Japan’s largest organized crime syndicate, the Yakuza, has launched a website complete with a welcoming message and a background music - a new look for the one of the most feared criminal syndicates in the world.
Instead of guns, molls and mayhem, the site is festooned with pictures of cherry blossoms and religious temples, and carries an anti-drug plea, reading "Banish Drugs and Purify the Nation League" -- one would not think that it represents a criminal organization.
Yakuza-watchers say the site, run by the Alliance for Drug Eradication and National Land Purification, is a shop window for the Yamaguchi-gumi, the biggest yakuza group in Japan. A message says it was set up to help create a “beautiful, orderly Japan” where young people are protected, drugs are outlawed and the happiness of ordinary people is pursued.
The footage is accompanied by a folk-style theme song, called Ninkyo Hitosuji, which celebrates manhood and the life of a yakuza member. The ideal of this manhood has been glorified in various Japanese Ninkyo eiga, or ‘Chivalry films,’ dedicated to an image of a noble yakuza.
Video clips and photos show hardened gangsters pounding sticky rice for a New Year festival, visiting Shinto shrines and acting as good Samaritans after the earthquake that devastated Kobe – home of the Yamaguchi-gumi – in 1995.
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| Screenshot from the "Yakuza" website |
Experts say the Japanese mob is involved in a range of criminal or near-criminal activities, including loan-sharking, extortion, intimidation and fraud. “Their main businesses are basically the same as those of crime gangs everywhere: drug dealing, smuggling, prostitution, gambling, and protection rackets,” says a paper by Andrew Rankin, a researcher at Cambridge University, who also notes a recent shift to white-collar crime.
The website, however, illustrates the romantic self-image cultivated by yakuza members, who describe themselves as ninkyo-dan, roughly translated as “chivalrous groups”.
The Japanese yakuza is considered one of the most feared criminal syndicates in the world, as well as the richest one. Members do not shy away from the public and have office buildings, business cards, and even fan magazines.
However, as a result of security crackdowns and the tightening of laws, the criminal syndicate has fallen in numbers. The number of members fell to an all-time low in 2013, slipping below the 60,000-member mark for the first time on record, police said.--Source: Independent/RT