Introduction: This is an old Tokyo Journal article from the 1990s by Michael McDongah. As it is no longer available anywhere but well worth reading, we are taking the liberty of republishing it here at Fujiland.
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A rather large, meaty-headed man with karate-damaged knuckles is drawing his finger across a calendar hanging on the wall of Gang H.Q. Koike-san, my burly guide, stylishly decked out in paramilitary fatigues and army boots, kindly explains the significance of the dates circled in red ink.
The year kicks off with the appearance of the Imperial family at the Palace on January 2. Commoners begin congregating at around 8:30 am. Each year, the police allow a different patriotic group, i.e. right-wing gang, to lead the parade through the main gates of the Palace, escorted by Imperial Household staff in morning coats. Before entering everybody is searched and handed a plastic Japanese flag to wave. Gang members strategically place themselves along the front of the crowds and raise banners, hands and voices in a banzai chant as the emperor appears. One gangster informs me it is disrespectful to take photographs of the emperor. By way of compensation, he lets me take a picture of the back of his head, tattooed with the number 4 and Death, written in English. An old man passes us carrying a picture, bordered in black, of a young soldier, perhaps his brother. The crowd is riddled with police to prevent any unseemly incident. In 1969, Okuzaki Kenzo, an angry veteran of the battlefields of New Guinea, launched a slingshot of pachinko balls at Emperor Hirohito. These days the emperor appears behind bullet-proof glass.
Uyoku — right-wing extremists — are obsessive about dates and anniversaries. All provide a good excuse to dress up for the day and head out in a convoy of sound trucks to exhort unfortunate passers-by to greater feats of Yamato spirit, the essence of Japaneseness. The senden ka, literally “propaganda vehicles,” come in a variety of colours, favourites being black with gold kanji or military olive green, most have speakers mounted on the roof, grilles on the windows, and a few add a battering ram on the front, Mad Max style.
Come February 11, National Foundation Day, the trademark sound trucks fan out across the city and congregate at Yasukuni, the controversial Shinto Shrine dedicated to the military war dead, and later descend on Shibuya to take over Hachiko Plaza. On a lovely sunny afternoon, last Foundation Day, I hitched a lift on a convoy. The police were open mouthed to see a gaijin, albeit a blonde haired, blue eyed, Aryan mascot, sitting up front next to the gang boss. Cruising through Tokyo, a law unto themselves, the lead truck ignores red lights, blocks an intersection, warns the halted traffic to stay put, and hails the convoy through in strict formation. One unfortunate lady, caught in the middle of the eight trucks, stalls her car in a panic. Out jump a few, burly youths, with brown, spiky dyed hair, and kindly push her vehicle aside. On we roll.
En route, the gang stop off at an office building to pick up some large, mysterious cardboard boxes, duffel bags, 5-feet-long gas cylinders and folding tables. The trucks pull up in Shibuya, blocking all the roads that run to the Hachiko side of the station, pedestrianizing the area for the rest of the afternoon. While the senior members stand around, smoking, and chatting to each other, underlings unload, set up the tables, and unpack hundreds of little boxes. Each box, the size of a packet of cigarettes, contains a small cake with ‘Love Your Country’ picked out in kanji icing. Other gang members, one in large black and gold Chanel sunglasses, roll out the cylinders, actually full of helium, and begin inflating balloons. While the usual round of speeches blast out from the sound truck speakers, the upbeat gangsters hand out cakes and balloons to passers-by. The two plain-clothed policemen, assigned to keep an eye on the gang, help out with the distribution of balloons.
Foundation Day, to all intents and purposes, is a restoration of Kigensetsu; a national holiday of the prewar and wartime period, created by the Meiji government to celebrate the myth of the enthronement of the first Emperor, Jimmu. Invented tradition played a major role in forging a centralized nation state featuring the emperor at its psychological and physical center. The occupation authorities abolished the holiday in 1948. The Japanese government reinstated it in 1966. Back at Yasukuni I remembered another gang handing out leaflets and collecting donations in support of the construction of a special shrine to the Showa Emperor, along the lines of Meiji Jingu.
Claiming the past and manufacturing a sense of continuity is an important concept in Japan. Group identity possesses a powerful resonance. One shouldn’t assert individual identity too strongly over group consensus. Inevitably there is an undertow of tension over what constitutes identity, and a continual tug of war over the character of the group, expressed in everyday friction between its members, and in larger struggles such as the popular conception of history. Power is a major factor in the contextualizing of time and space. The right conveniently and profitably align themselves with the powers-that-be and underpin the status quo. I notice Koike-san is using a traditional-style calendar marked by the year of the reign of the current emperor; time and space, by imperial decree.
