{"product_id":"the-japanese-mafia-yakuza-law-and-the-state-9780199257522","title":"The Japanese Mafia: Yakuza  Law  and the State","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Japanese mafia - known collectively as yakuza - has had an extensive influence on Japanese society over the past fifty years. Based on extensive interviews with criminals  police officers  lawyers  journalists  and academics  this is the first academic analysis in English of Japans criminal syndicates.  Peter Hill argues that the essential characteristic of Japans criminal syndicates is their provision of protection to consumers in Japans under- and upper-worlds. In this respect they are analogous to the Sicilian Mafia  and the mafias of Russia  Hong Kong and the United States. Although the yakuzas protective mafia role has existed at least since the end of the Second World War  and arguably longer  their sources of income have not remained constant. The yakuza have undergone considerable change in their business activities over the last half-century. The two key factors driving this evolution have been the changes in the legal  and law-enforcement environment within which these groups must operate  and the economic opportunities available to them. This first factor demonstrates that the complex and ambiguous relationship between the yakuza and the state has always been more than purely symbiotic. With the introduction of the boryokudan (yakuza) countermeasures law in 1992  the relationship between the yakuza and the state has become more unambiguously antagonistic. Assessing the impact of this law is  however  problematic; the contemporaneous bursting of Japans economic bubble at the beginning of the 1990s also profoundly and adversely influenced yakuza sources of income. It is impossible to completely disentangle the effects of these two events.  By the end of the twentieth century  the outlook for the yakuza was bleak and offered no short-term prospect of amelioration. More profoundly  state-expropriation of protection markets formerly dominated by the yakuza suggests that the longer-term prospects for these groups are bleaker still: no longer  therefore  need the yakuza be seen as an inevitable and necessary evil.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45648016408629,"sku":"ByrdShop_0199257523","price":146.42,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780199257522.jpg?v=1781706594","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-japanese-mafia-yakuza-law-and-the-state-9780199257522","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}