None Dare Call It Conspiracy #2

[Cain]

In Japan, the Yakuza rose to prominence through corruption from the vast arsenal and storehouses of the US military after World War II and the Korean War...
- John M Hagedorn, A World of Gangs: Armed Young Men and Gangsta Culture, page 158

To a large extent [...] the yakuza were considered "reliable", because it was felt that organized crime could be used to control "disorganized crime" and at the same time buttress the power of the existing political and economic elite. 
- Mark Galeotti, quoted in James O Finckenauer, Organized Crime, foreword

Through their control of drug trafficking, prostitution and employment in the building sector and public works... organised crime has invaded the real estate cooperatives (jusen), the leading brokerages and the shareholders meetings of certain large companies [...] After having speculated on the upside, the yakuza then speculated on the downside.
- Guilhem Fabre, Prospering from Crime: Money Laundering and Financial Crises


The Yakuza need no introduction.  Having been the subject of countless films, books and other productions, the Japanese organized crime syndicate is fairly well known to all.

Or, so it would seem.  Yet, the history of the Yakuza is not so well known, which is unfortunate, as their history illustrates how organized crime can quickly come to determine the political and even economic fortunes of a nation.  Indeed, that the history of the Yakuza is obscured is not entirely by accident – one of the standard texts on the group, Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld by Kaplan and Dubro – had its entire inventory shredded by book publisher Robert Maxwell, likely as a favour to his friend and financial backer Ryoichi Sasakawa, a Class A War Criminal with ties to Japan's ultranationalist scene and criminal underground.

The Yakuza, as many such gangs, claim they grew out of local self-defence initiatives, during a period where traditional authorities were unable to provide it.  As the Tokugawa shogunate assumed power, peace descended over Japan, its incessant, 200 year long civil war drawing to a close.  As with all wars, the restoration of peace meant a large number of armed men left without a profession and legitimate employment.  Many of these groups, known as hatamoto-yakko, took to banditry and plunder as a way of life.

They were opposed by the macchi-yakko, from whom the Yakuza claim descent.  The macchi-yakko loosely translates to "defenders of the town" – ordinary villagers and townsfolk who took up arms to defend their home against roving bands of decommissioned warriors.  The macchi-yakko were considered by grateful Japanese townsfolk as Robin Hood figures, gentlemanly lawbreakers dedicated to the common good.

Naturally, the idea that the Yakuza emerged from such origins is a lie.

The Yakuza did not emerge until a hundred years after the death of Chobei Banzuiin, a near-mythical leader of the macchi-yakko in Tokyo.  Instead, they derived from street hustlers, gamblers and peddlers, who organised themselves as to divide up territory and spoils better, and generally recruited from the lowest classes of society.  The gamblers and peddlers in particular were courted by certain Japanese authorities and given a measure of official sanction in return for helping with criminal issues – a relationship which helped form the basis of the political corruption of Japan.  However, such a relationship was mostly opportunistic, not political or structural, and remained this way until after the Meiji Restoration.

The Meiji Restoration, like all efforts at industrialization and modernization in what was an authoritarian and isolated society, produced a certain... backlash, of a nationalist bent.  And there is where our story truly begins, with a man by the name of Mitsuru Toyama.  Third son to a poor family of middling samurai rank, Toyama idolized the warrior past of his ancestors, to the point of taking part in the final samurai uprisings of the Meiji period.  After leaving prison, the streetwise Toyama gathered around him the unemployed youth of Fukuoka, organising them into a fighting force used to keep order at the nearby mines.  He also enlisted in his first nationalist organisation, the Kyoshisha, in this period.

Keeping order in the Fukuoka slums and mines, Toyama became influential with the local political elite, earning both their respect and fear.  In 1881, he decided to expand on his samurai-derived, ultranationalist ideals with the founding of the Genyosha, better known as the Dark Ocean Society.  Acting as an umbrella organization for ultranationalist groups, Toyama drew them into the world of organised crime as well as political activities, and frequently blurred the two.  The Dark Ocean Society favoured authoritarian rule at home and expansion abroad, and set about undertaking activities to ensure those goals were met.

The Genyosha assassinated, blackmailed and threatened their way to the very top of Japanese society, in particular gaining strong support among the Japanese military's officer corps and bureaucracy.  They acted as bodyguards for politicians, hired muscle for underworld crime lords, as legitimate labourers where needed.  They also operated sophisticated schools where members were trained in martial arts, weapons and languages, and dispatched these agents abroad, where they fed information back to the Dark Ocean leadership.  Essentially, the Society was Japan's first modern intelligence service, and the first modern manifestation of the Yakuza.