Green Day, April 29, the Showa Emperor’s birthday, is another excuse to take the trucks for a spin around the metropolis, via Yasukuni and the Palace, snarling up traffic, blasting deafening martial music and shouting right wing slogans at pedestrians who remain outwardly impervious to the assault. The Right are particularly fond of Hirohito, an implausible candidate for the godlike status he enjoyed during the war years. Such was the reverence for the image of the emperor, the allies considered painting Hirohito’s face on the side of warships serving in the Pacific to deter to kamikaze squads, reasoning the pilots wouldn’t dare to crash headfirst into the imperial countenance. Hirohito’s post-war transformation was no less remarkable — from international hate figure to a grandfatherly character with a penchant for marine biology pottering about in the imperial gardens. Showa means peace: Hirohito’s reign was the most violent in Japanese history. Green Day posthumously recasts the Showa Emperor as a nature lover and environmentalist. It is difficult to avoid or resist such national myth making. Our minds are made up for us. The right is an effective bulwark against common sense and an honest reckoning of history and society. Right-wing activists map out the parameters of debate and brook no dissent. Critical thinking is not welcome; your silent cooperation is appreciated.
Not surprisingly, one date noticeably absent from the official calendar of national holidays is May Day, International Labor Day, established by the International Socialist Congress in 1889. May Day has not been recognized in Japan since its repression in 1936, having previously been observed for sixteen years. In its place, Japan has its own government sanctioned ‘Thank You Labor Day’ on November 23. Traditionally, a rare opportunity for the left to flex their political muscle, May Day is part street theatre, part ritual civic disobedience, and carries a symbolic significance for both right and left in the turbulent post-war period. Koike-San says his group usually rally their trucks and ‘patrol’ the area around Hibiya Park and Toranomon to counter-demonstrate, harass and shout down their opposite numbers on the left.
In the ‘jan ken pon’ of politics, pragmatism beats principle, and law and order wins out over protest. So it was in the deprived and tumultuous years following Japan’s defeat. The ‘Food May Day’ demonstration of 1946 was a particularly significant outpouring of popular discontent. Largely inspired by housewife action, some three quarters of a million people assembled in Hibiya Park for anti-government demonstrations. Emboldened by numbers, fifty thousand continued on to the Prime Minister’s residence. The police rose to the challenge, brutally, opening fire on the crowds while American military jeeps and armored cars, fitted out with mounted machine guns, intervened to restore order. What the authorities perceived as chaos was, for protesters, a dynamic time of free speech that promised the possibility of change. The Palace Plaza was a sea of red flags and revolutionary banners, loudspeakers hummed with revolutionary slogans, and even relayed jokes at the emperor’s expense. The leader of a delegation that was finally allowed to meet the Prime Minister remarked point blank that somebody so fat could not possibly be living within the 500-yen monthly income imposed on the nation by the government. Such insolence seems remarkable by today’s standards. By May Day, 1952, although the balance of power had shifted back to the authorities, the government remained sufficiently concerned about combined labor action and anti-Americanism being vocally expressed in public that protesters were forbidden from approaching the Palace. Despite a court order overturning the ban, the police were determined to keep the hordes at a respectful distance. The protesters marched on regardless and the police responded with tear gas and pistols, killing two.
It was against this backdrop that modern right-wing gangs came to prominence. Post-war chaos left law and order in a shambles. Shortages fuelled a black market that encouraged the siphoning off of supplies, exacerbating the problem, and pushing up prices and profits even further. It was a ripe time for entrepreneurial criminals and businessmen. Gangs came to bridge the gap between respectable society and illegality, expanding the economic gray zone to every corner of civic life. For example, the mutually beneficial association of the construction business and gangs in labor brokering and strike breaking neatly dovetailed into post war reconstruction and boom years for both. In the convergence of business, political and criminal interests, the right became self-appointed political storm troopers and vigilantes. The anti-red purge, sanctioned by McArthur at the onset of the Cold War, gave the rightists a political raison d’être and material support from above. This new breed of muscle for hire also found plenty of time for straightforward, old-fashioned crime such as robbery, drug and gunrunning, extortion rackets, prostitution and gambling.
