22 Facts About Yakuza

Roots of the Yakuza survive today in initiation ceremonies, which incorporate tekiya or bakuto rituals.

The most romantic tales tell how Yakuza accept sons who have been abandoned or exiled by their parents.

Many Yakuza start out in junior high school or high school as common street thugs or members of bosozoku gangs.

Yakuza groups are headed by an oyabun or kumicho who gives orders to his subordinates, the kobun.

The Yakuza is populated almost entirely by men and the very few women who are acknowledged are the wives of bosses, who are referred to by the title ane-san.

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Many Chinese or Korean persons who do not know the name "Yakuza" would know the name "Yamaguchi-gumi", which is frequently portrayed in gangster films.

The Yakuza repeated their aid after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, with groups opening their offices to refugees and sending dozens of trucks with supplies to affected areas.

Some Yakuza groups are known to deal extensively in human trafficking.

Yakuza frequently engage in a unique form of Japanese extortion known as sokaiya.

Yakuza have ties to the Japanese realty market and banking, through jiageya.

Yakuza have been known to make large investments in legitimate, mainstream companies.

Also, Yakuza usually do not conduct the actual business operation by themselves.

Yakuza presence has increased tremendously since the 1960s, and even though much of their activity in the United States is in Hawaii, they have made their presence known in other parts of the country, especially in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as Seattle, Las Vegas, Arizona, Virginia, Chicago, and New York City.

The Yakuza are said to use Hawaii as a midway station between Japan and mainland America, smuggling methamphetamine into the country and smuggling firearms back to Japan.

In California, the Yakuza have made alliances with local Korean gangs as well as Chinese triads.

The Yakuza saw their potential following the constant Vietnamese cafe shoot-outs and home invasion burglaries throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.

Yakuza groups have a presence in North Korea; in 2009, Yakuza member Yoshiaki Sawada was released from a North Korean prison after spending five years there attempting to bribe a North Korean official and smuggle drugs.

The Korean significance had been an untouchable taboo in Japan and one of the reasons that the Japanese version of Kaplan and Dubro's Yakuza had not been published until 1991 with the deletion of Korean-related descriptions of the Yamaguchi-gumi.

Yakuza have been in media and culture in many different fashions.

Yakuza films have been popular in the Western market with films such as the 1975 film The Yakuza, the 1989 film Black Rain, the 2005 film Into the Sun, 2013's The Wolverine, and Snake Eyes in 2021.

Video game series Yakuza, launched in 2005, portrays the actions of several different ranking members of the Yakuza, as well as criminal associates such as dirty cops and loan sharks.

The Yakuza derive most of their income from a casino, Kenji's, and are currently fighting to keep other gangs from peddling drugs in their territory while seeking to protect their activities from police interference.