1892 saw the first official cooperation between the Genyosha and nationalists in government – the former unleashing a terrorist campaign in support of the latter.  In the preceding years, the Dark Ocean Society had murdered, bombed and maimed more than a few liberal politicians in Japan, so such an alliance was hardly unexpected.  However, the boost it gave to the Genyosha led to them being used directly by the Japanese political elite not only domestically, but in their overseas ambitions as well.

In 1895, five Dark Ocean Society assassins infiltrated the Korean Imperial Palace and killed the Queen, acting on a direct order from the Minister for War.  The Queen had been a dangerous opponent of Japanese plans for expansion onto the peninsula, working out agreements with the Russian Empire to train troops for the Korean Army and counter Japanese influence in other ways.  This event, of course, precipitated the Japanese takeover and annexation of Korea.

The success of the Dark Ocean lead to a proliferation of secret societies in Japan.  Some had official backing, some achieved power through organised crime.  However, the traditional gambler and peddler groups known as the Yakuza, and the Genyosha inspired nationalist organisations, both found they had shared interests in defeating encroaching leftism and the breakdown of the traditional Japanese feudal order. 

Eventually, a successor to the Genyosha emerged, a fusion of the criminal yakuza and ultranationalist elements.  It was founded by Ryohei Uchida, the right-hand man of Toyama and was called the Amur River Society – better known abroad as the Black Dragon Society, for an alternative reading of the characters that made up its name.  The Black Dragons were nothing if not ambitious – their immediate aim was to drive Russian influence out of Asia, and their eventual plan was to place all of Asia under Japanese rule.

The Black Dragon Society mobilized bandits and Chinese insurgents in Manchuria, passing on intelligence and laying the groundwork for what would become the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5.  When the Japanese Army invaded, the Black Dragons members acted as guides, translators and intelligence operatives for their forces.

By 1919, the dividing lines between the Yakuza, ultranationalist groups and government had eroded entirely, with the founding of the Great Japanese National Essence Society.  With over 60,000 members, this was set up by Toyama and the Minister for Home Affairs, Takejiro Tokunami, acting as an internal paramilitary force that broke up strikes, attacked unionists and killed "subversive elements" with impunity – often working directly alongside Japanese police and military officers.  This group eventually evolved into the paramilitary arm of the Seiyu-kai, one of the two dominant political parties of the period.  The opposition, the Yamato Minro-kai, had their own paramilitary arm – also made up of Yakuza.  In such an environment, liberal and socialist opposition learnt to stay out of politics, lest they end up dead.

When Japan declared war on America, the power of the Yakuza was broken.  They had moved society as far right as business, the military and the ultranationalists in government had required.  Ultranationalists and gangsters would from now on be required to wear a government uniform – that of a soldier or of a prisoner, their choice.

After the war, and with the American occupation, some within the civilian bureaucracy were rightly concerned about the release of these ultranationalist elements into wider Japanese society, and how they might aim to hinder the occupation through acts of subversion and insurgency.    General Whitney, heading Government Section of the Occupation machinery, felt the best way to inhibit Japanese war-making ability was to empower the left – the unionists, socialists and even Communists.

Whitney was bitterly opposed, however, by General Willoughby, chief of army intelligence, better known as G-2.  Willoughby directed G-2 to direct aid towards ultranationalist and criminal elements within Japanese society.  Initially, MacArthur toed the line between these two different approaches, breaking up Japanese monopolies and enshrining human rights, while on the other hand tolerating the yakuza's control of the Japanese black market (at a time when the Occupation forces were not too concerned about securing the food supply to the population, the black market provided food for the population and a good little earner for American GIs).

In 1948, due to the situation in China, things changed.  It was decided that harnessing Japanese economic and (reduced) military power to counteract Soviet expansion was necessary.  Equally, American businessmen looking to influence or control Japan's latent economic might felt far more comfortable with a situation where the Japanese Communist Party in particular and unionists and socialists generally were kept under the boot by ultranationalist elements.

Willoughby directed G-2 to give as much aid and intelligence as possible to support the yakuza in this effort.  There was more than just a professional element to this action, of course.  Willoughby was known among the Japanese Occupation forces for having extreme right-wing views.  He concocted far-fetched conspiracy theories about Communists and had voiced agreeable opinions about General Franco and his regime (whether he was paid to do so is still up for debate).  He also sprung known Japanese ultranationalists from prison, to work in G-2's "Historical Section", or else a number of private intelligence groups he had set up.

Not that Willoughby had any compunctions about getting his own organisation dirty at times.  He coordinated the kidnapping of a Japanese author, Wataru Kaji, by G-2 personnel, who then handed him over to the CIA for torturing.  He was kept in CIA custody for over a year.  But most of the work, especially when it came to strike-breaking and killing unionists, was done by rightists in tight with the Yakuza.

