http://news.yahoo.com/s/dailybeast/2011031...kereliefefforts

Story about how the Yakuza is providing disaster relief in Japan. Interesting. Good PR for bad guys!

Yakuza are organized around old Fuedal Japanese Clan traditions. Part of their 'schtick' is that their criminal activities are how they provide service tot heir Clan. I would expect them to provide disaster relief on one hand, and steal money like crazy from Help Organizations on the other. After all, those businesses that pay protection money.. need protection. If they want to be able to say, "You remember how we helped you rebuild your restaurant, and your house, and the school your children go to. We need some quid pro quo on that." They need to do their part.

Sabs makes a fine point, the yaks are a lot closer to their feudal traditions than some other forms of organized crime and, while that hardly makes them good guys it does at least mean they are more prone to viewing themselves as having a duty to the community at large than a lot of mafia outfits.

To be fair, Mafia Outfits in Italy/Sicily would probably response the same way to a natural disaster of that magnitude in their area as well.

It's a lot less certain though, the mafia have come a lot more completely in to embracing the purely criminal mindset which is a purer form of predation.

The yakuza come out of the rise of the Tokugawa Shogunate and, as the samurai class became administrators, the number of active samurai needed decreased. No longer were the large armies of the Sengoku Jidia needed. So, many samurai became ronin or set up a school of swordsmanship or jujutsu - the rise of the dojo and the bureaucraticization of martial arts (the rise of menkyo or license scrolls to track experience). The yakuza determined that they would keep alive the classical traditions of their clans, and were the true inheritors of bushido - the administrative samurai having given up on the life of a warrior. The Yakuza plied the three classic trades: prostitution, racketeering and gambling, offering services that were above and beyond what the Shogunate could give the populace. The yakuza further served the needs of the people by being a kind of second court, outside of the Shogunate system, where citizens could find recourse. The yakuza could settle debts, property disputes, dowry etc. in ways that the Shogunate could or would not (see: the yakuza businesses).

To this day, if you want to deal in criminal activity in Japan, you must go through the yakuza. They organize and run whatever constitutes 'outside' the government, the underbelly, and have something of a working truce with law enforcement. When a child is acting up in highschool, and nothing seems to be getting through to them, they can be presented to the yakuza oyabun. 'I can not do anything for him, I do not know what to do!' And the yakuza will take him in. You either work within the rules of open japanese society or you work within the rules of closed japanese society. But, whatever the case, you work within the rules.

I also heard about yakuza bands wandering the streets, making sure that no one is looting. That is a yakuza right, after all (stealing, if they ever stooped to it).

thank you for pointing that bit of history out shadow monkey

So in the end Japanese society has a very ingrained sense of honor and duty, even to the (in outsider eyes) extreme of refusing food or drinks made by competitors to the company or company partners.

Still, i think this sense of duty is being eroded generation by generation thanks to outside media and such.

I does however makes for a nice template for envisioning the loyalty of a true "company man" in SR, as he may be as (or more) loyal to the company as a nationalist is to his nation (or the mythical/stylized nation of his mind at least). This btw may make a former company man turned runner a very interesting case, as he may attempt to uphold his internalized code of honor even after having been abandoned (in his view, at least) by the company he served.

Very interesting. Thanks for posting

It's the Otaku. Blame the Otaku. And the fact that Westerners don't see the term, or even the people, as an insult.

Blame the western otaku or the Japanese otaku?

Yes.

I've met a few of those folks here in the USA that freak me right out. Heck, I enjoy quite a few anime, and have been using Ghost In The Shell as Shadowrun inspiration since before I was playing Shadowrun, but I draw the line well above pillows with anime bondage girls on it, and anything on that level is just creepy.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm... Anime Bondage Girls...

Um, I'm sorry, what?

Guy in my freshman dorm had one. We never saw him fully dressed, just when he went on toilet trips in his boxers. His roommate was a pretty cool guy, and it was readily apparent whose side of the room was whose. One half was stacks of ROTC stuff, the other was posters of scantily clad anime girls in suggestive poses. Truly an interesting situation.

Edited for typos, really shouldn't type without glasses on.

Japanese Politicians banned loli/ero manga.
sankakucomplex < = hugely NSFW page had several articles on this.
it's basically the playboy of anime . . many pictures of scantily clad "women" and i use this term "loosely" and some interesting/funny articles in between.

Thanks for the post, interesting story.

yep, it's like american politicians banning guns from washington DC . .

Gun bans I can understand. Honestly, why do civilians need artillery? Banning Firearms on the other hand...

Hey I need a howitzer for deer hunting! One shot and the antlers end up on the roof automagically. ;P

-D

So that we can fire them at Canada every Independence day. Gotta keep those shady Canadians in check.

/citation needed

Yakuza are thugs, mafiosi are thugs, but generally speaking even thugs don't drek where they eat.

Put another way a wolf has as much to gain from the flocks long term health as the flock does.

You'd be better off firing them at us on Canada Day. Be more appropriate considering when my buddy with his little cannon fires his.

Want to keep Canada in check? Try making better beer. Of course, that might give us incentive to invade.

So, the Yakuza have a firm place in Japanese Culture that borders on the legitimate (From a moralistic point of view), despite their criminal ways. I bet their older members are complaining about how things have gone downhill and kids don't respect them and so on...

I know. His justification is wrong though. He's trying to make a show of defiance that just ends up showing support! That's why I fire ours at Canada on July 4th.

We're an oil bearing country that has yet to be invaded by the USA. I think his plan has worked so far.

Now if we count the stuff before Canada became it's own sovereign nation, that's a different story.

I'll try to find some supporting material Lurker but the whole thing basically amounts to a matter of time, the Mafia evolved in to a criminal organization a few hundred years ago (the original form of the word translates to "swaggerer" roughly and was applied to the sicilian property managers of proper italian nobility during the rennaissance) and have been around longer than the yakuza.

Generally. And then you've got idiots like the Camorra, some of whose activities make the Mafia look nice in comparison.