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21st-Century Yakuza: Recent Trends in Organized Crime in Japan ~Part 1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Andrew Rankin
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Japan has had a love-hate relationship with its outlaws. Medieval seafaring bands freelanced as mercenaries for the warlords or provided security for trading vessels; when not needed they were hunted as pirates. Horse-thieves and mounted raiders sold their skills to military households in return for a degree of tolerance toward their banditry. In the 1600s urban street gangs policed their own neighborhoods while fighting with samurai in the service of the Shogun. Feudal lords paid gang bosses to supply day laborers for construction projects.

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Research Article
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Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 10 , Issue 7 , February 2012 , e2
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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
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