Politically, rightists in Japan fulfil a dual role — acting as an advance guard for reactionary, conservative political factions, while at the same time providing a contrast that makes the establishment appear sensible, moderate and respectable. Rightist appeals for recognition of the flag and national anthem, condemnation of a reckoning of Japan’s wartime record, support for revisionist history texts, changes to the Constitution and Article 9, the campaign for ministerial visits and state support for Yasukuni Shrine, have all filtered into mainstream political debate. Rear-guard actions attack those who dare hold alternative points of view. Victims include the national teacher’s union, for their perceived left-wing leanings, public figures — from politicians, filmmakers, to journalists — who step away from the official version of reality, and participants in street demonstrations and seminars of an anti-authoritarian nature, who are liable to harassment and physical attack. The right’s greatest triumph is the resultant self-censorship — the most effective muzzle on thought, speech and action. Sensitive topics are best avoided, anything that smacks of controversy is anathema.
The right propagate and exploit the Japanese fear of confrontation and disharmony. The embarrassment of getting mixed up with gangsters is as big a pressure as the threat of violence. Gangs are not averse to turning this double-edged sword on their political and corporate sponsors. The symbiotic relationship between the underworld and ordinary society is filtered through complex networks of shell companies, financiers, underlings and fixers. The uniformed rightists are symptoms of the system, merely the clown fish to bigger sharks. Petty thugs are useful for strike breaking, warning off rivals and complainants, and securing shareholder meetings against ordinary stockholders who may have legitimate but unwelcome opinions. The more powerful characters further up the food chain, directing events, can easily reverse these services into even more profitable protection rackets and blackmail. Sophisticated ‘sokaiya’, corporate racketeers and extortionists, buy into companies, offer ‘protection’ from embarrassing disclosures, demand funds for their assistance and silence, and buy more stock in related companies to spread their web of influence. Loan sharking and repayment collection, extortion, pay-offs, punishment beatings, jiageya (land raising specialists) — the use of strong-arm tactics to induce landowners to sell up, labor brokering and the move into construction and materials in the 1960s and 1970s were followed by a predictable shift into the world of high finance.
A thin, blurry line separates rightist groups and the yakuza. Perhaps the most significant difference is in dress code — paramilitary dress against suits and ‘civvies.’ Though tactics differ, the aims are the same. A sokaiya in a smart business suit is essentially the same as a paramilitary-dressed rightist; they differ only in the way they lay siege to a company. The sokaiya mounts a silent attack, privately meeting with company officials, while a rightist group will circle the company with trucks screeching ear-splitting slogans. The ultra-nationalists may politely inform the General Affairs department of the company of their plan to return, offering an opt out if the company settles their expenses. Alternatively, but not much less subtly, they might offer a subscription to a newsletter, or some other goods and services, for which the company will pay handsomely. Sokaiya and right-wing gangs often collude. After a few weeks of right-wing encirclement and daily rantings, a sokaiya will miraculously appear offering to rid the company of their unwanted attention. Switching roles, a gang may offer protection against sokaiya. Pay-offs may well escalate, rather than solve the problem.
One can’t help wondering — how is this allowed to happen? It is interesting to contrast the police attitude of zero tolerance to leftists and the accommodation the authorities have reached with the right and yakuza. Leftists are beyond the pale, literally viewed as ‘outlaws’ seeking to overthrow the system. Gangsters work within and underpin the system, creating a shadow version of the establishment. Gang structure and methods are roughly equivalent to corporate Japan. On a street level, gangs and the police recruit from roughly the same demographic. At the higher echelons of authority, a shared agenda becomes apparent. The Japanese police apparently prefer the stability of organized crime to disorganized crime, allowing the shadow structure of rightists and yakuza to flourish. Police attitudes mirror those of Yoshiro Watanabe, the current boss of Japan’s biggest gang, the Kobe-based Yamaguchi-gumi. Mr. Watanabe portrays himself as an unorthodox public servant, providing a home for society’s dropouts. He contends he merely contains the activities of this underclass, the worst excesses of which are directed at each other, making the yakuza a better alternative to free-for-all crime, especially street crime and random violence, that plagues most other developed countries. This pragmatism has spawned hundreds of officially registered criminal organizations with tens of thousands of members — a professional criminal class, complete with business cards, and lapel pins.
