'm like going through this small town in Northern Saitama, talking
• 23:17
  to this guy's mistress, people I grew up with, trying to figure out what is the connection,
• 23:24
  you know, very early on. I'm like, okay. Um, and it belongs to Takatagumi. Takatagumi has
• 23:31
  an office in, you know, Conan. Everybody knows where the office is. You know, sometimes they
• 23:37
  even used to list them in the, in the, in the, you know, in the phone book. It was in
• 23:41
  93, so I don't think they're listed in the phone book anymore. So I got the address and
• 23:45
  I knocked on the door and I was like, uh, you know, I'm like, I'm Jay Gagelstein from
• 23:50
  the Umidishinbun. And, uh, uh, I'd like to talk to you about, you know, you're one of
• 23:56
  your bosses and the Makoto and you know, the response is like, it was like, it's sort of
• 24:01
  a fortress. And I remember like a big wooden door and the response was like this, when
• 24:06
  I rang the doorbell was like sounds of like, raw, like sound like people roaring. And like,
• 24:12
  and I hear like, that's a people like running towards the door. And I'm like, I'm, I'm,
• 24:15
  I just, you know, I had a taxi waiting, I ran out with these people chasing me and got
• 24:19
  a new taxi. And I was like, okay, clearly, you know, clearly these people are, are, you
• 24:24
  know, uh, a little scary. Um, but you know, over time, uh, you know, I got to learn a
• 24:34
  lot about the Yakuza because I've befriended one of the cops who was working on the, on
• 24:37
  that case, who was covering the missing Yakuza boss. And, um, you know, my reporting on the
• 24:45
  story was, was good. And, uh, at the end of the first year, my boss said like, oh, like,
• 24:51
  hey, you know, half of the newbies are going to be sent to local offices where they're
• 24:56
  going to cover everything, you know, local, local news, local politics, local events.
• 25:01
  You are being promoted to covering the, you know, the Saitama police headquarters. So
• 25:07
  we're going to, you're going to cover organized crime unit one, organized crime unit two.
• 25:14
  Um, and that's your job. You know, everything relating to organized crime to every case
• 25:19
  they do, that's what you're covering. And also we're going to, we're giving you theft
• 25:23
  and theft and public security because, you know, and I was kind of like, you know, I
• 25:29
  sort of would like to cut, you know, cover homicide. That's sort of my background. And
• 25:33
  he's like, well, homicide is really important and white collar crimes. Like, you don't,
• 25:38
  you're probably not good with numbers. You just don't seem good with numbers. Um, and,
• 25:42
  and, uh, it's complicated. And he said, and the thing is, you know, 30% of the Akaza,
• 25:47
  they're foreigners. They're like Koreans or Taiwanese, mostly Koreans who are brought over
• 25:53
  as slave labor and stayed. So you're a guy, Jean, they're a guy, Jean. So you'll get along
• 25:59
  great. It's perfect for you. And, and, and, yeah. And he said, he said, oh yeah. And I like the
• 26:05
  other 20% of them are the outcast class, the people in Japan that, you know, used to handle
• 26:11
  leather and butcher animals. So, you know, outcasts and guys, you're a guy, Jean, you'll just be fine.
• 26:16
  You know, you, you, you know, that's, we decided to put you, you don't have any say in it.
• 26:21
  A match made in heaven.
