The worst of times can bring out the best in everyone, even the yakuza.
I wrote this piece for the Daily Beast and supplied them with confidential materials to vet the article as well. I'd like to say that I'm not an advocate of the yakuza; I don't consider them generally a force for social good or social welfare.There will certainly be yakuza who take advantage of the crisis to rake in ill-gotten gains; they aren't boy scouts. There will also be ordinary people doing the same thing.
However, even yakuza are capable of doing heroic acts. There are members of the Inagawa-kai driving trucks of supplies to areas in Tohoku as far as they can get on vehicle and then hiking eight hours, carrying backpacks full of supplies to those in need, even in areas where radiation levels are high. Each individual doing it has their own motives; I can't read their minds. I think some of them are doing it simply because they want to help their fellow citizens.
It would be an easier world if everything was black and white but often it's a world in shades of grey. Sometimes, even "bad guys" can do good things, and ordinary citizens in times of crisis can do awful things. It works both ways.
As far as I'm concerned, everyone risking their life to help the victims of this tragedy, the police, the fire-fighters, the self-sacrificing staff at the nuclear reactor staying on the job, the Japan Self-Defense Forces, the US military, the good journalists covering the earthquake and nuclear disaster in great detail–they are all heroes. I'm not counting myself amongst them.
Even Japan's infamous mafia groups are helping out with the relief efforts and showing a strain of civic duty. Jake Adelstein reports on why the police don't want you to know about it. Plus, more coverage of Japan's crisis.
The worst of times sometimes brings out the best in people, even in Japan's "losers" a.k.a. the Japanese mafia, the yakuza. Hours after the first shock waves hit, two of the largest crime groups went into action, opening their offices to those stranded in Tokyo, and shipping food, water, and blankets to the devastated areas in two-ton trucks and whatever vehicles they could get moving. The day after the earthquake the Inagawa-kai-稲川会- (the third largest organized crime group in Japan which was founded in 1948) sent twenty-five four-ton trucks filled with paper diapers, instant ramen, batteries, flashlights, drinks, and the essentials of daily life to the Tohoku region. An executive in Sumiyoshi-kai, the second-largest crime group, even offered refuge to members of the foreign community—something unheard of in a still slightly xenophobic nation, especially amongst the right-wing yakuza. The Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest crime group, under the leadership of Tadashi Irie, has also opened its offices across the country to the public and been sending truckloads of supplies, but very quietly and without any fanfare.
