Yakuza Gang in Japan

There's no room for individuality in traditional Japanese society. In a country where uniformity is valued above all else, you have to keep the rules - or keep out. An inability to conform, to fall in with the customs and mores of the times, thus, has spawned sub-societies of `outsiders' at every turn of Japanese history. While some have expressed their differences in harmless ways, the frustrations of others have come out as violent rebellion.

The Yakuza - with 300 years of violence to their credit - is the oldest and most frightening of them all. Between 1958 and 1963, the number of Yakuza members rose to 184,000, more than the Japanese army, with over 5,000 separate gangs staking their claim over large pockets of the country. The figure plummeted to half in later years, but with bloody gang wars and new areas of illegal operations, the Yakuza is as much a blight to modern society as it was in its high-expansion years.

A section of Yakuza experts trace their origins to a group of trouble-mongers known as kabuki-mono, who raised hell in the early-1600s with their brawls and bad language. Masterless samurais, who were out of jobs during these times of peace, they roamed the countryside in search of booty, hustling passersby, terrorizing and often killing them with the long samurai swords they wore on their belts.