• 26:22
  Yeah. A match made in heaven. Um, I, there's this sort of funny story about this. I heard from a
• 26:26
  cop once, um, you know, it makes it to detective. He asked, okay, you know, he goes to his boss
• 26:35
  and his boss says, okay, I'm assigning you an organized crime. And he's like, why are you
• 26:38
  signing an organized crime? Like I have a, like, you know, I majored in accounting. I'm like really
• 26:43
  good with numbers. Um, you know, I asked to be put in the white collar crime section and the boss
• 26:49
  says, go look in the mirror. So when I went in and I looked in the mirror, I understood what he meant
• 26:54
  because they had a very Yakuza face. They have a very identifiable kind of sort of
• 26:59
  Cro-Magnon sort of puggish angry face. And this was this guy do a T. So it was kind of like that,
• 27:05
  you know, there is a certain logic to that. All right. So what's the genesis of these guys,
• 27:10
  the Yakuza, were they around in medieval Japan already? Like running city brothels and knifing
• 27:15
  samurai in the back or the Yakuza are much more modern. I mean, they, they claim to have been
• 27:20
  around, you know, for ages. It's like, uh, you know, the firemen of the town, um, are the peace
• 27:27
  keepers are sort of vigilante groups, but really, you know, what you can say definitively is that
• 27:36
  from like starting around 1870, 1880, uh, the first real organized crime group was the Aizu
• 27:41
  Gotetsukai in Kyoto. Um, and they were basically gamblers gambling federations. So they would
• 27:47
  set up places where you could gamble and they would run the house and they'd run it, you know,
• 27:54
  fairly reasonably because if you're not ripping off the customers, nobody can win, nobody's going
• 27:58
  to come. And then if you're also running gambling dens, of course people run out of money because
• 28:05
  that's what happens with gamblers. Then you start loan sharking. Right? So the genesis of them is
• 28:11
  gamblers, um, federations of gamblers, which are called Bakuto. And then there's a other
• 28:17
  group of Yakuza and the distinctions sort of vanished over time, which are called Tekkiya,
• 28:21
  which are people that are basically street merchants, traveling street merchants. They
• 28:26
  run the festivals. They sell their wares on the side of the road. Um, they used to be very common
• 28:33
  in Japan, sort of kind of like street vendors. And because street vendors have to deal with,
• 28:38
  with cops and people and, you know, and, uh, and thieves, they sort of created an association of
• 28:47
  themselves to protect themselves and their business interests and give them some negotiating power
• 28:52
  because United, you know, they, they can deal with the town hoodlums that might rip off their stuff or
• 28:58
  try and charge the money to set up business there. Um, that is the historical
• 29:04
  history of the Yakuza. The, the easiest one to understand is the Yamaguchigumi, which was founded
• 29:09
  in 1915 in Kobe. So, which is kind of, it was kind of an association of dock workers and temporary
• 29:17
  staffers. So they basically controlled the docks and provided local labor. Um, and then, you know,
• 29:25
  uh, set up as a corporation as well. And then also sort of, again, providing security services and
• 29:32
  you know, racketeering and extortion. And, you know, that is the antecedent, not the antecedent,
• 29:37
  that is the ancestor of the modern day Yakuza. Um, and, and where do these, I mean, besides looking
• 29:44
  extremely cool on television, what's the meaning behind the full body tats that these lads are
• 29:49
  sporting? Well, the one is that when you get tattooed, you are, you are committing to the
• 29:56
  Yakuza lifestyle. You're saying like, I am not going to return to a civilian life. I am, I am
• 30:01
  a Yakuza now. You have essentially branded yourself as a Yakuza. The second is that often, um,
• 30:08
  if the boss is paying for the tattoo, you will get the organization's logo tattooed on your body
• 30:14
  and your boss's name, which is corporate branding at its finest. So you cannot go to another
• 30:20
  organization. You are locked into that organization. And the third reason is, um, the Inagawa Kai,
• 30:25
  the Inagawa Kai likes to call, um, the tattoos, gaman, meaning endurance. So because they were
• 30:33
  very painful, done traditionally with kind of an awl and ink, the tattoo shows that I can endure
• 30:43
  pain. The more dense the tattoo is, the more painful it is. Um, and it also costs a lot of
• 30:49
  money. So it's kind of like a human peacock thing. It's like, I can endure pain and I have enough
• 30:56
  money and status to be this tattooed. Um, so it shows that as well. So all of those things together,
• 31:05
  uh, a commitment to the lifestyle, um, a basically you're, you're, you're branding yourself
• 31:11
  or the boss is paying to brand you to keep you loyal to the group and stay in the group, right?
