Yakuza

The National Police Agency announced recently that there were total of 44 human trafficking cases confirmed by police across Japan in 2012, and a dramatic uptick in the number of domestic…

The message of "Strong In The Rain" in its tale of foreign and Japanese heroes and villains--and there are both, remains with the reader long after the book is done.…

“People’s clothing are the ‘social symbols’ which allows other people to understand whether he/she is a Buddhist monk, a Christian priest, a salary man, or a medical doctor. Therefore the…

It is difficult to say whether the wabori Japanese traditional tattoo (入れ墨） hurts more or less than the electric needle tattoo. Pain is like tickle, it is not a feeling…

Hello Kitty, yakuza working in the nuclear industry, coffee and cigarettes, 2012 was a year chock full of news. Here are some of our favorite stories we ran in 2012.

Chapter 12: "We Ran It In A Different Way" is a must for anyone interested in the shadow history of Japan. It details how in post-war Japan, the CIA, using…

Because of Japan's personal privacy protection laws, created by the LDP to discourage magazine reporters for writing about their scandals and organized crime ties, I'm limited in what I can…

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. You can tell more about a man by his enemies than you can by his friends. A man with no enemies is…

The next time I ran into Shira she told me I shouldn't expect to see Shin again. He probably wasn't coming back. "Not coming back?" I asked puzzled. "You don't…

These days the price of a standard civilian hit-job can run as high as $2 million. That’s not the price to get the job done―that’s the price if one of…