Original subtitles

"Mafia" - you hear that word

and you think you know what it means...

...but behind that word

lie empires of crime with their own laws,

their own rituals, their own code.

My name is Max Serio, Italian filmmaker.

I've been obsessed with organised crime my whole life

and I got this deep feeling

that at the top of every country,

every system,

there's always a mafia mentality.

I decided to go meet the people

who live in these organisations

from inside,

to understand how they manage to stay on top for so long.

A camera, an address book -

and I'll take you in the most dangerous

criminal organisations in the world:

the Chinese Triads, the Japanese yakuza,

the fearsome 'Ndrangheta in Calabria

and the vory, the Russian mafia.

I will show you the rules and rituals they have in common

and those that make them unique.

No lies.

No bullshit.

We're not just talking about crime.

We're talking about power, respect,

loyalty sealed in blood, held together by fear.

This is Mafia.

They call themselves the yakuza.

The police use a much more prosaic term: "organised crime group".

Police are on high alert

as the conflict surrounding the Yamaguchi-gumi,

the country's largest designated yakuza syndicate, intensifies.

The yakuza,

also known as gokudo, the "extreme path",

hidden in plain sight for most of the 20th century.

...an alleged member of a Japanese organised crime group

with attempting to traffic nuclear materials to Iran.

Offices, business cards, sharp suits.

Japan didn't outlaw them.

They registered them, in the hope of keeping a closer eye on them.

By the '60s, their numbers had swelled to 184,000.

Today, they're under 20,000,

but they remain extremely influential

at every level of Japanese society.

The three main yakuza clans,

the Yamaguchi-gumi, Sumiyoshi-kai and Inagawa-kai,

they're not hiding in back alleys.

They sit at boardroom tables

with their involvement and interests openly declared

and that's what fascinates me.

Unlike other criminal gangs,

they don't operate in the shadows.

On the contrary, they do everything they can

to be recognised instantly.

When you think of the yakuza,

you mostly think of tattoos.

Tattoos are yakuza, and yakuza is scary.

Horiyoshi III and Horiyoshi IV

have been carrying on this tradition for nearly 100 years,

passed down from generation to generation.

It's an ancient art dating back centuries,

but it didn't start with the yakuza.

Since the Edo period,

tattoos have had a major reputation.

It got to the point where, among the Edo firefighters, they'd say,

"He doesn't have a tattoo, so he's not a real firefighter."

That's how closely tattoos were associated with firefighters.

Firefighters were usually just regular people

who had other jobs, like carpenters or plasterers,

and those people would get full body tattoos.

It wasn't until after the war

that tattoo machines started being used.

Before that, it was all done by hand

and hand poking was the main method for craftsmen.

Hand poking is much more invasive and painful

than the machine method.

That's why real yakuza pride themselves

on getting their full body tattoos done this way.

Some people take over ten years

to finish a full back piece,

while others finish in half that time, or even a quarter of it.

I'm not really the type of person who likes tattoos,

but once I decided I was gonna live as a yakuza,

I thought I should go all the way and get tattooed down to my wrists,

so I did.

I told the tattoo artist to put anything on me.

As you talk more and more, you start getting closer.

Sometimes, you end up becoming friends,

going out to eat together

and developing that kind of relationship,

even between a client and a tattoo artist.

After all, everyone is getting something they love tattooed.

Whether they're yakuza or an ordinary citizen,

it's the same for everyone.

These are all symbols of Japanese culture,

but they are also specific symbols of each yakuza clan:

the group's brand, the boss's name...

Seiya, Mako and Shinya,

three former yakuza members

who agreed to tell me their story.

I've seen their tattoos

and I keep thinking that, when you leave the yakuza,

maybe you'd want to erase everything.

But how do you actually do that?

Even if you scrape away all that ink,

the yakuza, your past, still stays with you.

I do regret getting the tattoo now.

After all, I can't take a bath,

even when I go golfing.

