The yakuza was involved in the drugs and prostitution sectors, while also getting rich through trafficking real estate in cities destroyed by bombings and fires. This formed the foundations for the Japanese mafia, which came to prominence at the end of the Second World War and during the subsequent American occupation of the country. While the regime was strengthening its police power, those on the margins of society organised themselves around peddlers ( tekiya) and professional gamblers ( bakuto). It all began during the Tokugawa shogunate (1603-1867). Their book, Yakuza, Japan’s Criminal Underworld, is a comprehensive and thoroughly researched and sourced text on the origin of this movement and its implementation. While photographers Anton Kusters and Chloé Jafé captured the yakuza‘s everyday existence on glossy paper, the Japanese mafia often keep themselves hidden from foreign eyes, preferring to leave themselves and their activities shrouded in mystery.Īlec Dubro and David Kaplan, two American journalists, decided to investigate this world, without judgement or sensationalism. The world of the yakuza is a source of fascination as so few people have had the opportunity to enter into it without being a member of the clan.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |