Senin, 16 Maret 2009

Origins and Traditions



Origins and Traditions


In a private club in Tokyo's neon-lit Ginza entertainment district, men in dark pinstripe suits drink, smoke and play cards. A few of the men are huddled together in a corner, involved in hushed but animated conversation. Others puff their chests out for the accommodating "comfort women" who adorn the smoke-filled room like well-placed flower arrangements.


The club is on the second floor of a small building where the constant whir and clang of a busy pachinko parlor on the ground floor can be heard upstairs. Pachinko is the Japanese national obsession, a slot machine that sends tiny chrome balls through a vertical maze, like a pinball machine set on end but smaller in size. The relentless chatter of hundreds of moving pachinko balls is softened by the club's sound system, which plays the theme from The Godfather, performed on traditional Japanese instruments, koto (Japanese banjo) and wood flute.


A squat older man sits toward the back of the room at a table surrounded by bowing young associates, who respond to every order and request he makes with an unvarying hail of "Hai! Hai!" ("Yes! Yes!"). The older man is flanked by two women—one in a short black cocktail dress, the other in a schoolgirl's pleated plaid skirt and white blouse. Both women cover their mouths and giggle at the man's every gruff word.


A young man in a shiny sharkskin suit enters the room, his head bowed. The other men immediately take notice and stop talking. The young man approaches the older man's table. He does not dare lift his eyes. Without a word he formally presents an artfully wrapped object to the older man. The package is no bigger than a small piece of candy, but the young man sets it down on the table ceremoniously with both hands. His left pinky is heavily bandaged. The old man stares at the offering, then stares at the young man's damaged hand. The moment is tense until the older man nods, his face relaxing a bit, and orders one of his minions to remove the offering without opening it. Everyone in the room knows what it is, the severed last joint of the young man's finger. The gift is an act of appeasement. Several men in the room have also lost parts of their pinkies. It is one of the telltale signs of the Japanese yakuza.

Yakuza members also favor tattoos, but theirs are elaborate body murals that often cover the entire torso, front and back, as well the arms to below the elbow and the legs to mid-calf. Naked, a fully tattooed yakuza looks like he's wearing long underwear. Dragons, flowers, mountainous landscapes, turbulent seascapes, gang insignias and abstract designs are typical images used for yakuza body art. The application of these extensive tattoos is painful and can take hundreds of hours, but the process is considered a test of a man's mettle.


To a Westerner's eye, the yakuza's 1950s rat-pack style of dress can seem comically retro. Shiny tight-fitting suits, pointy-toed shoes and longish pomaded hair—long out of style in America—are commonplace among the yakuza today. They also favor large flashy American cars, like Cadillacs and Lincolns. Unlike other organized crime groups around the world, the yakuza have no interest in keeping a low profile. In fact, in most Japanese cities, yakuza social clubs and gang headquarters are clearly marked with signs and logos prominently displayed.


But despite their garish style, the yakuza cannot be taken lightly. In Japan there are 110,000 active members divided into 2,500 families. By contrast, the United States has more than double the population of Japan but only 20,000 organized crime members total, and that number includes all criminal organizations, not just the Italian-American Mafia. The yakuza's influence is more pervasive and more accepted within Japanese society than organized crime is in America, and the yakuza have a firm and long-standing political alliance with Japan's right-wing nationalists. In addition to the typical vice crimes associated with organized crime everywhere, the yakuza are well ensconced in the corporate world. Their influence extends beyond Japanese borders and into other Asian countries, and even into the United States.



Oyabun-Kobun, Father-Child


Like the Mafia, the yakuza power structure is a pyramid with a patriarch on top and loyal underlings of various rank below him. The Mafia hierarchy is relatively simple. The capo (boss) rules the family with the assistance of his underboss and consigliere (counselor). On the next level, captains run crews of soldiers who all have associates (men who have not been officially inducted into the Mafia) to do their bidding.


The yakuza system is similar but more intricate. The guiding principle of the yakuza structure is the oyabun-kobun relationship. Oyabun literally means "father role"; kobun means "child role." When a man is accepted into the yakuza, he must accept this relationship. He must promise unquestioning loyalty and obedience to his boss. The oyabun, like any good father, is obliged to provide protection and good counsel to his children. However, as the old Japanese saying states, "If your boss says the passing crow is white, then you must agree." As the yakuza put it, a kobun must be willing to be a teppodama (bullet) for his oyabun.


The levels of management within the yakuza structure are much more complex than the Mafia's. Immediately under the kumicho (supreme boss) are the saiko komon (senior adviser) and the so-honbucho (headquarters chief). The wakagashira (number-two man) is a regional boss responsible for governing many gangs; he is assisted by the fuku-honbucho, who is responsible for several gangs of his own. A lesser regional boss is a shateigashira, and he commonly has a shateigashira-hosa to assist him. A typical yakuza crime family will also have dozens of shatei (younger brothers) and many wakashu (junior leaders).


