Giant Robot Store and GR2 News

It’s a bit scary to think that Yakuza, the gangsters in Japan are public, but like the leader of a gang in southern Japan says about the recent crackdowns as written in the NY Times, ““If they crush us, organized crime will just become harder to see, and more violent, like in Mexico,”” They’re throwing grenades as seen in Outrage, the gangster film by Takeshi Beat Kitano. The issue with the crackdown is sort of a breaking with tradition. (NY Times – Yakuza)
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The crackdown on Yakuza gangs in Japan is slowly underway. Of course as soon as something like this gets publicized, the gangs will just change their ways and adapt to whatever is made. They’ll adapt faster than the changes by society so will the gangs really slow down? It’s the public ridicule that’s hampering companies such as Olympus and the many government agencies who are Yakuza fronts helping out the earthquake / tsunami clean up. Kenichi Shinoda, head of the Yamaguchi Gumi, the largest gang in Japan, said, “The result, he warned, would be the creation of a population of dispossessed mobsters who could turn to violent crime to make a living. “Yakuza gangs are amazingly gentlemanlike,” he said, citing the traditional respect for seniority that binds gangs together. “[We] adhere to those values more than ordinary people do.” (Guardian UK – Yakuza)  
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