• 31:16
  It's hard to leave once you've been tattooed. And the other thing is you're showing, I am tough.
• 31:20
  I can endure pain and I have patience. You know, it takes maybe 500 hours to get a full suit done.
• 31:29
  When you walk around Tokyo, for example, these days, you have a feeling that Japan truly is like
• 31:33
  a crime-less society or something, at least when it comes to street crime. Sure. There are some
• 31:37
  areas that are a bit more sleazy and stuff, but if one expects like guys in suits, um, covered in
• 31:43
  tats, like going old boy on each other or something, you'll be pretty disappointed. I mean,
• 31:48
  I walked around Tokyo plenty and I can't say I've ever even seen a single Yakuza like standing about
• 31:53
  even though you'd expect it. No, that probably doesn't mean that there's no crime in Japan these
• 31:57
  days, does it? Well, crime status, crime stats go down all the time. Now Japan has a huge problem
• 32:04
  with fraud. Um, like fraud, like people, you know, like real estate, not just real estate, but fraud,
• 32:11
  like someone, you know, sending you a bill for something you've never, you know, you know,
• 32:15
  you never paid for or fishing things or phone calls. Um, you know, I just talked to a victim of this
• 32:23
  the other day, there's a new scam in which people call. So there's a whole, a whole kind of scam
• 32:29
  called like Tokuryusagi or Oriorisagi in which someone calls you and says like, Hey, you know,
• 32:36
  uh, it's your grandson. Um, I'm in really big trouble. Please wire me some money. Or they call
• 32:43
  and say like, you're, you know, your car is parked on the wrong side of the road and we're going to
• 32:47
  impound it. You know, you need to pay some money. You, you know, we can send someone to get it, or
• 32:51
  you can go to the bank and pay it. Um, any, any pretext to get someone to wire money somewhere.
• 32:57
  Um, so as these crimes have become well known, the latest trend is that people call someone.
• 33:04
  And this is why I never pick up my phone anymore. And they pretend to be the police and they say,
• 33:09
  we've raided, um, we've just arrested, you know, members of this fraudulent credit card group,
• 33:16
  um, that had been defrauding people all over Japan. Your name came up in the investigation
• 33:21
  and your bank card showed up in their, uh, amongst their belongings. We need you to pack
• 33:26
  immediately and come to the police station where we're going to, you know, uh, question you
• 33:31
  voluntarily, or, um, if you're not going to come voluntarily, we will, we will put out an arrest
• 33:37
  warrant and come for you. What would you like to do? Then, you know, the phone switches a couple
• 33:41
  times and you talk to like a prosecutor and you talk to the police and it appears to be coming
• 33:45
  from a police number. Um, and you know, finally, after all this pressure and this smooth talk,
• 33:53
  they convince you to wire money, show it to show them that you're, you know, your accounts are not,
• 33:58
  uh, part of this criminal groups activities and then they disappear. So, you know, that kind of
• 34:06
  fraud is rampant, but going down the street and having someone steal your purse or mug you or
• 34:12
  break into your house, that's rare. Um, and one of the reasons that's rare is because, you know,
• 34:18
  Japan has cameras everywhere. I mean, they're everywhere. Uh, you know, and, and anyone who
• 34:24
  has a camera, if the police are like, can I please have that footage? No one says no. Everyone's like,
• 34:30
  Oh, sure. You know, here goes. Oh, right, right, right. But, um, most of these like criminal
• 34:34
  activities, such as scams or running brothels and stuff, although that's probably that's semi-legal.
