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Comment by w1ntermute | Hacker News Reader

He also contributes to the JSRC[0], a blog about crime in Japan. It seems to me like this photographer had very limited exposure to the activities of the yakuza. They are most definitely violent. Adelstein's family was at risk as well because of his reporting on the yakuza, so anything about "honor" is definitely not true. People need to stop romanticizing criminals.

0: http://www.japansubculture.com/

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Yes yakuza are criminals, but the article also highlights that like many subversive organizations they also provide a number of community functions typically provided by the police (e.g. the article talks about how Yakuza communities tend to have lower crime rates; safety tends to be a service provided by the police). Terrorist organizations often do the same; Hezbollah has been a huge provider of social services in Lebanon, running schools and hospitals: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah_social_services

Hernando de Soto talks about how the Shining Path provided social services to build legitimacy in his incredible book, "The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution in the Third World": http://www.amazon.com/The-Other-Path-Invisible-Revolution/dp...

Sudhir Venkatesh also talks in his book about how drug dealers in Chicago provide similar services, in order to be not be rejected by communities inside of public housing projects. http://www.amazon.com/Gang-Leader-Day-Sociologist-Streets/dp...

Yakuza - like drug dealers and terrorists - are capable of great violence, but the photographer's point was that within the yakuza community that he experienced, violence is seen as a last resort. And that community activities that provide legitimacy is an important tool as well, in order to be accepted by the local community and also as a recruitment tool. This is definitely a common theme in the literature and my personal experience as well.

I've read Gang Leader for a Day as well, and while gangbangers might have some redeemable qualities, that doesn't make what they do any less despicable.

I heard once from someone whose parents lived through the Third Reich that for those years, you never had to lock your door or chain your bike. One presumes this only applied if you had the correct allegiance.

I think you're right that this guy was being shielded from the violence but I don't understand your objection to the Yakuza being referred to as honorable. Is it not possible to be both violent AND honorable? No one is suggesting that they are nice people, just that there seems to be an agreed upon ethos to which (it seems) everyone adheres.

That agreed upon ethos usually says when your family is targeted for your actions, those targeting them are not honourable.

They are violent and target innocents, the Yakuza should never be mistaken for honourable.

You are right of course, thinking this through - it is obvious that if innocents are targeted there is little honour in all of this.

Honour means different things to different people. It's cultural, contextual, and even individual.

Most criminal gangs are honorable, by their own standards. Many of them work like this - if you break the rules, you die. So obviously, they have a big incentive to follow the rules.

The impression I got from that book was Adelstein was exaggerating the personal stuff to add a little drama. He may have been threatened, but nothing happened.

If you tried to write the same book about MS-13 you'd be dead before you got to the second page.

There are several books about the MS-13. Here is one of them:

http://www.amazon.com/This-Is-Mara-Salvatrucha-Americas/dp/1...

There's a difference between writing a book about a gang and actually talking to them. Adelstein went and interviewed Yakuza members about their business, talked to sex workers, and talked to cops who explained how things work.

The parent didn't say a book he said the same book.

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