Japan’s biggest yakuza organised crime group has published a Sankei Shimbun magazine for its members that includes a poetry page and senior gangsters’ fishing diaries.

According to several Japanese newspapers, the first issue of the new publication called “Yamaguchi-gumi Shinpo”, ie “the Gazette Clan Yamaguchi,” one of the most powerful and important in Japan, was recently released.

Japan Yakuza:No ad campaign

Difficult to know exactly when because, one suspects, there was no advertising campaign. We do of course is not on newsstands, no question to subscribe, but nearly 28,000 members received the No. 1 8 pages with a bonus editorial “boss” of the clan, Kenichi Shinoda, to plump up the morale of his troops.

According to the newspaper Sankei Shimbun, who was able to obtain the “Gazette Clan Yamaguchi,” Kenichi Shinoda recalls in its platform for younger generations yakuza values ​​and discipline that is the strength of the Japanese underworld for decades. As an entrepreneur in times of crisis, the boss said that times are tough and the Japanese mafia should not rest on its laurels or on its “brand” if it wants to grow its business and make a profit, adds for its part the Mainichi Shimbun.

Japan Yakuza:A section people

But the publication, the frequency is not specified, also contains lighter sections: a page with game problems Go or Shogi, chronic poetry haiku (traditional Japanese poems), and an essential item “people “in which readers could for example have all the details on the latest fishing parties of” bigwigs “of the clan.

Like the Italian mafia or Chinese triads, the yakuza are active in a wide range of activities from playing lucrative drug trafficking and prostitution, through usury and extortion. They also have interests in finance and real estate. Yakuza organizations are not officially illegal and their activities have long been tolerated by the authorities, but the mafia legislative arsenal has increased in recent years and crime syndicates are more bothered by the police.

“They are probably aware that it is now harder to do their business with new and tougher provisions, eg from opening bank accounts or sign real estate contracts,” said a police officer quoted by the Mainichi Shimbun.

Japan Yakuza: Fewer members

The number of yakuza has declined in recent years, about 7,000 per year, but the mob has still more to 63,000 people on the island, according to figures from the National Police. Clan Yamaguchi eg lost 3,300 members in 2012, although it still represents more than 40% of organized crime in Japan, according to the same source. According to Japanese media, the second issue will be released “in a few months.”

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