More worrying than the increasing violence of the Japanese far right was the release of Yoshio Kodama in 1948.  Kept in a secure facility for accused Class A War Criminals, Kodama had run a private intelligence agency for the Japanese military during WWII and, like all such men, was deeply tied into the ultranationalist network of secret societies.  His particular speciality had been the buying and selling of various materials – namely, buying natural resources in Manchuria and Korea by threatening to shoot the seller in the head if they did not accept his pitifully low prices, then selling them in Japan for massive mark-up.  He also had a lucrative side-operation in heroin.  His company, Kodama Kikhan, had a working capital of $175 million in 1945, at the end of the war.

Shortly before his capture, he managed to give the vast majority of this wealth to Karoku Tsuji, another well known right-winger, though in this case not one with a background that would give the Americans cause to arrest him.  At the time, American intelligence reports referred to Tsuji as the "mystery man" of Japanese politics, able to give lavish donations to various groups and individuals.  Tsuji also put Kodama's money to work by using it to fund the founding of the Liberal Democratic Party – Japan's conservative party, which has had a nearly unbroken hold on Japanese politics up to the present day.

After Kodama's release, he was able to use this backing to give him a huge power base in Japanese conservative politics, to the point that Kodama was considered the most powerful individual inside the LDP.  The LDP also had funding from another source – the CIA, who poured millions into the party to prevent any socialist or Communist victory in Japan's elections.  Not that this was by any stretch the full extent of the CIA's relationship with Kodama – in fact, they paid him $150,000 to smuggle a cargo of tungsten out of China.  Kodama double crossed them on the deal, claiming the cargo sunk, pocketed the money he'd been paid and then sold the tungsten on.

Meanwhile, criminal elements flocked around Kodama, and he gave them his support.  Kodama acted as the middle man between G-2 and the yakuza, moving money and intelligence and leading the yakuza in battle, when necessary. 

By 1952, Japan had returned to its pre-war norm, with the Yakuza, ultranationalists and government all working together and really running the show in Japan.  Most influential in mainstreaming Yakuza influence, somewhat ironically, was the Minister for Justice, Tokutaro Kimura.  Under him, plans were laid down for creating a 200,000 strong anti-Communist task force, entirely of Yakuza and ultranationalist elements, called the Drawn Sword Regiment, using, as almost always, a "patriotic youth organization" as a front for the Regiment's activities.  This plan only failed because Prime Minister Yoshida vetoed it, fearing the American response to learning about such a group.  This hardly stunted Kimura's career in Japanese politics, however.

Because recounting the full history of the Yakuza's postwar activities would easily triple the size of the essay, I shall attempt to quickly sum up their fortunes since then: Yakuza power has waxed and waned according to the particular individuals in power within the LDP and the national and international situation.  However, despite their re-creation as a bulwark against Communist expansion, the Yakuza have survived the fall of Communism, continuing to exercise influence on a national level, through boardrooms, real estate and, yes, political corruption.

The Yakuza provide what is perhaps the pre-eminent example, outside of Sicily, of how organized crime and political ambition can quickly seize control of the fortunes of a nation.  That the Yakuza were not only instrumental in helping cause the Second World War, but thrived in its aftermath shows an ultimately flexible and adaptable organisation, one that is able to weather Japan's course in the 21st century.  The Yakuza are still more than just influential on the Japanese ultranationalist right as well – who are only one international incident or economic crash away from renewed popularity.  Even without that, the LDP is still the major political party in Japan, with decades at the helm of government.  How many high ranking members are corrupted?  Who is backed by companies flush with Yakuza cash?  No-one can really say.

[LMNO]

That was really very cool. I thought at first that it was gonna be a "Yakuza are like Vitanari's society" -- but when it veered into the ultra nationalistic and right wing territory, I really started to understand the "Japanese cultural personality" a little bit better. Thanks, Cain. Your essays are not in vain.

[Don Coyote]

Well I glad that I came back to read this. It's given me a different perspective of Japanese culture from what I am learning in my class on Japanese culture.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I love this. FYI.

[Nephew Twiddleton]

Very interesting. This explains history a bit better. This is going to take a little time to process. Might read it a couple of more times.

[Juana]

That was very interesting, Cain.

[Phox]

Hmm. I appreciate this a great deal, Cain. I am particularly intrigued by the bit involving Willoughby, though, I suppose I'm not quite surprised. I am, I must admit, surprised by the war criminal part, but I suppose I really shouldn't be. All in all, I definitely feel like I know a bit more about the history of the Yakuza now, and I'm gald ytou took the time to write it up.