
Upstart Gangs Filling the Yakuza Power Vacuum - ilamont
https://www.nippon.com/en/features/c04205/
======
Animats
From the article: _Meanwhile, the Kantō Rengō members had started out working
as drivers and bodyguards for the heads of major entertainment agencies. By
this time, they were starting their own businesses, like loan sharking, adult
movie production, and IT. The different members were pushing forward with
their own various businesses. I myself had a legitimate web advertising firm
that was highly profitable and growing rapidly._

There isn't much money in street crime. Unloading stolen goods is dead. Who
wants a partly broken used car stereo? Any TV one person can lift is
worthless. Used computers are E-waste. The old-line criminal organizations are
either being bypassed or are moving into more profitable areas. Initial coin
offerings, binary options, FOREX, and payday loans are the new big
moneymakers.

~~~
mrisoli
Just to make sure, you mean in Japan, right? Because unloading stolen goods
are alive and well in countries where cell phone prices are high and average
income is low(my personal experience is with the situation in Brazil).

Phones are easy to steal, people just start using them and lose focus on their
surroundings, thieves can just grab and run, they are easy to conceal and a
lot of people want to own an iPhone and can't afford it, there is a market.

I know there are ways to brick the device to make it unusable after it is
stolen but most people are unaware of how that works.

~~~
rangibaby
If “find my iPhone” is on and it’s a 64 bit iPhone there is no way to use it
without knowing the iCloud details of the account it is registered to.

------
jdlyga
upstart gangs should beware of the systemd gangs.

~~~
cperciva
I imagine you could get savaged by either of them...

------
ghostbrainalpha
Was there an error in translation here?

>These criminals don’t belong to established yakuza groups, but they don’t
have legitimate employment either. They make their living from violence or
engage in crime on the side, in addition to their main job.

It seems to be saying they are part time criminals with real jobs, but it also
says "they don't have legitimate employment".

~~~
edflsafoiewq
The alternation was kind of lost. The sense of the sentence is that hangure
refers to people who have neither legitimate employment nor belong to an
actual criminal organization but who make a living from violence or illegal
activities; or else, it refers to people who may have legitimate employment,
but make money in that way on the side.

------
txttran
I'm always interested in reading about the inner workings of gangs. It seems
like these biker gangs are not particularly sophisticated nor well organized,
though. The main one in the story immediately lost cohesion when their leader
fled the country and were absorbed by the Yakuza. In many ways, they seem less
robust and effective than biker/street gangs in America.

~~~
pwaai
I wonder if having all of your members be independently mobile on their
motorcycles allowed them to thrive in North America. It's so much easier to
commit crime when you just hop on and off a bike, access paths unavailable to
cars

Recently I've been reading about Vancouver's gang wars and it strikes me just
how persistent Hells Angels seem to be compared to other groups that have all
but disappeared off the radar or become friendly to Hells Angels.

Perhaps decentralization is the new organized crime paradigm...we won't be
seeing supercartels like Cali anymore

~~~
germinalphrase
"Leaderless Resistance" has a long history within groups that seek to remain
covert (for both legal or illegal reasons).

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaderless_resistance](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaderless_resistance)

------
taurath
The difference in wording when describing gang members is interesting to me -
"hoodlums" kind of describes a paternalistic disappointment, but in the US the
language usually describes them as sub-human.

------
capsulehotel
It's the same in western Europe.

Motorbike gangs like the Hells Angels got outlawed or severely restricted and
violent youths on welfare looking to get involved in crime didn't have the
money for expensive Harleys either way.

They started street gangs involved in drugs and fought with brutal violence
for control over the nightlife and prostitution, as they had nothing to lose
either way.