Crime in Japan is a franchise business. Affiliated gangs pay a monthly fee to their parent organization. There are around 90,000 ‘official’ gangsters in Japan, most of them in one of the three largest gangs: the Yamaguchi-gumi, the Inagawa-kai, and the Sumiyoshi-rengo. Gang styles differ. With over 8,000 members, the Inagawa-kai, the second largest gang in Japan and the largest in Tokyo, has made a name for itself in sophisticated business scams. The Yamaguchi-gumi, the largest gang, famed more for its muscle and swagger, boasts 17,500 full-time members, up a third since Watanabe took over 15 years ago, and more than five times the size of the entire American mafia at its peak in the 1950s. Inevitably, tensions between rival gangsters erupt, occasionally escalating into full-blown gang wars. Only then do the police lose patience and act decisively.
The authorities have dubbed all these entities boryokudan. To combat ‘violent groups’ anti-boryokudan laws were passed in 1991 making it illegal to belong to an organization that has a certain percentage of people with criminal records or engaged in designated activities that were previously difficult to prosecute. Activities such as demanding hush money, coercing businesses into using sub-contractors affiliated with yakuza, and even forcing members to get tattoos or cut off their fingers are now prohibited. To combat the anti-boryokudan law, many gangs have set up legitimate front companies to mask their identities. ‘Business suit yakuza’ now make up approximately one-third of total gang membership in Japan. The number of gangs affiliated with the Yamaguchi-gumi has fallen from 120 to about 100 but alliances with other crime groups have actually increased their power and income. Gang crests have disappeared from doors and new business cards printed up promote their new-found legitimacy. An additional category of ‘quasi-gangsters’ has appeared in police reports, their numbers growing from 14,000 to 48,000 in the past decade. The decline in yakuza numbers has also witnessed a corresponding increase in the creation and membership of right-wing organizations. Criminal groups have simply registered as political pressure groups. As with much of the so-called reform in Japan, the window dressing has changed but business continues as usual.
Koike-san’s ultra-nationalist headquarters captures the chameleon nature of these hybrid operations. In the main room the boss, sporting a neatly trimmed beard and silver framed glasses, is wearing a fetching maroon turtle-necked sweater, smoking a cigar, sitting behind a large desk, feet up, watching the Diet proceedings on TV. On the wall hang two large photographs, one of Hirohito in full military dress, taken in the 1930s, and a full-length portrait of a karate master, a nod to the affiliated dojo downstairs. The adjoining room, where we are temporarily banished because of a hastily called meeting, is full of boxes of pornographic videos awaiting distribution. Every room has its own shredding machine, into which anything of any note, even the receipt for the noodles just delivered by a nervous looking delivery boy, is dropped into oblivion. The gang members carry prepaid mobile phones, the numbers change every few weeks to avoid detection. The radio equipment that connects the trucks with H.Q. crackles in the background. Outside the Japanese flag flies atop the building and the vending machine next to the front door bears the group insignia. Koike-san looks at me with his large, open, bear-like face, and asks “Do you have mafia in your country?” I turn the conversation back to the gang’s yearly outings.
Constitution Day, May 3, commemorates the enactment in 1947 of the post-war constitution, announced by Emperor Hirohito, on the ninety-fourth anniversary of the Meiji Emperor’s birthday. The American-scripted document relegated the emperor from divine status, separated Shinto and State and introduced Article 9, the anti-war clause that has been a lightning rod for left- and right-wing forces ever since. Article 9 forbids Japan the right to retain land and sea forces. Doublethink set in when McArthur, in 1950, called for the creation of a National Police Reserve (NPR), the forerunner of the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), to deal with domestic unrest while freeing up American troops for service in Korea. The cooperation between erstwhile enemies against Korea was a great boost to the recovery of the Japanese economy. The Japanese PM of the time described the Korean War in his memoirs as a “godsend.” Ultra-nationalists such as Koike-san are rooting for rearmament and despise the toy-soldier status of the SDF. Ironically, a not insignificant number of gang members, promoting the ‘Yamato spirit’ of a nationalist Japan, are Korean, or of Korean ancestry. Personal differences aside, everybody bonds in anti-Communism.
