The Devil you know

Photograph: AP

The Guardian has an interesting story about Japan's attempt to curb the Yakuza:

Tokyo recently became the last of Japan's 47 prefectures to introduce local laws aimed at depriving crime syndicates of income by targeting firms that knowingly do business with them. Under the nationwide ordinances firms that help the yakuza earn money will be warned, and their names made public if they refuse to sever their ties. Repeat offenders face fines of up to 500,000 yen (£4,200) and company officials can face jail terms of up to a year.

I was surprised to read this because the Yakuza have been more or less tolerated for years:

In 2009 Takaharu Ando, then chief of the police agency, declared war on the yakuza, ending a long-established practice of tolerating the mob, which in turn kept down street crime and adhered to established rules of engagement.

The roots of that arrangement can be traced back to the 1800s, when the forerunners of the yakuza were permitted to carry weapons, provided they helped to maintain order when the police were short of manpower.

There were unofficial deals like this with the mafia as well, and in America I still run across some Godfather-inspired nostalgia for them. I remember Debbie Reynolds in a Las Vegas documentary saying that "nobody who got killed who wasn't supposed to" when the mob ran Vegas.

When I was back in the small town I grew up in at Christmas, my father told me about how the local jewellery store had been robbed in the middle of the day. The weird thought that went through my head was: "this wouldn't have happened if the mob was still here." This is a small town, but near the industrial city of Hamilton that has a long mafia history, with some wiseguys inevitably expanding to the surrounding towns. I wasn't actually sad they had left, but the logic I fell into is a pernicious one.

I think people fear disorder more than crime. What's more, organized crime's traditional sources of revenue: gambling, prostitution, and bribery, were things decent people didn't get involved in anyway, so tolerating them in exchange for keeping muggers and armed robbers under control was worth it. That deal with the devil came back to bite society in the ass, when the drugs the mafia were importing found their way into nice suburban homes. I'm glad Japan is turning its back on the idea that the Yakuza "maintain order" or are "men of honour." Playing by the rules doesn't count for much when the game is corruption and violence.