If I could remove all the tattoos, I would.

As it stands now, I have had this part removed.

It is still slightly visible,

but I have had it removed in sections the size of a postcard.

You might eventually get rid of some of the ink,

but the bloodstain of violence is much harder to wash away.

12 hours in a metal tube.

No sleep, exhausted.

You step off with relief,

only to be hit by Tokyo's humidity.

♪ I hear you

♪ Every sound just makes you wonder

On the surface,

Tokyo is one of the safest, most civilised cities on Earth.

Everything works. Everyone bows.

But where there is order, there is always someone who wants chaos.

And that's where the yakuza comes in.

300 years of history.

Some were born from the ronin,

the infamous samurai warriors

abandoned by their shogun

with nothing but their code.

Others, from the street peddlers

who wandered the villages of feudal Japan looking for a cause.

Still others, from the gamblers, the cheats, the swindlers

who ran illegal dice games in the shadows.

The outcasts of society, in short, who found each other.

After the war, in a shattered country,

they filled the void:

black market, protection, politics...

The gokudo, Japan's shadow state,

filled the vacuum left by their disgraced war leaders.

Here I am, exhausted,

walking down a dark alley in Kabukicho

to meet a man who cut off his fingers

in devotion to his yakuza boss, his oyabun.

My name is Shinya Yuyama.

I'm a former yakuza. Nice to meet you.

I was born and raised in Fukuoka.

We were poor, so my mom would tell me,

"At least go to the school to eat lunch and then come home."

So I'd just go for the school lunch,

even though I knew it was wrong.

I guess I was in an environment

where I just ended up doing it anyway,

like stealing.

Environment matters.

If you're born in a tough neighbourhood, if you're hungry,

if no-one looks out for you,

well, it's much easier to end up choosing the code of the street.

My name is Seiya Oshida.

Nice to meet you.

My dad was a painter.

I was supposed to take over the business.

I used to help him out a bit,

but he died young, around 42 or 43.

If I'd stuck with painting,

I probably would have gone down a different path,

but I got into bikes and...

The Japanese motorcycle gangs.

This is where the drift begins.

You're young - you're 15, maybe 20.

The life society offers you just doesn't suit you...

...so the gangs start to form.

Thugs on bikes,

screaming engines, heavily modified rides,

bright colours everywhere.

People who need to be seen.

You become part of a violent tribe,

chasing a life out of control,

answering only to the law of the street.

It's a perfect recruiting ground for the yakuza.

I went to this place where the older kids hung out...

...and we'd drink, sniff paint thinner, stuff like that.

Yeah, that's right.

So our biker gang was on one side

and another gang was on the other

and we just stood there staring each other down.

The tension was so thick, you could feel it...

...like nobody could even pass through.

And then someone yelled something,

a single command,

and all 200 guys just went at it,

a total brawl.

Man, that was such a shock!

Then I decided I wanted to get into loan sharking

and the person who introduced me to the business...

This guy's way of life was just so cool.

He lived purely on grit and whenever something happened,

he didn't rely on anyone else.

He just went and solved it himself and won his own glory.

I was hanging out at the pachinko parlour by the station

when I met my mentor back then

and we started going out drinking...

...and that's pretty much how I ended up joining the syndicate.

In the yakuza, you just end up in it.

You're young and you barely notice.

Then one day you realise you've entered a world

that owns you for the rest of your life.

Joining the yakuza isn't just a matter of filling out a form.

♪ I swear I saw an angel... ♪

Like in most criminal organizations,

it's presented as joining a family...

...and this bond can be initiated and formalised

with the sakazuki ceremony,

where the boss and subordinates

symbolically share cups of sake.

Images like these are extremely rare,

shot by yakuza members themselves.

They document the historic 1989 ceremony

where Yoshinori Watanabe is officially inaugurated

as the 5th kumicho of the Yamaguchi-gumi,

becoming the new supreme boss

of the most powerful yakuza organisation in Japan.

