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April 23, 2025 62 mins

Secrets, power, and brutality: Explore the Yakuza empire under the iron fist of Kazuo Taoka - Part 1

 

Japanese gangsters, members of what are formally called bōryokudan (“violence groups”), or Mafia-like criminal organizations. In Japan and elsewhere, especially in the West, the term yakuza can be used to refer to individual gangsters or criminals as well as to their organized groups and to Japanese organized crime in general. Yakuza adopt samurai-like rituals and often bear elaborate body tattoos. They engage in extortion, blackmail, smuggling, prostitution, drug trafficking, gambling, loan sharking, day-labor contracting, and other rackets and control many restaurants, bars, trucking companies, talent agencies, taxi fleets, factories, and other businesses in major Japanese cities. They are also involved in criminal activities worldwide. Taoka Kazuo (born March 28, 1912, Sanshōmura, Japan—died July 30, 1981, Amagasaki) was Japan’s major crime boss (oyabun), who, after World War II, rose to head a giant crime organization, the Yamaguchi-gumi. Though centered in Kōbe, it had interests and affiliates nationwide and consisted of more than 10,000 members (known as yakuza) divided into more than 500 bands. Kazuo Taoka was born to a poor farm family in a village on the island of Shikoku; his father died before Taoka was born, and his mother died when he was four years old. Raised by relatives, he left school in his early teens and in 1929 began associating with yakuza gangs in Kōbe; in the early 1930s he became an apprentice and then a member of Yamaguchi-gumi. During World War II the organization fell apart; Taoka restored it in the postwar years and made it into a giant cartel, dealing in extortion, labor racketeering, gambling, prostitution, loansharking, smuggling, show business, and other enterprises both legal and illegal. Ideologically he was ultra-rightist and ultra-nationalistic.

 

⏳𝐕𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐎 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒 ⏳

00:00 – Intro

10:16 – An introduction into the Yakuza

14:11 – The big syndicates of the Yakuza

32:38 – Yakuza key words

37:36 – Hariucki Yamaguchi

42:43 – An introduction to Kazuo Taoka

 

Links:

https://www.reddit.com/r/yakuzagames/comments/1ckcz2x/glossary_of_the_yakuza/

 

🍁 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐃𝐚𝐧𝐚 𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐚 🍁

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Your source for the life and history of infamous gangsters ... and some other stuff, too. Your go-to resource for information on famous gangsters' lives and histories, as well as other things.

 

🎥𝐃𝐚𝐧𝐚 𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐚'𝐬 𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐕𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐎𝐒🎥

Omar Portee became an informant BEFORE building a criminal empire!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuJdTc-aIfs

The mafia killed Theodore Roe for trying 2 keep the Policy Racket in the African American community

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zESVOySsQRM

Billy Donahue's murder has gone unsolved for 8 years!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yNSGeECVc0

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