• 34:40
  Isn't it? Are they run by, by the Yakuza or no? So brothels are sex places are mostly legal. So
• 34:48
  here's the, you know, here's the, here's Japan sex laws 101, any sexual service that you can
• 34:54
  possibly imagine can be bought or sold, um, legally except vaginal penetration. And if a man or woman,
• 35:05
  uh, well, I mean, uh, there's no punishment for the customer or the, um, or the client,
• 35:14
  there's no customer for the prostitute or the, for the sex worker or the customer. If it's a one to
• 35:19
  one thing, even though it's technically a crime, there is a punishment for the pimp or the brothel
• 35:25
  owner. And basically the Japan's anti-prostitution laws are designed to protect women. Meaning that
• 35:32
  in the days when women were being sold in the slavery after the second world war, basically
• 35:36
  sold the brothels, um, to pay off family debts, the law was designed so that if you saw a woman
• 35:42
  under duress, you could go to you as a customer can go to the police and say, Hey, this woman
• 35:47
  is being coerced into doing sex work. Um, and she doesn't want to, and then the police could raid
• 35:51
  the place. She could give a statement, the brothel owner would be arrested or the pimp would be
• 35:55
  arrested and she could go free. Um, and so that still continues to this day, even, even at some
• 36:02
  establishments, which are called so plans and they have been, uh, outlawed, but, but you know, the
• 36:09
  ones that existed at the time these laws went into place are allowed to continue business. Um,
• 36:16
  you go into the soap land, you are paying for someone to bathe you and, you know, uh, sit in a,
• 36:25
  a, a, um, luxury bath, maybe get a massage. Um, then you go to a separate room and in that room,
• 36:34
  if you decide that you and the masseuse are in love, then that is free love. And if you have sex,
• 36:42
  that is, um, legal because that is not included in the price of admission. That is something that
• 36:49
  happens between you and, uh, the woman you've just fallen in love with. And if there's some sort of
• 36:55
  monetary exchange there that does nothing to do with the, with the establishment itself. So that is,
• 37:01
  you know, the legal clause in, in, in practicality in today's, you know, internet age, there's a lot
• 37:08
  of prostitution that goes on, but places that are licensed and the police license these places too,
• 37:13
  which is kind of interesting, right? They enforce the law, but they also license these place. Um,
• 37:18
  if you have an establishment offering sexual services, um, as long as you are not explicitly
• 37:26
  offering regular sex, vaginal penetration, then you're completely legal. That's why it can be
• 37:32
  advertised and sold. Um, I think because of the Olympics, uh, that, you know, Kabukicho in some
• 37:39
  areas were very cleaned up. So the signs vanished a little bit, but all that stuff is still,
• 37:44
  it's still quite legal. Yeah. And these establishments are run by who? These
• 37:49
  establishments are run by, sometimes they run directly by the Yakuza. Oh, okay.
• 37:54
  And sometimes they're run by people who pay them off. So one of the reasons the Yakuza have lost
• 38:00
  so much power by October 1st, 2011, every prefecture in Japan and a prefecture is like a state
• 38:11
  has banned paying off the Yakuza. If you pay them protection money, if you do business with them,
• 38:17
  you're a criminal. And that is a great way to put these people out of business, because they're
• 38:22
  a great way to put these people out of business. Cause no one wants to go to jail because you're
• 38:26
  paying off the Yakuza. It also gives you a great excuse to like, Hey, I would love to pay you
• 38:31
  protection money, but then I go to jail and this business collapsed. Sorry, I can't do it anymore.
• 38:35
  So what's up with these guys these days? I mean, I did hear that their numbers are dwindling,
• 38:39
  but I don't know if that's because of like, uh, people in Japan just having less kids,
• 38:44
  or is it because of these extremely draconian laws that you, uh, that you just described,
• 38:49
  or is it like foreign gangs? I read an article that the Chinese dragons or something. Oh yeah,
• 38:54
  my God, we hear about that all the time. Chinese dragons are nothing. I mean, that is a myth that
• 38:58
  has been perpetuated since 1999, right? I think it's, and the police kind of encouraged that myth
• 39:03
  too, because with organized crime fading away, like they still want the same budget, right?