But how does someone

actually become a yakuza member?

What kind of ritual marks that moment,

the crossing of that line?

I asked my guests.

New members line up together

to receive the sake cup from the boss.

They hold a simplified joint ceremony.

The boss pours the sake for them.

♪ Walk on, walk on, walk on

♪ Walk on

♪ When all is said and done... ♪

They receive the sake

and drink it in three sips.

Once they finish drinking, that is it...

and then there is a paper placed underneath,

so you wrap it in that paper

and tuck it deep into your chest.

That is where the bond between "parent" and "child"

is first born.

When I first received that cup,

I thought, "Right, this is where my yakuza life begins."

Performing the ritual made it feel like I'd truly become his underling.

Yeah, I remember that feeling.

What are the rules of the yakuza,

the ones a new soldier must follow forever?

The ones that keep the organisation running?

The ones with no exceptions?

...seals your commitment for life.

Above all...

Absolute, unquestioned.

Serving your boss, your oyabun, that is the greatest honour.

I will go to prison for this person without hesitation,

to be able to say that, even if I were sentenced to death,

I would be satisfied with that.

Mm.

The yakuza is predominantly a boys' club,

a historic patriarchy where women are rarely welcomed.

Every now and then, though,

a woman proves

she's just as tough as the men.

That's what happened to Mako.

The first time I was invited by the Inagawa- kai,

but I thought, "No, this guy is no good."

The second time, when Sumiyoshi asked me if I wanted to join,

I thought...

I did respect him, yes.

I felt some fear, but I also felt loyalty,

or something like that.

Loyalty is key.

It's the foundation of the yakuza's origin story.

The modern yakuza was born after World War II

when the country lay in ruins,

starving, destroyed.

The old order was swept away in disgrace.

The state was absent. The law didn't reach.

And in that void,

the yakuza seized its opportunity.

In a post-World War II period, uh...

yakuza gain, you know, powers in construction sector

by labour dispatch, subcontracting,

providing materials,

and then as either labour brokers

or protection racketeers whenever strikes happens.

Professor Takuma Kamada is a young academic

specialising in the study of the yakuza.

In a world where people are still hesitant to speak publicly,

Kamada has no qualms about telling it like it is.

He thinks like I do: exposing crime is the same as fighting it.

The term "yakuza"

originally comes from a... old gambling-card game.

In that, one of the worst hands that you can draw

is 8, 9, 3.

In old counting in Japanese,

that reads "ya-ku-sa",

so basically calling yourself

"good-for-nothing".

But try telling a yakuza he's a good-for-nothing.

No, it doesn't work that way for them.

They consider themselves descendants of the samurai.

At its peak, in the '60s,

the organisation had reached 180,000 members.

The yakuza was more powerful than the state. It was everywhere.

Even today, it can be found in many parts of Japan.

As of today, there are 25 designated

large-scale yakuza groups nationwide...

...and big ones will include things like Yamaguchi-gumi,

which is by far the largest one,

with headquarters in Kobe...

...and you've got Sumiyoshi-kai and Inagawa-kai,

both of them located in Kanto, Tokyo region,

so all these groups - big, large groups together,

they'll account for something about 70%

of overall yakuza memberships in Japan.

It is actually not crime,

or it is actually not illegal

to be a yakuza member

or even form yakuza groups,

which is guaranteed by the "freedom of association" part

of the Japanese constitution.

Like the moon,

there is always a side of the yakuza you can see - the illuminated one...

...but there is another side, forever in darkness.

It has two faces:

one legitimate,

one illegitimate.

Their success and longevity depend on their ability to combine the two,

so those looking in from the outside

don't know where one ends and the other begins.

I ran a construction company providing labourers,

essentially a staffing agency.

If there was a good piece of land...

...I'd flip it or rather find a buyer

and, you know, take a cut.

