Yakuza’s Influence on Japanese Politics

Background

Yakuza, Japanese organized criminal groups, is one of the biggest criminal organizations in the world. They make money out of business such as human trafficking, prostitution, drug trafficking, extortions and so on. The United States has sanctioned individuals associated with Yakuza in order to dissolve the organization. However, Japan has not implemented sufficient policies to reduce the impacts of Yakuza and eventually eliminate them from society. Why don't’ Japanese politicians reluctant to do so? One possible reason is because Japanese politicians are in favor of having Yakuza for their benefits.

During the era of exponential economic growth in Japan, companies and politicians were the main business partners of Yakuza in order to move people they did not want and money through informal measures. Unlike mafia in the United States, the existence of Yakuza is not illegal under Japanese law even today. At one point, even the Prime Minister of Japan bailed the boss of Yakuza out or attended to the wedding of the Yakuza family. This tendency of being close to Yakuza seems to be more common among the members of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which party has been the ruling party for most of the time in Japan after the W.W.Ⅱ. For a long time, Japan has not successfully formed parties that can compete with the LDP. And currently, most influential politicians are in the LDP or used to be members of the LDP, meaning there is no actual political diversity in the Parliament.

There are two important points to note. First, the LDP is known as a relatively nationalist and right-wing party. Secondly, Yakuza actively engages in political activities representing the rightest opinions and harasses political opponents. In Japan, people refrain from expressing their political views, sometimes because they are scared to do so in society. Is Yakuza having the freedom of doing its business in exchange for helping politicians? To understand what is going on in the Parliament, this study will see how Yakuza and politicians are connected to each other, and how that may have an impact on politics in Japan.

Question

How are the Japanese politicians’ connections with Yakuza affecting the political decisions in Japan? Do the parties play a role in connecting the politicians to Yakuza? 

Methodology

This study will use voting data of politicians for network connections in order to see who is making what type of political decisions with concrete data. The bills to look into are ones related to financial regulation, especially money laundering, and anti-violent groups (legal term for Yakuza in Japanese) legislations. This study will first focus on voting for domestic legist rations for applying the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime in 2017, which Japan had refused to pass more than a decade. This voting attitude on these matters will show how connections with Yakuza do or do not play a role in Japanese political decisions. Attributes of this study will include affiliated parties, the time they were in the LDP, the connections with Yakuza (categorized by each Yakuza family), and the membership of the rightest political institution, Nippon Kaigi, as information to show their political views.

Data

The official website of the Parliament shows all necessary data for the voting history, the attribute for the affiliated political parties, groups, and the period that they have been the members of the LDP. To collect data on the attribute of the connections between politicians and Yakuza members, the basic source will be news reports in Japan and journalists’ publications on Yakuza. Since pursuing research on Yakuza is very difficult and dangerous especially for Japanese citizens, I found that non-Japanese scholarly books have more detailed information than Japanese counterparts.

Limitation

Since most of the Yakuza business is informal activities, only a limited amount of data is available. In addition, the network will not show other factors that may affect the political decisions in Japan, such as political pressure coming from the United States related to regulations of illicit financial activities.

Sources

·      Jake Adelstein, The Yakuza Lobby, Foreign Policy (December 13, 2012). Available at https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/13/the-yakuza-lobby/

·      Jake Adelstein, Japan’s yakuza aren’t disappearing. They’re getting smarter, The Washington Post (April 8th, 2017). Available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2017/04/08/japans-yakuza-arent-disappearing-theyre-getting-smarter/

·      Peter B. E. Hill, The Japanese Mafia: Yakuza, Law, and the State, Oxford University Press (March 30, 2006).

·      Leo Lewis and Hudson Lockett, US sanctions companies linked to Japanese yakuza, Financial Times (October 3, 2018). Available at https://www.ft.com/content/bc0acf9e-c697-11e8-ba8f-ee390057b8c9

·       Ogata, Kenji, Yakuza gangs prospering despite the law, International Herald Tribune (March 19, 2007). Available at http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200703190057.html

·      Jake Adelstein, The Yakuza: Inside Japan's murky criminal underworld, CNN (December 16, 2016).