• 39:09
  Same number of people assigned to it, right? So you need some menace, right? Yeah. Foreign menace.
• 39:14
  You have to have something to have a menace, right? I mean, I think actually the recent
• 39:18
  legislation to make, to make the usage of marijuana a crime, um, which wasn't a crime
• 39:25
  before, it was only possession was only a crime, was basically police and lobbyists, you know,
• 39:31
  creating more work for the cops because they have something to do, right? With less crime and less
• 39:35
  organized crime, you know, there's a lot of cops with no reason to be around. Um, so,
• 39:42
  so what is happening to these guys? Oh, one of the, so the reasons they're fading out are first of
• 39:47
  all, the, the laws changed. And, and in addition to the laws changing in a civil way, every bank,
• 39:58
  every sports club, um, every telecommunications company now has a clause in their contracts,
• 40:05
  which says, which you have to sign saying, I am not a member of an organized crime group,
• 40:09
  nor am I associated with them. Now, if you don't sign that, you cannot get a cell phone,
• 40:16
  you cannot rent an apartment, you cannot have a bank account. If you do sign it and you are
• 40:24
  associated with organized crime, then you've committed fraud and then you can be arrested
• 40:29
  and prosecuted. So basically on every level, living as a Yakuza is unpleasant and hard.
• 40:40
  And even if you can find someone to, uh, pay the phone bill for you and be your substitute,
• 40:46
  to be your proxy, there's always that fear that you're going to get caught.
• 40:51
  Um, and then you'll go to jail. And even if you don't go to jail, even if the prosecution drops
• 40:55
  the charges, which happens often, you know, in Japan, when you get arrested, you're basically
• 41:01
  in a black hole for 23 days. That's how the law works. The police arrest you. They have a certain
• 41:06
  amount of time to take your case to the prosecutors. I read about an executive who was in jail.
• 41:10
  Yeah. Yeah. Carlos Cohn, right? So imagine, you know, like, you know, let's suppose you're
• 41:15
  Yakuza with a regular job, 23 days, you don't show up for work. You know, you probably will
• 41:20
  lose that job. So it's not a business that people want to go in. That is why the average Yakuza age
• 41:26
  is now 55, which is my age. I'll be 56 in March. Um, you know, no young people want to do it. Uh,
• 41:35
  it's very hard to live as a Yakuza. And you know, the days when you could intimidate people with
• 41:40
  your business card and get them to pay you money have long vanished. I mean, I have tons of
• 41:47
  Yakuza paraphernalia, um, which is great and interesting, but it doesn't do me any, any good.
• 41:52
  Um, I think over here, like, and, and this is kind of the funny thing about, you know, the Yakuza is
• 42:01
  that they existed out in the open, right? Cause they're not illegal. So they would do things like
• 42:07
  this. So this is a succession ceremony of the Inagawa Kai. So from the beginning,
• 42:15
  so from the, uh, Azkama Sikka. And that's a DVD. Yeah, it's a DVD. So they made this DVD, um,
• 42:25
  with production values and you see all the ritual sake exchanges and the names of the Yakuza bosses
• 42:30
  are all printed on the screen. So, you know, who's who and who's risen up and who's not risen up,
• 42:37
  you know, what the new power balance is. So I'll put on a DVD. It's everyone lower in the
• 42:42
  organization has to buy it and everyone in the organization has to buy it. So it's kind of a money
• 42:45
  raising gig, but it also is like a wonderful documentation of who's who in the Yakuza, right?
• 42:50
  And they always do this. So they're not a secret society. And, uh, yeah, this magazine was
• 42:57
  eventually forced out of business, but this was Jitsu a document though. It's a thick magazine,
• 43:02
  right? She has like 200 and every month it would come out and you know, the,
• 43:07
  but what's in the magazine? Like, what would these guys write about? They had their own journalists
• 43:11
  or were they writing articles themselves? So, so there are journalists that cover them and it would
• 43:15
  be like, you know, this is an article about the Yamaguchi Gumi, the biggest group had a split.