My boss was the one handling the real-estate side of things.

On the other side,

hidden in the alleys and slums where the light doesn't reach...

I did everything that could be called

debt collection or extortion.

Sold girls off to islands.

They saddle them with debt,

force them into prostitution

and take the money upfront.

They sell girls for 3.5 million yen or so,

pocket the cash,

then make them work off the debt through prostitution.

On the surface, the yakuza says it's against drugs

because they hurt their communities.

But behind the scenes,

they keep trafficking them to make real money.

Once again, two sides of the same coin.

It was meth, mostly.

On a small scale,

I was making 50,000 or 60,000 a day.

On top of that, on a good day,

make 100,000.

Once you're on meth...

I did want to move up in the world, you know,

but I ended up turning to drugs instead.

Behind their elegant suits,

their elaborate body art

and claims of family,

lurks something savage.

The yakuza can be extraordinarily cruel,

both to their customers

and to their own members,

who are expected to use their initiative to expand the business.

I had this guy who was skimming off my clients,

basically stealing the profits from my business...

...and he was stealing millions of yen from the syndicate safe.

We managed to catch him.

We interrogated him for a long time,

but he just wouldn't talk.

You know how there are hammers,

like a mallet?

I took one of those and smashed his leg

with all my might.

I had him tied up

and his leg was completely mangled.

Blood was spurting out, and even fat. It's funny, actually.

You swing with all your might, right?

And on that first swing,

when I went in with a full-on, complete swing...

The round end.

You know, it just went right in.

I thought, "Whoops!"

But I was already so worked up,

so I kept pounding away

and all this white fat was just flying everywhere.

But, you know, my adrenaline was pumping

and I was totally in the zone.

Anyway, by the end,

I'd settled the score with this guy.

Their stories tell me everything.

No act of violence or revenge was too big.

It's no wonder that by the early '90s,

the Japanese state decided

the yakuza had to be stopped.

Strict laws were passed to outlaw them

as "boryokudan", violent criminal groups,

to make them easier to identify and prosecute.

But while this slowed them down,

it wasn't enough to eliminate them.

They were simply too powerful.

I was meeting with a journalist and he said to me,

"Do you want to meet a yakuza boss?"

I thought he was joking.

So I was waiting at this shopping centre

and these two guys, you know, very well-dressed um...

came in in dark suits and they...

I was sitting there and they said, "Are you Martina?"

They drove me to this cafe.

I saw, you know, this very well-groomed man,

also very elegant,

and he was just sitting very quiet.

Very serious, as well.

Got a coffee and we started talking.

The "kumicho" is the supreme boss.

He holds the power of life and death.

Nothing moves without his order.

Right below him, his "wakagashira", the Number Two.

Then the "shateigashira", the Number Three.

Below them are the mid-level officers,

the "kyodai" - the brothers...

and at the bottom of the pyramid,

the ones who get their hands dirty,

the soldiers - the "kobun".

A pyramid of dozens,

sometimes hundreds of men,

all waiting for a word from above.

Look, under our boss, we had about 80 guys in our branch

and above him there was another boss,

making about 700 of us in total.

Out of those 700 people,

I eventually worked my way up to around 27th in the ranks.

To move up, you have to make money.

With money comes power

and then you can go up the ladder.

Or you can use extreme force

and simply eliminate whoever is in your way.

You never know when, where or how

a conflict might break out or how you might end up killed...

...but well, that's the nature of it, isn't it?

Our chairman killed four people in a turf-war incident

and that's how he gradually climbed the ranks, I suppose.

♪ JOHNNY LLOYD & SAM MCCARTHY: What

The group mainly engages in governance,

in control of some areas,

so relationship with the population is very, very important.

Violence damages this relationship,

these ties with the community

and also with the state.

Look at the statistics.

Japan is one of the least violent countries in the world...

...and the yakuza will tell you

they are the ones keeping order.

