In Japan, even mobsters bite the recession bullet

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TOKYO, April 20 (AFP): They made their money with sex, drugs and gambling but then invested much of it in high finance. Now Japan's yakuza have their back to the wall as the economic crisis takes aim.
Just like the legitimate businesses they have muscled into, Japan's mafia are being squeezed by the steepest economic downturn in decades, and as profits have plunged, management has been thinning out the ranks.
One of the victims of the downturn is Taro Hiramatsu, a heavily tattooed retired gangster in his 50s who said he never felt all that comfortable with the underworld's new high-flying ways to begin with.
"The yakuza have been hit by the financial crisis because they've invested in the stock market among other things," said Hiramatsu, the number two of his crime gang until he was unceremoniously kicked out last year.
"For yakuza today, money buys everything, including senior positions," Hiramatsu-not his real name-told AFP in a recent interview, his intricately inked arms crossed defiantly over a potbelly.
"In the past, your rank was decided on courage and the sacrifices you made to the group, including being ready to give up your life," he said.
His own career as a gangster hit the skids, he said, when the cash dried up and he could no longer pay his 30,000-dollar monthly dues to the syndicate.
About one third of mid-level chiefs in his crime group, he said, have lost their jobs over the past year, many fleeced of their possessions with only their group insignia tattooed indelibly on their chests.
"Organisations are taking this economic downturn as an opportunity to sort of prune the ranks for the first time in years," said Jake Adelstein, a former Yomiuri Shimbun daily crime reporter and yakuza expert.
Hiramatsu is proudly old-school. His broad tatooed back features a samurai warrior clasping a knife between his teeth beneath a rippling black cod. His arms are laced with sakura cherry flowers, an ancient symbol of Japan.
Sitting cross-legged in a Tokyo house, he says he doesn't have much time for the new generation of mobsters who have traded the mean streets for the corporate boardrooms, and their nine- milimetre automatics for the Nikkei-225.
In a year when exports and share prices have halved in the world's second- biggest economy and corporate giants have plunged into the red, he reckons it may be time for gangsters to dust off their ancient code of ethics.
The yakuza, who trace their roots to samurai gone astray during the 17th- century Edo period, traditionally relied on gambling, prostitution, loan- sharking and protection rackets as their bread and butter.
They have operated relatively openly, entertaining close ties with politicians and lobby groups, while police have tolerated their existence as long as they have stayed on their turf and kept down street crime.
Although police will at times go after their members, Yakuza groups themselves are not illegal.