• 43:20
  This is, you know, a year later, what's happened to split who's been killed, who's winning,
• 43:24
  who has the most members. So there was just like aired their laundry out in the open.
• 43:28
  Well, not their crimes, but so it opens with here, photograph photographs of people coming
• 43:34
  in and out of like their monthly meetings, right? I gotta say, that's pretty cool. That's pretty
• 43:41
  cool. Um, there are always, uh, usually at the beginning, um, are somewhere in here, uh,
• 43:51
  a lot of penis enlargement ads. I don't know, you know, what that says, but there are. And then
• 43:56
  you have a poetry section and then there are sections written about, uh, you know,
• 44:02
  the latest crimes. Sometimes they're very critical of what is happening in the Yakuza world. Um,
• 44:09
  and it'll tell you, you know, it has articles on the latest arrest, like, you know, organized
• 44:14
  crime member Miyazaki arrested for fraud, uh, Yamaguchi Gumi, executive and Guma arrested for
• 44:20
  extortion and threats. Um, I'm gobsmacked that a crime syndicate has their own like publishing
• 44:27
  house and like regular press and the whole parallel like thing going on when it comes to journalism.
• 44:34
  Yeah. And then like, here's an organizational chart, you know, who's at the top with their names.
• 44:39
  If you're just listening to this conversation, please go check out the YouTube version because
• 44:42
  Jake is showing us the articles on video. You know, and, and, and, you know, I mean,
• 44:49
  it's almost a running joke. So the Yamaguchi Gumi is the biggest organization. Um, it's,
• 44:53
  and they're still around. Yeah, they're still around. It split apart in 2015, right? Yeah.
• 44:58
  And, you know, they've had this sort of simmering gang war going on for 10 years. And it's like,
• 45:03
  every other issue of the, of the, of the magazine when it still existed would be like, you know,
• 45:09
  you know, you know, you know, is the war over, you know, is, you know, like, you know, peace,
• 45:15
  you know, peace talks coming soon, you know, and it's like, after 10 years, you're like,
• 45:19
  well, this is a cliffhanger, cliffhanger. Um, and the people that put out these Yakuza
• 45:24
  magazines also used to put out these like glossy kind of mooks. So here's all the organized crime
• 45:31
  groups with their, with their various, um, corporate logos or daimon is the, is the term
• 45:37
  that they use. And, um, you know, it'll tell you what number of people they have and where
• 45:43
  they're located, you know, in Japan, where their territories are photos. It's like Game of Thrones.
• 45:49
  Every house has their own like, it's like Game of Thrones. I think there's 22 into 22 to 23 groups
• 45:56
  that are still around, you know, sometimes, you know, sometimes groups split apart. Um, there's
• 46:02
  a lot of splits in the Yakuza world. Like one group divides into two sections and then one group
• 46:07
  goes out of business and sometimes a little new groups emerge, but overall the numbers just keep
• 46:13
  going down, down, down. So would you say that they're slowly going extinct? Yeah, I think
• 46:17
  they're slowly going extinct. Now, I mean, I don't think that anyone would, would say this publicly,
• 46:24
  but you could kind of consider them like an intangible cultural asset because they are part
• 46:29
  of Japanese culture. I mean, maybe, maybe there's a lot of preserved, maybe they want to preserve
• 46:34
  them on some level, right? Uh, it wouldn't be hard for Japan to put in laws into place to completely
• 46:40
  put them out of business, but there doesn't seem to be an appetite for doing that. Uh, Jake, so much
• 46:46
  more stuff I wanted to talk about maybe next time. Um, thank you so much for the time. Uh, maybe last
• 46:51
  question really quickly in general. Um, in the end, I wanted to ask you maybe the following you've
• 46:56
  lived and worked in Japan for decades. Now, what's the biggest misconception people have about the
• 47:01
  place? Uh, wow, that's a really good question. Um, the biggest misconception that people have
• 47:12
  about Japan is that, that it's, it's a homogeneous society where everybody dresses the same and does,
• 47:17
  and does the same. No, Japan has become very politically diverse, um, uh, in, you know,
• 47:26
  incredibly, uh, more open to, uh, different expressions of sexuality, um, and gay marriage
• 47:33
  and things like that, that you wouldn't associate with. Japan has become very liberal, um, and it's
• 47:38
  not the conservative place that it used to be. Um, that is, I think, the biggest misconception.