The public face of gangs — the foot soldiers, opportunists, misfits, hangers on, petty criminals, and wannabe hoods are a loose federation of errand boys, a floating membership around a smaller number of hard-core members. For many of the junior gangsters, who are the lowest creatures on the food chain, it is a phase they will grow out of. One feels vaguely sorry for them. Dressing up and belonging to a group is one way of satisfying the need for some meaning and significance in their lives. Trucking around town, trick or treating the locals like right-wing ‘Merry Pranksters’, beats working in a convenience store, the only activity some of these characters seem cut out for. Some will have to make a career of it. One young guy has shaved off his hair and eyebrows, lost a finger and gained full-body tattoos. Looking out of the truck, Tokyo is an endless stretch of gray concrete; an urban, sensory deprivation tank. Inside, a bento-box lunch and one-cup sake party is in full swing.
August 9, an eventful time for the Russian Embassy complex near Kamiyacho, marks the anniversary of Russia’s declaration of war against Japan and its subsequent occupation of the Northern Territories, an issue that inflames considerable passion on the right. In 1951 Japan signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty with 48 allied nations, but not Russia. Amongst the declarations of the Treaty, Japan renounced all claim to the Kuril Islands. Unfortunately, the text didn’t specify which islands made up the Kuril chain, hence the “confusion,” as one would say in diplomatic speak. Russia steadfastly maintained the issue was closed until Mikhail Gorbachev, and his Japanese counterparts, announced the dispute would be finally laid to rest as part of a future peace treaty between the two nations. Then the Soviet Union collapsed.
On August 9, every year, war is declared on the embassy in an epic showdown between rightists and police. Around 30 trucks are cruising the area, circling the surroundings streets as if waiting for the signal to attack. Loudspeakers boom demands for the return of the islands. At both ends of the road, a token phalanx of burly riot police, the kidotai, complete with shields, helmets, heavy padding and batons, block the highway — roman garrison style. Busloads of riot police are hidden away in the side streets to be called on if necessary. Ordinary traffic cops wheel heavy-duty metal barriers across both ends of the road to prevent the trucks access to the street that passes directly in front of the embassy compound. The trucks circle. A number of envoys from each gang are searched and escorted by police to the embassy gates. There, they line up, ceremoniously unroll a proclamation, press the doorbell, and shout their demands into the intercom, no doubt at some poor secretary, unlucky enough to have drawn the shortest straw. Satisfied, the rightists pose for a group photograph and are escorted back beyond police lines. Meanwhile, ordinary pedestrians are going about their business, taxi drivers wearily look on from the deepening traffic jam, and office workers mill about in search of sandwiches and bento boxes. The trucks crawl by. Bemused young officers display large banners politely asking the trucks to keep the noise down. Police boffins with decibel counters anxiously poke large mikes in the direction of the loudest offenders. Cheeky truck drivers gun the volume to unbearable levels only to drop it as the police team scuttle towards them. Plain-clothes officers take video, photographs and note down license plates. Many of the senior gang members and police exchange nods or stop for a quick chat. It is a peculiar pantomime of power. Without warning, the doors of a truck fly open and a few young gang members leap out and attack the front-line police. A kidotai squad are immediately at the barriers, as the traffic cops retreat. A lot of pushing and shoving ensues, a mass of blue overalls and army boots. If not for the police helmets and trendy sunglasses, it is difficult to tell them apart. Calm is quickly restored.
A couple of hours later, the pattern monotonously resumed, one driver suddenly swerves his truck into the barriers, managing to break through the police lines, scattering them for a stunned second, perhaps equally surprising himself. The police respond swiftly, throwing spiked barriers in front and behind the wheels preventing the truck maneuvering away. Police descend like a swarm of bees, one policeman bobbing up and down at the back of the crowd videoing the riot police as they bash in the doors and flood inside. The occupants are bundled out and the driver, nattily dressed in a green traditional ‘happi’ suit and ponytail, emerges, handcuffed, and is led away. The police take custody of the truck.
At the end of the day, in one of those ‘Japan Only Moments’ many of the trucks on their final pass say goodbye to the police. One goes as far as mentioning the heat and humidity, and thanks them for a hard day’s work well-done, leaving with a final “otsukaresamadeshita.” Later, in an izakaya, the two plain-clothes police officers assigned to the gang briefly join the boss and amassed members for a light snack and a beer. Before leaving, the policemen hand out mobile phone straps featuring the official police cartoon mascot.
And so it goes. You may see the rightists fly by on the anniversary of Mishima’s death on November 25, or en route to a corporate extortion, or speeding to disrupt a gathering of leftists, adding a splash of color to the dreary conformity they help enforce. At the close of the year, December 23, the gangs congregate once again at the Palace, for the birthday appearance of the current emperor, completing the cycle of another year in the life of a gang.
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