A successful candidate for admission into the Mafia must participate in a ceremony where his trigger finger is pricked and the blood smeared on the picture of a saint, which is then set on fire and must burn in the initiate's hands as he swears his loyalty to the family. In the yakuza initiation ceremony, the blood is symbolized by sake (rice wine). The oyabun and the initiate sit face-to-face as their sake is prepared by azukarinin (guarantors). The sake is mixed with salt and fish scales, then carefully poured into cups. The oyabun's cup is filled to the brim, befitting his status; the initiate gets much less. They drink a bit, then exchange cups, and each drinks from the other's cup. The kobun has then sealed his commitment to the family. From that moment on, even the kobun's wife and children must take a backseat to his obligations to his yakuza family.

The Yakuza Godfathers




The Yakuza Godfathers


In the years following World War II, yakuza membership increased dramatically to 184,000 members divided into 5,200 gangs throughout the country, making it larger than the Japanese army at the time. Inevitably these gangs encroached on one another's territories, which resulted in bitter and bloody gang wars. The man who brought peace to the warring factions and unified the yakuza was the group's first 20th-century godfather, Yoshio Kodama.


Kodama's gift was his ability to balance his affiliations to both right-wing political groups and criminal gangs, using each to keep the other in check. He was a political fixer who served his government through corruption, espionage and other dirty dealings, which the Japanese simply call kuroi kiri (black mist). In the 1930s and 1940s, he maintained an extensive network of spies in China, feeding information back to the Japanese government. He procured large shipments of materials, such as nickel, cobalt, copper, and radium, for the mounting war effort, sometimes bartering for these supplies with heroin. A grateful Japanese government awarded him the title of rear admiral for his patriotic efforts, and by the time the war was over in 1945, Kodama was worth the equivalent of $175 million.


After the Japanese surrendered to the Allied powers, he was classified a Class A war criminal—a distinction reserved only for cabinet ministers, ultra-nationalists and high-ranking military leaders—and served two years in prison before being released as part of a general amnesty. A fervent anti-Communist with access to valuable information regarding Communist movements in China and Japan and an army of street criminals at his disposal, Kodama became an attractive asset for the occupying forces. Just as Lucky Luciano provided the Mafia's services to the invading Allied forces in Sicily during World War II, Kodama acted as go-between for the G-2 section of the occupational forces and the yakuza, and was able to mobilize battalions of gangsters to carry out his political will. The CIA paid him $150,000 in 1949 to use his underworld connections to smuggle a shipload of tungsten out of China, a shipment that never arrived, although Kodama kept his fee.


Taoka first came to power in the port city of Kobe, where his gangs rounded up unskilled laborers and sold their services cheaply to shipping companies. Other yakuza clans competed for this lucrative racket, but under Taoka's guidance, the Yamaguchi-gumi took the lion's share of the labor business.


Unlike Yoshio Kodama, who disdained street-level violence, Taoka had lived with it all his life and had no problem using it to his advantage. Orphaned as a boy, Taoka was forced to work on the Kobe docks where he was taken in by a local gang leader named Noburu Yamaguchi. As a young man, Taoka proved to be a fierce street fighter. His signature move was to claw his opponents eyes with his fingers, which earned him the nickname Kuma (The Bear). In 1936, at the age of 23, he was sentenced to eight years in prison for murdering a gang rival.


Upon his release in 1943, he was welcomed back into his old gang, and in 1946, at the age of 33, he became the new oyabun after the death of Yamaguchi. Police arrests and the military draft had reduced the Yamaguchi-gumi to just 25 loyal kobun, but under Taoka the gang's ranks would soon swell. His organizational genius and natural aggressiveness helped to make the Yamaguchi-gumi Japan's premier yakuza clan. The cunning Bear made a pact with Kobe's largest bakuto gang, the Honda-kai, but in fact he was uncomfortable with sharing power. The traditional gamblers were no match for his soldiers, and soon the Honda-kai was devoured by the Yamaguchi-gumi.

A Korean gang from Osaka, the Meiyu-kai, was Taoka's next target, and its defeat gave the Yamaguchi-gumi a controlling share of the Osaka rackets. Operating like a wartime commanding general, Taoka moved in on the Miyamoto-gumi next and swallowed their ranks into his own. In the 1960s even the great Kodama had to negotiate with Taoka to keep the Yamaguchi-gumi from muscling into Yokohama

In 1972 Kodama brokered a historic pact between the Yamaguchi-gumi and Tokyo's powerful Inagawa-kai. The deal was sealed at Taoka's home in a traditional sakazuki ceremony in which blood brotherhood was sworn over elaborately poured cups of sake. After the sake was consumed, the empty ceremonial cups were wrapped in paper and put away inside the representatives' kimonos. The men then clasped one another's hands, and a go-between declared the ceremony completed. The Yamaguchi-Inagawa alliance created a yakuza behemoth with only four of Japan's prefectures free of their control.