That without them, things would be worse - much worse.

Like most criminal organisations,

it is crucial for the yakuza

to generate a sense of dependence and security in their communities...

...selling the idea

that without their involvement in governance, protection

and wealth redistribution,

people would be much worse off.

♪ THE CAVE BIRDS: We're In This Together

March 11th, 2011.

A magnitude-9 earthquake,

a 40-metre tsunami...

...hits the northeastern coast of Honshu Island,

killing nearly 16,000 people.

The state is overwhelmed.

The first relief to reach

the devastated areas - water, food, blankets -

doesn't come from the government.

It comes from the yakuza.

♪ I was lost... ♪

I really wanted to see if there was anything I could do.

At the time,

we went in two cars, so there were probably about seven or eight of us.

We stayed for a week.

There was just so much mud and sludge everywhere.

We were all using shovels to scoop it out.

Men knee-deep in mud,

shovelling for a week.

No-one thanked them publicly.

Maybe that tells you something about Japan,

or maybe it tells you something about the yakuza.

But as soon as they did something positive,

something to clean up their public image,

the yakuza plunged right back into recriminations and violence.

In August 2015,

a massive split within the largest yakuza faction

triggered a wave of violence.

The century-old Yamaguchi-gumi

split into two warring factions,

sparking a bloody turf war,

drive-by shootings,

retaliatory killings

across central and western Japan.

The violence prompted Japan's National Police Agency

to designate the factions as warring gangs,

granting authorities broad powers

to restrict their activities and seize their assets.

It took a full ten years

before a precarious truce was reached,

during which time the yakuza had already purged from its ranks

anyone who hadn't shown sufficient loyalty.

As a boss told me once,

you have to take responsibility with yourself

for the mistakes that you've made.

You can have temporary expulsion,

which is called, um, "hamon",

and also you can have the "zetsuen",

which is the cutting of all relationship with the group

and you can never be reintegrated.

In the yakuza,

there is one fundamental rule you must never break:

you never challenge the boss - never.

I did. I rebelled against the chairman and...

There was a place they called the "confinement room".

They locked me in there, that sort of thing.

You know those small, like, prison-style doors?

There was a small door like that

and they would feed me through it every day.

That's what it was like.

And then comes...

Do you know what that is? One of the rituals

that made the yakuza legendary.

My argument with the boss was about my meth use.

In the end...

...out of respect for my boss...

...and the big brother told me I had to do it myself.

I messed up twice.

It's a bit of a failure: a bit short

and a bit odd, compared to others.

I finished it off with a Japanese sword.

Some keep them in the freezer.

Some put them all on the family altar.

Some bury them at a shrine or temple...

...to show they've accepted everything.

Seiya - a lifetime in the yakuza.

He has ten fingers,

but is it possible he never made a mistake?

Well, one person from our office once cut off his finger

and took it to the boss.

The boss severely reprimanded him.

He said, "Don't do something like that on your own.

I understand how you feel, but don't do it."

Today, there's a booming market for prosthetics.

You don't want the world to know you're a yakuza.

Buy yourself a new finger. Walk into the shop.

"I need a pinky." No problem.

I've started thinking that I'd like to get one.

If it looks like you're missing a finger,

you get suspicious looks, like, "Are you yakuza?"

Along with missing fingers and elaborate tattoos,

there is a third unmistakable sign

of the yakuza brotherhood:

the suit. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Impeccable, clean - everything perfect.

All in perfect yakuza style.

The suit is the yakuza's cloak of respectability,

the universally accepted uniform of big business.

But a suit can only hide so much.

In the early '90s,

Japan was trying to recover from a brutal economic crisis...

...but the yakuza was too deeply rooted in the country,

inside the legal economy.

Then came globalisation...

and Japan lives on exports.

The global market wanted transparency,

clean banks, clean companies.

It was time to clean house.

