Japan’s great chain of islands stretches for two thousand miles. Right in the middle is its biggest island – Honshu. ibid.
Tokyo – home to over thirty-five million people. ibid.
Macaques: they’re not just here for a bath, they’re are on to a good thing. ibid.
The further South you go the stranger life seems to become. Japan: Earth’s Enchanted Islands II: The Southwest Island
It has eighteen active volcanoes. ibid.
The northernmost frontier – this island endures a brutal winter that locks the land in snow and ice. Japan: Earth’s Enchanted Islands: Hokkaido
Land-sharking – the most ruthless business practice to emerge during the baburu, and one that quickly produced a dizzy mixing of Japan’s mighty corporate world with the proud yakuza underworld. Misha Glenny, McMafia
Large parts of Kansai (western Japan) were rocked by the most bloody yakuza war on record. Hundreds of members and associates of the Yamaguchi-gumi and the Ichiwa-kai fell victim in carefully coordinated hits. ibid.
The public despaired both of the yakuza behaviour and the apparent inability of the police to do anything about the violence. ibid.
Resentment towards the United States continued to grow, along with the perception that Tokyo had been bullied into sacrificing a successful economic policy. ibid.
Business started to borrow money. Lots of it ... The stock market shot into the stratosphere ... It was not long before the extraordinary speculation on the Nikkei found its way into the property market ... A lot of people didn't want to sell, and so the companies and banks turned to muscle – the yakuza. ibid.
Japan’s legal and illegal worlds were steadily becoming indistinguishable, and nowhere was that distinction more fuzzy and impenetrable than at the Sumitomo Bank. ibid.
Itoman [subsidiary of Sumitomo] squandered about half a billion dollars of its capital, and police estimated that about half of this ended up in the coffers of the Yamaguchi-gumi. ibid.
Japanese taxpayers underwrote the excesses of the bubble period, subsidising the obscene money-grabbing in which both the zaibatsu and the yakuza had indulged. ibid.
We stroll into the bar on the corner ... a cumbersome old TV from the 1970s on its last legs, but still pumping out Japanese music videos. In general, the cliché holds that the Japanese maintain a stark social reserve, but such considerations are brushed aside as the landlady beams excitedly at Django, while placing some raw fish and tofu in front of us. She grabs the telephone and calls her friends. ‘Django’s here. Come on down.’ ibid.
Like most established organised criminal communities, the yakuka have a complex mythology about their origins. ibid.
They remain a core element of Japanese society, but since the collapse of the bubble they have faced unprecedented challenges to their authority, but from their enemies at home and, increasingly, from foreign rivals who are beginning to squeeze their economic base. Like the rest of Japan, the yakuza are encountering some difficulty in adapting to a globalising world. ibid.
Contrary to popular assumptions, they did not shoot, extort or bribe their way to the top: they are, bizarrely, a product of Japan’s legal system. ibid.
In its core activity, the yakuza are not only a privatised police force; they are a self-contained judicial system as well – criminal syndicates as cops, barristers, judge and jury. ibid.
The government felt able to pass the Law Regarding the Prevention of Unjust Acts by Organised Criminal Syndicate Members in 1991. ibid.
So the yakuza enjoys the unique status of being a legal and an illegal entity simultaneously. ibid.
Since 1991 the police have registered a significant consolidation of jakuza power into just three families – the Yamaguchi-gumi and two Tokyo-based groups, the Sumiyoshi-kai and the Inagawa-kai. ibid.
Their main headache recently has been the police – not in the shape of any crackdown on the families, but because of pachinko, Japan's national sport ... Pachinko machines colonise whole high-rise buildings like mechanical spores, and players remain biologically attached to their machines for hours on end. ibid.
But while pachinko is gambling, it is in fact strictly legal and has an annual turnover estimated at about £300 billion, twice the value of the entire Japanese automobile industry, and somewhere in the region of the total gobal narcotics market! ibid.
The yakuza are combating their recruitment difficulties provoked by an ageing society and the declining prestige of their organisation by subcontracting Chinese groups to carry out the least attractive and riskiest part of the business. ibid.
A specific target – the more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry living along the West Coast. They were about to be forced from their homes ... Almost no-one protested the government’s plan. Ken Burns, The War: A Very Fearful Time, Yesterday 2014
Guadalcanal would prove a crucial victory. After six long months the Americans were beginning to learn to beat the Japanese. ibid.
By January of 1943 Americans had been at war for more than a year. US Navy war planes had stopped the Japanese advance at the Battle of Midway. Ken Burns, The War: The Worst is Yet to Come
Roosevelt had ordered some 110,000 Japanese aliens and American citizens of Japanese descent living along the West Coast out of their homes and into ten internment camps. Ken Burns, The War: A Helluva War
February 19 1942 is the year in which Executive Order 9066 was signed, and this was the order that called for the exclusion and internment of all Japanese Americans living on the west coast during World War II. (Internment & Japan) Xavier Becerra
Japan’s determination to present itself as the leader of a newly awakened Asia had the potential to seriously undermine the Allied war effort. WWII: Countdown to Victory: Facing the Music, Yesterday 2009
Until 2014 it was legal to own child pornography in Japan. The Law has changed but the sexualisation of children continues. Stacey Dooley: Young Sex for Sale in Japan, BBC 2016
For decades one of the richest and most powerful countries in the world has had a serious problem with child pornography. ibid.
Their obsession with everything kids … from music to used underwear. ibid.
I’ve just been kept by the police for two hours. ibid.
It is estimated that 5,000 schoolgirls work in these legal cafés. ibid.
To see what it’s like to live in a country that’s been struggling for twenty years. I discover what it’s like to live rough in Tokyo. I’m shocked by how far people go to get a job. And I follow in the footsteps of those who lost all hope. Stacey Dooley Investigates: Coming Here Soon: Japan, W 2017
1991: the stock market and property crash. ibid.
I begin to notice the signs of Japan’s decline. ibid.
The government says there are around three hundred deaths from overwork a year; some unions say the true figure runs into the thousands. ibid.
We shall completely destroy Japan’s powers to make war. White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima & Nagasaki, Truman, HBO 2007
On August 6 and 9, the new bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only times nuclear weapons have been used in war. ibid. caption
She [Kiyoko] is the only survivor of a school of 620 students. ibid.
The bright flash; we were hit by the blast. I was six years old. ibid. survivor
Everything was enveloped in this enormous flash. ibid. survivor
It wasn’t a cloud: it was a pillar of fire, a huge pillar of fire. ibid.
Their skin was shredded and hanging off their bodies. ibid.
All Hiroshima was on fire … The river was full of dead bodies; we stayed there. ibid.
Winds from the explosion reached 1,000 miles per hour. ibid. caption
My face was like a black ball. ibid. survivor
The pain was so intense I’d pass out. ibid.
With nowhere to go survivors returned to the devastated cities. ibid. caption
They found a high incidence of cancer, particularly leukaemia. ibid.
‘I’ve never felt so passionate about anything in my life.’ Storyville: Tokyo Girls, fan, BBC 2017
‘I’ve never seen anything like it. This isn’t a fad. It’s a religion.’ ibid.
There are around 10,000 teenage girls who call themselves idols in Japan. ibid.
‘As an idol, there’s a best-by date. I can’t do this for ever.’ ibid. idol
‘Idols used social media to lure fans to their handshake events.’ ibid. journalist