In July 1978, at the age of 65, Taoka survived an attempt on his life. He was enjoying a limbo performance at the Bel Ami nightclub in historic Kyoto when a young man named Kiyoshi Narumi walked up to the godfather's table, pulled out a .38-caliber pistol, and started shooting. Despite the presence of five bodyguards, Taoka was hit in the neck, and the assassin managed to escape. Taoka was rushed to the hospital in his bulletproof black Cadillac.

Narumi was a member of the Matsuda syndicate, whose boss had previously been killed in a skirmish with the Yamaguchi-gumi. Several members of the Matsuda gang, including Narumi, had eaten their oyabun's ashes, vowing to avenge his murder. Taoka eventually recovered from his gunshot wound, but his attacker was found dead several weeks later in the woods near Kobe.


Three years later Taoka succumbed to a heart attack. His funeral was a grand affair attended by high-ranking Yamaguchi-gumi members from all over the country, as well as a number of well-known celebrity entertainers. Thirteen hundred police officers were on hand to maintain order. The National Police Agency took advantage of the customary three-month mourning period and arrested 900 Yamaguchi-gumi members in the hope of weakening the gang after the godfather's death. Taoka had chosen a successor before he died, a man named Yakamen, but he was in prison at the time of Taoka's death. In the chaos created by the power void, Taoka's widow Fumiko grabbed the reigns and prevented a divisive power struggle within the gang. She was mainly a figurehead, as one would expect in a male-dominated society, but her strong presence nevertheless maintained order until a permanent successor was selected.


The Korean yakuza are a powerful presence in Japan, despite the fact that Koreans suffer discrimination in Japanese society. Although Japanese-born people of Korean ancestry are a significant segment of the Japanese population, they are still considered resident aliens. But Koreans, who are often shunned in legitimate trades, are embraced by the Japanese yakuza precisely because they fit the group's "outsider" image. The man who paved the way for Koreans in Japanese organized crime was the Korean yakuza godfather Hisayuki Machii.


Born Chong Gwon Yong in 1923 in Japanese-occupied Korea, Machii was an ambitious street hood who saw opportunity in Japan and seized it. After the Japanese surrender, Machii worked with the United States Counter Intelligence Corps, which valued his staunch anticommunist beliefs. While leaders of the Japanese yakuza were imprisoned or under close scrutiny by the American occupying forces, the Korean yakuza were free to take over the lucrative black markets. But rather than trying to rival the Japanese godfathers, Machii made alliances with them, and throughout his career, he remained close to both Kodama and Taoka.

The yakuza in america




The yakuza in america


On October 3, 1991, William Sessions, then-director of the FBI, testified at a hearing on Asian organized crime before the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. "The Boryokudan," he said, referring to the yakuza, "have built one of the world's largest criminal organizations ... According to a publicized report of the National Police Agency of Japan, the Boryokudan, in 1988, grossed almost 10 billion U.S. dollars in revenue, one-third from crystal methamphetamine, a relatively new and powerful stimulant known on the street as 'ice.' The Boryokudan control an estimated 90 percent of the 'ice' flow into Hawaii. The Boryokudan also smuggle guns from the United States into Japan "


The yakuza have made their presence felt in the United States principally in Hawaii, but also in California, Nevada and even New York.


Hawaii has a natural appeal for just about everyone, but criminal opportunities attract the yakuza there more than the exquisite beaches and lush flora. Yakuza members blend in easily in Hawaii because tourists from Japan and other Asian countries flock there. They invest in high-priced real estate, one of their favorite enterprises, and use the island state as a way station for crystal meth headed for the American mainland and firearms head back to Japan. They also work with local crime gangs, funneling tourists from Asia to gambling parlors, sex shows and bordellos in exchange for kickbacks from locals.


The yakuza have also put down roots in California where they have made alliances with Korean and Vietnamese gangs and furthered their traditional partnerships with the Chinese triads. Los Angeles is particularly attractive because of the influx of young actresses desperate to get their big break in the film industry. Yakuza shills have become adept at luring these vulnerable women into porn films and prostitution. Japanese men, whether on sex tours or at home in Japan, often desire western women, particularly blondes.


Like most American organized crime groups, the yakuza love Las Vegas, where gambling—both legal and illegal—is everywhere. Showgirls and hookers are also plentiful in Vegas, and the yakuza are instrumental in steering Asian tourists to establishments owned by Americans who pay substantial "finder's fees."