• 47:46
  The other thing that I think is nice to know about Japan is that, you know, the core value that sort
• 47:52
  of binds the society together, you know, as everybody says, politeness, but it's really
• 47:56
  reciprocity. Um, you know, do you give back what you get? Um, and everybody seems to keep this
• 48:04
  scorecard in their heads. So if you want to live in Japanese society, you need to remember every
• 48:10
  kindness that is bestowed upon you. And when it comes time to repay that back, you better be quick
• 48:16
  to do it. Wow. That's useful stuff. Um, where can people follow your work? You have X, you have
• 48:23
  social media. Okay. You can follow my work. The easiest place to follow it is at Tokyo Paladin,
• 48:30
  at Substack. Um, and you can also follow me on Instagram, uh, what is it? Instagram and, uh,
• 48:41
  threads at Tokyo Vice, um, easily, you know, very quick to grab that name. And then, uh,
• 48:48
  I'm barely on X anymore, but Jay Kattelstein on X. So, you know, follow my work on, uh,
• 48:55
  Tokyo Vice on Instagram, uh, Tokyo Paladin on Substack. Uh, and, uh, you can listen to
• 49:03
  my podcast, uh, wherever you get your podcasts, the Evaporated or Night Shift Witnessed. And what
• 49:09
  are you working on these days? Right now I am working on a new book about Bitcoin called The
• 49:15
  Devil Takes Bitcoin. It's about the whole Mount Gox scandal. Yeah. Yeah. It's about the whole Mount
• 49:21
  Gox thing. And it's about Tigran Gambaryan, who was freed from Nigerian prison earlier on.
• 49:27
  He was one of the lead investigators on the Mount Gox case. Um, and you know, Ross Ulrich makes
• 49:34
  an appearance too, because he's intimately involved with the, with Bitcoin. And I think
• 49:39
  the long title of the book is The Devil Takes Bitcoin Cryptocurrency Crimes and the Japanese
• 49:45
  Connection. Because, you know, even though I'm sure Satoshi Nakamoto is not Japanese, uh, it all
• 49:51
  comes back to Japan one way or another. Awesome. Looking forward to it. Jake, thanks so much.
• 49:57
  Thank you for having me. Hey Legends, thanks for listening. Please subscribe to the podcast on
• 50:00
  YouTube, follow on Spotify and Apple podcasts. I've been told I have to say that otherwise,
• 50:04
  nothing ever happens. Odd. Also, if you feel like it, do support me on Patreon. I'm playing the world's
• 50:09
  smallest violin here, but this is a one person pod. I do everything myself. There's no team behind
• 50:13
  me. So please feel free to hop on Patreon and find smart cookies on there. And then last, but certainly
• 50:18
  not least, I have to thank my existing patrons, Vare Sinto Vare Sice. Your podcast champions you.
• 50:24
  Without you, there would be no smart cookies, which makes you actual producers of this show.
• 50:29
  So eternal thanks to Sasha Vipotnik, Neven Cvijanovic, Yushpre Vrov, Nate Cirk, Goran Ivasic,
• 50:34
  Anze Sevar, Ole, Marin Ferrara, Aljaš Mahr, Štrole, Ajda, Mancian, Miha Medved, Medinjo, Goran, Gordon,
• 50:40
  Lorenzo, Jurečuk, Mila, Carmen, Veronica and Taichi. The community is growing, so I am really touched. Thank you.