Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 144, an offer you can't refuse, part one.

Today it's time for one of those listener-requested topics that's been coming my way for years now.

I've been putting it off because it's something I don't know much about personally,

but I finally had the time to do some reading.

So, here we go.

Let's talk about organized crime in Japan.

Japanese organized crime, of course, takes the form of the secret of groups known as Yakuza.

Not that you'll ever hear Yakuza members refer to themselves as such.

They prefer the rather vague-sounding Ninkil'antai, meaning chivalrous groups, or

Gokudo, a term which translates as sort of the extreme path, or those who go all in.

The police today, meanwhile, preferred equally vague Boryokudan, or violent groups.

The modern yakuza have their origins in Tokugawa era Japan.

They grew out of associations of small peddlers and gamblers,

who were respectively ignored by and actively prosecuted for breaking the laws of the Tokugawa establishment.

Tekia, or small peddlers, is a term referring to the predecessors of the kind of small vendors you might see at a local festival,

the kind of folks who move place-to-place hawking their wares.

During the Tokugawa era, that kind of trade was not regulated usually, but it also was not

protected. It was not worth the trouble to protect these kind of small-time vendors from theft or

assault. As a result, peddlers began to form associations to protect themselves, the cost of that

protection, naturally, being a cut of the

profits of all associated members. In other words, a classic protection racket. You pay a little

bit of money as insurance to sell your wares unimpeded. The other source of early Yakuza

...