Yakuza members have even been spotted in New York City, where they have made loose alliances with the American Mafia. Although cultural differences and the language barrier make a strong bond nearly impossible, the two groups have been able to cooperate in illegal gambling operations, with the yakuza channeling Japanese tourists to illicit after-hours casinos around the city

YAKUZA RACING




YAKUZA RACING


Yakuza Racing is proud to present the ultimate trophy car. Weve been working on this for over 4 years now, and this car is a nonstop trophy thief. Mainly comprised of Hayame accents, this car is non short of spectacular. We've spent hundreds of hours with all the little details like powdercoating all the bolts in the engine bay, candy red painting the Yakuza Emblem on the Zex Kit, building a custom diamond plate trunk and more. What else have we done? Too much to list but check out the DVD Screens and Autometer Carbon Vacuum and Fuel Pressure Guage. Special props to Brian Dugger of Carsik custom paint on the Nitrous Bottle, valve cover and nitrous control box.



TIM JORDAN




Check out this sick ride by our newest young pimp Tim Jordan, taking trophy after trophy on the East Coast. Reprezenting Yakuza Racing and Kustomized Kreations, this gentleman is taking it to the next level. Check out his list of modifications.



SIMON





TRD Toyota Racing Dynamics Font Lip
VIS Racing OEM Carbon Hood
Zex Nitrous System
AC Autotechnic Race Guages
AC Autotechnics 5" Tach Hidden in Glove Box
OBX Racing Sports Red Fire Extinguisher
Hayame Racing Floormats
Zenik Ikeda 18" Chrome Rims
Arospeed Intake System
Kicker Custom Vinyl Trunk with
2 Kicker 850.2 Amps
1 Kicker 450.2 Amp
F1 Race Sport Shifting
Eibach Pro Kit Suspension
Pioneer Avic N1 Navigation System
w/ DVD Player
OBX Type R Exhaust System



JUSTIN

Yakuza Racings gotcha eye on you from the back side. Justins got a rear view camera installed where the keyhole used to be, wired into his on screen display. Justin also has an XBox, DVD Player and Navagation System in his cockpit. The highlight is is custom stereo system where the rear seats used to be in his car. Justin has also accented his car with a VIS Racing EVO Carbon Hood, Isotta Steering Wheel and Shift Knob, Various OBX Racing and Hayame products, and a R34 Body Kit. We've also put some Skunk2 love in the suspension and engine.




Isotta Panther Shift Knob
Isotta Vallelunga Steering Wheel
Skunk 2 Spring Set
Hayame Carbon Fiber Pedal Set
OBX Racing Sports Header System
Injen Intake System
OBX Racing Strut Tower Bar
R34 Body Kit
VIS Evo Carbon Fiber Hood
OBX Short Shifter
2 Kicker 850.2 Amps
1 Kicker 450.2 Amp
Pioneer Avic N1 DVD Deck
Rear View Camera
AEM True Time Adjustible Cam Gears
AEM EMS Plug and Play System
OBX Racing Sports Type H Exhaust System
Anzo USA Projector Headlamps w/ Halos
VIS Racing Carbon Fiber Hatch
ZEX Nitrous System




GOLDIE

Goldie the pimp master unleashes his latest Yakuza Racing beauty. Airbag Suspension, Planet Audio Sound and a Wings West Urathane Body Kit make this car an all around stunner.




Niche 19" F-16 Chrome Rims
Kenwood 815 Deck w/DVD
Planet Audio Highs
Planet Audio Mids
Fosgate Punch Hi
2-Kicker 800.2 Amps
1-Kicker 400.2 Amp
EAI Airbag System
1/2 Inch Parker Valves
550 Vi-Air Compressor
Yakuza Racing Switches
Anzo Projector Headlights w/ Halos
Anzo Gunmetal Tail Lights
OBX Racing Racing Sports Type R Exhaust System
Wings West Eurathane Kit
SPW Industries M3 Style Mirrors




HEATHER

Part of the Yakuza Racing Team, Heather Anderson has been building her 2000 Honda Civic for both show and the track. Her SI has been completely modified with high tech Skunk 2 Racing mods, as well as stylish accents from Corbeau, Wings West, SPW Industries, Pivot USA , Hayame and more.




Skunk2 Intake Manifold
Skunk2 Mega Power Catback Exhaust
Skunk2 Front and Rear Strut Bars
Skunk2 Rear Lower Tie Bar
Skunk2 Adjustable Upper A-Arm
Skunk2 Stage II Vtec Cams w/dual springs & titanium retainers
JDM B18 Header
JDM Black Headlights w/blue headlamps
Pivot Vtec Controller
Pivot Shift Light
Conrero Leather Shift Knob & Boot
Nokya Pedals
Short Shifter
18" konig rims
Fog Lights
Indiglo Gauges w/blue led dash lights
Tinted Windows
Hayame Adjustable Sport Suspension
Hayame Blue and Black floor mats
Adjustable Rear Camber kit
SPW Nickel Plated Slotted Cross Drilled Rotors
Hayame Cold Air Intake