Yakuza

The word yakuza is internationally recognizable, but it is not the principal term used by Japanese police. Japanese law-enforcement agencies generally use bōryokudan, commonly translated as “violent groups,” for organizations designated under Japan’s anti-organized-crime framework. In popular culture, however, “yakuza” became the umbrella label for a broad collection of syndicates whose histories stretch across gambling networks, street markets, labor brokerage, entertainment districts and postwar black markets.

There has never been a single national organization called “the Yakuza.” The underworld has instead consisted of separate syndicates, alliances and affiliated groups. Some became enormous federations with hundreds of subsidiary organizations; others remained regional. The most important names in modern history include Yamaguchi-gumi, Inagawa-kai and Sumiyoshi-kai, along with regional organizations such as Kudo-kai, Dojin-kai and others formally designated by authorities.

Origins: bakuto, tekiya and a mythology of continuity

Histories of the yakuza frequently trace elements of the culture to bakuto, gambling groups, and tekiya, itinerant merchants and market operators. These categories are useful, but they should not be treated as a simple unbroken family tree leading directly to every modern syndicate. The criminal underworld evolved through changing economic and political conditions, and groups repeatedly merged, divided, renamed themselves and formed new alliances.

The historical image of the honorable outlaw also became part of yakuza self-mythology. Ideas associated with loyalty, obligation and chivalry were useful for creating internal identity, but they coexist with documented histories of extortion, assault, fraud, gambling, drug offenses, corporate intimidation and murder.

That gap between myth and reality is central to understanding the subject.

The oyabun-kobun model

Many yakuza organizations historically described internal relationships through the language of fictive family. The oyabun, or parent figure, stands above kobun, or child figures. Ritualized sake-sharing ceremonies known as sakazuki could formalize relationships of loyalty and hierarchy.

Large syndicates developed multiple layers beneath the top boss. A major organization could therefore contain numerous subsidiary groups whose leaders were themselves powerful bosses. This structure is one reason names such as Yamaguchi-gumi can describe both a central organization and a sprawling network of affiliated gangs.

The system also created succession problems. When a dominant boss died or retired, competing factions could disagree over who should inherit leadership. Some of the most important yakuza wars began precisely this way.

The rise of Yamaguchi-gumi

No organization shaped the modern yakuza landscape more than Yamaguchi-gumi.

Founded in Kobe in the early twentieth century, it was transformed after World War II under third-generation boss Kazuo Taoka. During Taoka’s long reign the syndicate expanded far beyond its original base and became a national force. By later decades it had accumulated a network of affiliates spread across Japan.

Its scale also made succession especially dangerous.

After Taoka’s death, a prolonged struggle eventually produced Masahisa Takenaka as fourth boss. Opposition to that succession created the Ichiwa-kai breakaway and the bloody Yama-Ichi War during the 1980s.

The organization recovered and again became overwhelmingly dominant. Japanese police data from the early 2010s showed Yamaguchi-gumi accounting for an extraordinary share of the country’s organized-crime population, while the NPA described the affiliated Kodo-kai as a major source of the syndicate’s power.

The 2015 split

Modern yakuza history changed again in August 2015.

Thirteen direct bosses left the sixth-generation Yamaguchi-gumi and formed Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi under Kunio Inoue. The split turned former allies into rival camps and produced a series of shootings, vehicle attacks and other confrontations across Japan.

The fracture later produced additional organizations, including Kizunakai and Ikeda-gumi, making the post-2015 map of the Yamaguchi world significantly more complicated than the old single-syndicate structure.

Japanese police continue to treat the rival Yamaguchi-derived organizations as a major public-safety concern.

Anti-boryokudan law and exclusion

Japan’s legal and social environment for organized crime changed sharply from the 1990s onward.

The Anti-Boryokudan Act created a designation system and mechanisms intended to restrict specific forms of intimidation and coercion. Later exclusion ordinances increased pressure not only on gang members but also on businesses and institutions maintaining relationships with them.

Banks, landlords, hotels, mobile-phone companies and other businesses increasingly adopted anti-organized-crime clauses. This made it harder for openly identified members to participate in ordinary commercial life.

The result did not eliminate organized crime. It changed its incentives.

Groups faced greater pressure to hide affiliations, use intermediaries and pursue offenses that did not depend on the traditional public image of a gang office and identifiable members.

Membership decline

Official Japanese figures show a long-term decline in the combined number of full members and associates.

The fall has been substantial enough to change the visual image of the yakuza. Older stereotypes of openly marked gangsters operating from signposted offices increasingly coexist with a less visible criminal environment.

Yet decline should not automatically be interpreted as disappearance.

Police have repeatedly warned that criminal organizations can adapt, and the boundary between traditional bōryokudan and less formal criminal networks can become harder to see.

Tattoos, yubitsume and popular culture

Two of the most famous visual symbols associated with the yakuza are irezumi, elaborate Japanese tattooing, and yubitsume, ritual finger amputation.

Both require context.

Traditional tattooing has a history far broader than organized crime, and it is wrong to equate a tattooed Japanese person with gang membership. Yakuza imagery helped intensify the stigma, particularly in the twentieth century, but tattoo culture and organized crime are not synonymous.

Yubitsume, meanwhile, became associated with apology and punishment inside some organizations. Its dramatic nature made it a favorite subject of films and journalism, sometimes giving the practice more prominence in foreign perceptions than it has in the everyday operation of modern criminal groups.

The yakuza on screen

Japanese filmmakers created an enormous body of yakuza cinema.

The genre ranges from romanticized outlaw stories to the brutal jitsuroku tradition that presented organized crime as unstable, political and transactional. Battles Without Honor and Humanity, Graveyard of Honor, and later Takeshi Kitano films such as Sonatine and Outrage profoundly shaped international ideas about the Japanese underworld.

For the archive, these films matter for another reason: several connect directly back to real people, organizations and historical conflicts.

That is the core of the Japan knowledge graph. The story is not simply a catalogue of gangs. It is a network of syndicates, bosses, wars, rituals, laws, books and films that repeatedly cross into one another.

Sources

– [Japan National Police Agency — 2025 White Paper, Boryokudan situation](https://www.npa.go.jp/hakusyo/r07/honbun/html/bb4421000.html) — Official NPA overview; 25 designated groups as of June 1, 2025 and major-group concentration. – [Japan National Police Agency — 2017 White Paper, Measures against Organized Crime](https://www.npa.go.jp/hakusyo/h29/english/full_text_WHITE_PAPER_2017_E.pdf) — Official English-language background on membership decline and the 2015 split. – [Japan National Police Agency — 2016 White Paper, Yamaguchi-gumi / Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi](https://www.npa.go.jp/hakusyo/h28/honbun/html/st500000.html) — Official account of 13 direct bosses leaving Yamaguchi-gumi and forming Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi. – [U.S. Department of the Treasury — Targets New Yakuza Syndicate](https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jl0694) — Official sanctions release describing Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi, Kunio Inoue and Osamu Teraoka. – [Japan National Police Agency — 2013 White Paper, Yamaguchi-gumi situation](https://www.npa.go.jp/hakusyo/h25/honbun/html/p3110000.html) — Official background on Yamaguchi-gumi dominance and Kodo-kai influence.