Weak economy hits Japan's gangsters Posted by Charley Blaine on Tuesday, October 6, 2009 3:56 PM
The yakuza are having to work harder than ever to get by and are stepping up education efforts. This column isn’t meant to convey sympathy for them. It’s that the advent of a yakuza version of the Series 7 exam that stockbrokers take is a bad omen -- very bad.
"The yakuza are a real barometer," says Jake Adelstein, a blogger and the author of a new book, "Tokyo Vice." "When the yakuza are doing poorly, the economy is doing poorly."
The Yakuza is the Japanese Mafia. They're no joke from what I heard.
