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Go to audibletrial.com slash Japan to claim your offer. This week I'm going to recommend

After the Quake by Murakami Haruki. After the Quake represents the response of Murakami, one of Japan's best-known modern writers,

to the 1995 Kobe earthquake, which not only devastated Western Hanshu,

but seemed to reveal the growing impotence of a nation which was once destined to be number one.

Like everything Murakami's ever written, it's great.

Go to audible trial.com slash Japan to claim your copy.

Okay. Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, Episode 145, an offer you can't refuse, part two.

So, to recap, after the Second World War combination of the opportunities presented by post-war

depression and then revival, the American move away from the left and towards the Japanese

right, and the continuing rightest contacts of the Yakuza allowed Japan's criminal

syndicates to bounce back from their suppression at the hands of the wartime military government.

But that's not the end of the story. What do the modern Yakuza look like?

Well, the answer is a complicated one in part because there are many different Yakuza families.

Not as many as there once were, though, because one of the biggest features of the post-war

Yakuza has also been consolidation.

Partially that consolidation was the result of government pressure.

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