In Process

Currently, I'm working on Book One for this year's 24 "real" book goal. It's still the book that I got roadblocked on last year, Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld by David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro. I've got about 100 more pages and I'm finally pretty into it. It's not quite so much about the yakuza as it is general corruption in Japan (politics, banking, business and policing), but since that corruption has ties to or leads back to the yakuza, I suppose it works. (If you tilt your head and squint.) Wanting to learn specifically about yakuza, I was finding this book a bit disappointing. Looking at it as learning about corruption in Japan, it's much more interesting.

Anyway, the point (or closer to it): there is a lot of corruption in Japan. A lot. And it isn't hidden, underworld type stuff. It's out and proud kind of behavior that is really enmeshed with regular society. Which leads me to this...

Back in '97, I was living with the Tokiwas, my third host family, when the daughter told me that a building a couple of blocks over was on fire and that it could be seen from my room upstairs. So we're standing on the balcony of my room, watching this maybe eight-story building burn (not the whole thing, maybe the fifth or sixth floors), firemen rushing up and down the fire escape and she explains to me that it was a yakuza building.

Honestly, it wasn't that I didn't believe her, but I took it with a grain of salt. I mean, it's not like I can go to Dallas and point out what, if any, mob connections certain buildings have. Shoot, I don't even know what street gangs are the most prevalent around here (though when I see a group of guys all wearing the same colors, I do catch a clue, even if I don't know their particular affiliation). I just figured it was one of those "See that house? That's crazy Mr. Burns' house. He murders and eat little kids" kind of things.

But reading this book? Yeah, I'm kind of thinking she was 100% correct, no salt required. Apparently the yakuza in Japan is a lot more known and visible than what I think of when I think of the mob in this country.

This also helps explain more about all the Japanese TV shows I've seen that have yakuza members shaking down the owner of some noodle restaurant. Cause that seems to be a pretty common theme.