1992 anti-yakuza laws,

where if a organisation meets certain criteria:

a organisation having a vertical structure,

members use violence for their living,

enough members will have criminal records...

...police can swiftly issue orders, impose sanctions

and disrupt the revenue streams.

Then we've got 2010s yakuza-exclusion ordinances.

It is indirect strategies

that punish those business owners, businesses,

non-yakuza citizens

that keep the relationship with the yakuza.

Under these new laws,

if you are a yakuza member,

you can't sign a contract,

you can't rent an apartment,

you can't get a phone plan,

you can't open a bank account, and so on.

You are cut off from society.

The people I'd been dealing with all this time,

well, they just said,

"Sorry, but we can't associate with the yakuza any more,"

and rightly so.

The old-school yakuza no longer exist as they once did.

They can't survive as...

No home, no phone, no bank.

If you're yakuza, society erases you.

Even if you leave, you remain branded for five years.

That's why the new generation isn't signing up any more.

But even as the yakuza retreats,

crime doesn't disappear.

In today's Japan, the void is being filled

by a more unpredictable, anarchic criminal element.

New, younger and more lawless gangs.

The Hangure and Tokuryu are on the rise.

No honour, no code, no name.

They hit and run.

Crime always finds a way.

You don't know where the headquarter is.

You don't know where... the number of each organisation,

you don't know how many members there are

in each organisation, and so on.

Only 5% of those who leave the yakuza

truly start over.

But how do you get out?

With the Italian mafia... Well, you don't get out - not alive.

The yakuza, though, is different.

The boss gives the green light and you're out.

Clean. Just never talk about your past.

I got out of prison for the second time

at about 33 years old.

I had discussions with various executives

almost every day for about a month.

And I said, I'll leave my finger behind, too.

And that's when the boss finally said,

"If you sort it out,

your feeling is that much,

then all right."

I do think I'm living now with a sense of social responsibility,

so I haven't committed a single crime since.

Well, maybe the odd speeding offence.

I was getting arrested every two years.

The longest stretch I had was seven years.

Nine times out of ten, it was stimulants.

Ten times makes a little over 20 years,

so I think being locked up is why I'm still alive today.

The question is whether I can keep living like this.

Basically, whether I can stay out of prison.

I have to stay out,

but how to keep that going is the real challenge...

...and that's when I started going to church.

♪ RATIOS: After All

But for a woman, it's not that easy,

especially when you end up marrying a yakuza boss

and having children with him.

♪ Love yourself... ♪

Mako tried to leave,

but found it impossible to escape her criminal past.

I got my nursing licence,

but they found out.

The tattoos, the missing finger...

There was no hiding it.

I got fired. Every hospital in Gifu,

they wouldn't take me on.

Today, Mako helps former yakuza

reintegrate into society.

She lives alone.

Her children want nothing to do with her.

"Kokai" means regret, remorse.

But perhaps the most important word is "ishiki" - awareness.

If I hadn't done those bad things myself,

I wouldn't understand how people who do bad things feel.

No matter how dark your past,

it can change...

And here I am, at the end of this journey.

The yakuza - a world apart,

perhaps a dying world.

♪ THE CAVE BIRDS: Next Time Around

♪ I had a dream

♪ I will see you before...

They still end up in some bizarre headline

every now and then,

like when they were caught in a DEA sting

trying to export nuclear material to Tehran

via Myanmar.

But in reality, they are now a marginal curiosity,

tolerated as long as they stay within their boundaries.

It leaves a mark on your skin for life.

It promises family, values,

a place to lay your head...

but what it really gives you

is a sentence that never ends.

♪ I was like the man

♪ Who holds his word

♪ Like a grave digger

♪ Who comes in still

♪ I was only ever in it for myself

♪ I'm to blame, I'm to blame

♪ Now I wanna rescue something

♪ Do you think

♪ Never could get changed

♪ And if I want it bad enough

♪ Do you think

♪ That I can be redeemed ♪

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