Annual Survey of International & Comparative Law Volume 4 | Issue 1 Article 9 1997 Yakuza: The aW rlords of Japanese Organized Crime Lt. Bruce A. Gragert Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/annlsurvey Part of the Criminal Law Commons Recommended Citation Gragert, Lt. Bruce A. (1997) "Yakuza: The aW rlords of Japanese Organized Crime," Annual Survey of International & Comparative Law: Vol. 4: Iss. 1, Article 9. Available at: http://digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/annlsurvey/vol4/iss1/9 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Academic Journals at GGU Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Annual Survey of International & Comparative Law by an authorized administrator of GGU Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Gragert: Yakuza YAKUZA: THE WARLORDS OF JAPANESE ORGANIZED CRIME LT. BRUCE A. GRAGERT* The power of the yakuza, Japan's legendary crime syndi cates, reaches into all areas of Japan's economic life and politics. Composed of some 3,000 separate, tightly-knit gangs, with over 80,000 members, the yakuza survive de- spite Japan's 1992 Anti-gang law and other government measures. While the range of their traditional activities has been somewhat reduced, they have compensated by turning to more sophisticated types of crime and by ex panding their operations abroad - mostly to Southeast Asia, parts of Latin America, and the U.S. Estimates of their annual income from criminal activities and their 25,000 legitimate "front" organizations run to as high as 70 billion dollars, with some 500 million dollars traced to the U.S.