Word: yakuza
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...increasing boldness of Mafia-like crime syndicates. Japan boasts the lowest crime rate of any industrial nation (Tokyo's homicide rate is about one-tenth that of New York's, for instance, and robbery is almost nonexistent). But police estimate that the country now has 124,000 yakuza (good-for-nothings, as mobsters are commonly called), divided into some 2,900 gangs. A crackdown on these boryokudan (violence organizations) has become the top priority of Japan's 200,000-man national police force...
...police have put pressure on such traditional gangland rackets as gambling, drug trafficking and prostitution, the mobsters have increasingly turned to corporation blackmail for new revenues. The shakedowns are made possible by the common corporate practice of hiring yakuza thugs, instead of less effective private guards, to police general stockholders' meetings. Such men even have a name, sokaiya, meaning general-meeting experts...
...Kyoto bank, which had used yakuza to threaten and intimidate workers into going along with management in a labor dispute, almost went broke from mob shakedowns before it recently called on police for help. At a general stockholders' meeting of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries two years ago, a tough-looking platoon of men beat up a group of peace advocates who had bought shares in the company so that they could protest Mitsubishi's arms production. The men were known to be sokaiya, but no company official ever admitted inviting them. Indeed, it is possible that they had simply...