Japanese Kantei 2016 - Harvard Model United Nations

Japanese Kantei 2016
Committee Update Papers
Dear Delegates,
It is my pleasure to again welcome you to the Specialized Agencies of Harvard Model United Nations 2011! The
conference is now less than a few months away and many hours of hard work and preparation have been undertaken
by our staff to make the 2011 conference the best yet. For your reference, this document contains committee update
materials that can be considered supplementary information to those contained in the Study Guide. It is our intention
that this document will provide yet another resource to your preparation in the lead-up to conference. Also, check
your committee’s individual page on our website for further research and inferormation.
If you have any questions regarding your committee, or to introduce yourself to your director, please contact your
director directly at: kantei@harvardmun.org
As always, do not hesitate to contact me directly if you have any conference questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Hunter Richard
Under-Secretary-General for the Specialized Agencies
412 Quincy Mail Center
Cambridge, MA 02138
sa@harvardmun.org

Japanese Kantei: 2016
Committee Update
Th e Ya k u z a: Ba c k g r o u n d
The long and varied relationship the Yakuza has held
with Japan may seem very strange to foreigners. The
term “organized crime” brings to mind images of mafia
godfathers, family-style organizations, and an underworld
network of influence by which the gangs intimidate their
way into money and power; all of these images apply to
the Yakuza, but these gangsters operate in a fashion quite
distinct among organized criminals. Their distinctive
culture, supposedly based in a rigid moral code and
traditional family values, combined with an interest in
influencing politics and racketeering, has made them an
intrinsic part of Japan, for better or worse. In these past
few decades, however, the sureness of their continuing
influence has been deeply shaken.
Although it may be a little fanciful, modern-day
Yakuza insist that their roots reach as far back as the
17 th century, when packs of newly unemployed samurai
(called “ronin”) began harassing small towns. Groups of
townsfolk, known as “machi-yokko” organized to resist
the onslaught; according to legend these were Robin
Hood-like figures who protected the helpless, strictly
adhering to the dual principles of “giri” and “ninjo” (two
Japanese concepts that have no true English translation;
the closest approximation is a sense of obligation or
being tied by fate, and compassion, respectively.) These
machi-yokko, honorable outlaws, came to be a cultural
phenomenon, starring in innumerable legends and tall
tales. Over time, however, the need for such vigilantes
passed and Japan was left with disorderly bands of young
men with a penchant for violence and the habit of being
able to do as they please. As the anxious government
began to crack down on such groups, their membership
shifted towards a rougher demographic, namely the
“burakumin” (Japan’s caste of ancestral outcasts, similar
to Indian untouchables; it is estimated that up to 60%
of modern Yakuza have burakumin ancestry.) In fact, the
term “Yakuza” is actually a reference to the worst possible
hand in a popular Japanese card game, indicating the
unlucky lot of these burakumin. These newer gangs,
deprived of their original function, turned to two main
illicit sources of income, depending on their location. In
the towns and cities, the “tekiya” sprang up – an umbrella
term for any of the various street vendors of shoddy or
illegal goods. Along the main highways, gangs of machiyokko
known as “bakuto” established a monopoly on
gambling dens. Both groups, tekiya and bakuto, still
mainly comprise the modern concept of the Yakuza.
The ideal Yakuza gang is a microcosm of Japanese
culture and values: its organization, traditions, and even
political affiliations all reflect the rich history of Japanese
society as a whole. Following the traditional Japanese
family dynamics, Yakuza gangs are organized around
father-son, or oyabun-kobun, relationships, with one
oyabun having many kobun, similar to the godfather and
family typical of American mafia. This creates a pyramidal
structure that may include sub-oyabun depending on the
size of the gang, as well as “older brothers” and “younger
brothers” among the kobun. Each oyabun-kobun tie
entails a deep, lasting obligation, including willingness to
sacrifice one’s life or go to prison for the good of the gang.
Besides these ties, gangs also participate in rituals (often
with Shinto elements) to mark members, from full-body
tattooing and removal of the final joint of the little finger
(this last ritual was based in the idea that the partially
crippled hand would decrease one’s sword-wielding
ability, forcing co-dependence among gang members.)
Although it would be impossible to generalize the
ideologies of all of the many Yakuza throughout history,
typically Yakuza have maintained a strong nationalist
affiliation, beginning with their traditional Shinto regard
of the emperor as a divine being, a belief which over
time progressed into an anti-communist and anti-liberal
stance. As a result, conservative and even ultra-nationalist
and fascist leaders of Japan have come to see the Yakuza
as a powerful tool, a physical means for ends with which
politicians wish not to be tied. This tie between the Yakuza
and politics began as simple offers from Yakuza bosses
to local politicians of discreet physical intimidation of
opponents, protestors, etc. With time and increasing
dependence on the success such intimidation brought,
Yakuza intimidation grew to massive proportions, from
violent strike-breaking and violent policing work to
even assassinations. Secret liaisons between politicians
and the Yakuza bosses, known as “kuromaku” (after the
name of the curtain-operator in Kabuki plays,) wielded
immense power and wealth, determining the outcome of
elections, public policy, and even foreign relations using
the politicians’ faces and coalitions of Yakuza strength.
Even the U.S. officers in charge of the Occupation of
Japan were not above soliciting Yakuza assistance for
intelligence purposes, despite the gangs’ opposition to
both foreigners and the democracy the Americans were
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attempting to instate. As a measure of the immense power
of the Yakuza, official reports on the Occupation pointed
to the gangsters’ encompassing influence as the single
largest threat to the success of Japanese democracy.
With the sometimes-hidden, sometimes-blatant
support of the Japanese government (mainly the Liberal
Democratic Party, which has controlled the government
since World War II) combined with an explosively
growing economy, the Yakuza have been able to grow
like never before. Instead of the traditional small gangs
of 50 to several hundred members, in the post-war era
Yakuza gangs have adopted survival of the fittest tactics
in which one gang out-competes and absorbs or allies
with other gangs to form massive coalitions of thousands
of members. The largest gang, the Yamaguchi-gumi,
which boasts 55,000 members in 850 clans (half of all
of the Yakuza in Japan,) began as a small riverfront gang
in Kobe and now controls criminal activity throughout
all of Japan. In fact, gangs like the Inagawa-kai, the
third largest with 15,000 members, have even expanded
their scope outside of Japan and direct drug trafficking,
prostitution, and gambling in the U.S. and throughout
the world. In comparison with other organized crime like
the American mafia, Yakuza are recognized and legitimate
organizations with offices and events and member lists.
They employ lawyers, accountants, historians, and public
Japanese Kantei: 2016
relations officials. The beauty of the Yakuza, ideally, is
that their activities are perfectly transparent, unhidden:
assassins would turn themselves in after committing their
murder, and police could rely on the gangs to regulate
the underworld without directly infringing upon the
general populace. Much has changed for the modern
Yakuza, however; after the war a new class besides the
bakuto and tekiya called the “gurentai” emerged, with
no true occupations but violence and crime, forecasting
the decline of the gangs’ traditional values. Although
most Yakuza still identify with either the role of tekiya
or bakuto based on their primary source of income, their
business ventures have diversified to include not just
drug and arms trade, sex-related industries (pornography,
prostitution, strip clubs, etc,) blackmail and extortion
of both small and large businesses, and joint criminal
activity with foreign mafia, but also legitimate activities
like professional sports, construction, real estate, banking,
shipping, and investing.
Despite the massive flourishing and expansion of
what were once simply bands of outlaws, the Yakuza have
met with increased resistance over the past few decades.
In the 1980s, a collapse of credit that was blamed partially
on the Yakuza’s racketeering (much of the debt was traced
back to the gangs) instigated a series of anti-racketeering
legislation collectively known as the Botaiho, or Organized
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Japanese Kantei: 2016
Crime Countermeasures which were enacted in 1991.
The Botaiho is unlike American anti-mafia legislation
in that it targets legal action against the gang-syndicate
as a whole, which the Japanese government classifies as
a “boryokudan” (violent crime organization) as defined
by certain criteria such as the practice of exploitation for
financial gain, a specific percentage of criminal records
among members, and a hierarchical structure. The
importance of the specificity of these countermeasures is
the allowance of the Yakuza to continue as an institution
while targeting their criminal activities: the gang’s legal
pursuits and autonomy are held intact and non-criminal
organizations such as labor unions are unaffected.
Another important aspect of the Botaiho was that its
legislation was drafted and enacted by the LDP, the very
party that had allied with the Yakuza for decades. Japan’s
increasing liberal public has been becoming further and
further at odds with the conservative values of both the
Yakuza and their patron party, but if the LDP’s repression
of the Yakuza were intended as a show of distancing
themselves from the disliked gangsters, its efforts were in
vain. In 2009, for the first time in the history of Japanese
democracy, the LDP was not elected into power, leaving
the political status of the Yakuza in a questionable state.
In addition to the political quandary facing the
Yakuza, there is also the increasingly prevalent problem of
inter-gang warfare. As mentioned before, the Yamaguchigumi
have managed to coalesce into a single syndicate
encompassing half of Japan’s Yakuza, but along the way
this involved several assassinations of rival gang leadership,
turf wars, broken alliances, and for the first time in years,
civilian and inter-gang deaths. The government has
intervened, using the pressure of the Botaiho legislation
as leverage, which has brought about a ceasefire in order
to avoid being labeled “violent crime organizations.”
Increasingly, the Yakuza are being forced to adapt to
changing policies to avoid instigating further government
intervention. As is, the gangs are able to operate under
normal, if slightly more cautious, conditions.
In order to make any decisions regarding the future
of Japan, an understanding of the history and cultural
depth behind the Yakuza as an institution and a force to
be reckoned with is essential. Japan has entered an era of
great change in which nothing about the future of the
Yakuza is certain, and as such, the leaders of Japan must
tread carefully around this sleeping tiger for the good of
the nation and the world.
References
Dubro, Alec, and David E. Kaplan. Yakuza: Japan’s
Criminal Underworld, Expanded Edition. 1 ed.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Print.
“Yakuza - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Oct. 2010.
.
Ad d it i o n a l Ba c k g r o u n d Mat e r i a l s To Be Po s t e d in
t h e Co m i n g Week s
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