People think of the yakuza as wielding swords and having tattoos and missing fingers. What you should be thinking of the modern-day yakuza is Goldman Sachs with guns.

This is great news. Maybe everyone call tell a few more people each and that way, I will be able to visit an onsen for the first time. Now that we know yakuza don't wield sword and have tattoos.

I guess that these journalist investigate only the top of the mountain, the guys colecting debts and filling the ranks of the uyoku dantai stil look the same old business to me.

Yakuza uses all kinds of weapons from swords to guns.. thats obvious. and neverknow1 ruling out that they dont wield swords anymore would be naiive ;P its there heritige im sure some still do ^^

Probably true. More likely they only carry credit cards with them though.

I've yet to see one with a gun. Every second person is apparently a Yakuza according to my Japanese wife. 'Don't talk to them, they look like Yakuza!', she says. They look no different to anyone else in my eyes. I was starting to think that the Yakuza are a myth, made up to scare foreigners that come to Japan!

Oh... about swords and guns, is not like the yaks think that blades are cooler than guns. Is a cold fact that is very dificult get guns in Japan, even for the yaks.

neverknow2,

"Every second person is apparently a Yakuza according to my Japanese wife. 'Don't talk to them, they look like Yakuza!', she says. They look no different to anyone else in my eyes."

LOL, I had the same experience with my girlfriend.. she refused to eat at any of the dozens of food stalls at some street festival because she said the yakuzas running them looked 'scary'. They looked like the people at every other food stall in Japan, fried noodles. Now if one of them had looked like Kobayashi Akira or Sugawara Bunta, THAT would have been awesome.

Kobayashi Akira or Sugawara Bunta,

Cool!

No Yazuka is a group of pussys that were killed and kicked out of america by hell's angels and the irony is Hell's angels is not a powerful criminal enterprise/gang .

I imagine how yazuka would do against other gangs in america, hell's angels is not even in the top 10 of the most dangerous gangs/crime syndicate that operate in america.

Well they are not powerful or dangerous in the usa, they are very powerful in the nordic countrys of europe which hell's angels stronghold is in denmark.

Hell's angels has less then 1000 members in usa and Yazuka couldnt handle that, how the hell would yazuka handle ms-13 that are 100 times more violent then hell's agels and have about 300000 members in usa alone and are allied with the mexican mafia

I wonder if Jake the yakuza expert knows that the name "yakuza" means 8, 9 and 3 - totaling 20, a losing number in Japanese gambling.