Narrating against dominance: Women and organized crime in Japanese discourse and popular culture

ABSTRACT

Globally, women have often been marginalized in discourses about organized crime and are typically cast as passive agents exploited by men in their daily lives. Rather than accepting this stereotype as given, this article traces various discourses and lived experiences of women involved in Japanese organized crime. In the case of Japan, common understandings of organized crime often refer back to the stereotypical roles filled by men with reference to popular culture: as gangsters, gamblers, goons, or thugs. Engaging existing scholarship that examines women’s participation in organized crime, this paper interrogates women’s experiences and participation through the lens of Japanese manga featuring stories involving female criminality, complemented by nonfictional accounts drawn from collections of interviews and autobiographies. Whereas most discourses and narratives concerning organized crime in Japan suggest women are disempowered or passive agents, narratives by women themselves suggest that women connected to organized crime wield significant influence and authority in certain situations. I suggest that women’s agency in the real world of organized crime can be seen most clearly in Japanese manga and popular culture, which – while fictional – in fact makes the actual voices and stories that inform them widely visible to a broad audience, thereby giving voice to these silenced actors.

KEYWORDS:

• yakuza
• organized crime
• manga
• popular discourse
• silences
• women

Introduction¹

In postwar Japan, representations and depictions of the yakuza (the Japanese mafia) range from the epitomized anti-authoritarian folk heroes of feudal yore to the “cool” criminals, gamblers, wanderers, and assassins in postwar popular culture. Yakuza have also figured prominently in modern Japanese politics and society at-large, with historian John Dower (1999, 141–144) showing that during the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945–1952), organized crime dominated large parts of the economy and that turf wars were a common occurrence between rival gangs in major cities. Yakuza were employed by corporations such as Mitsui to break striking and picketing workers engaged in labor disputes in the 1960s, and over the longer postwar period yakuza have also figured in various oral histories concerning daily life in urban cities and rural villages throughout the country (Siniawer 2008, 151–163; Fowler 1996, 93, 115, 184; Saga 1987, 46–50).

In many scholarly accounts of organized crime in Japan, however, women are portrayed in patriarchal frameworks and are shown as exercising little or no agency over their lives. Journalist Ieda Shōko (1986, 10) underscored this fact by noting “authors writing about the yakuza only go as far as to write about men, as if the yakuza was only ‘men’s territory.’” In the process of interviewing men and women she confirmed her suspicions, namely that “women had roles to play as well.”² Little has changed since Ieda recognized this nearly four decades earlier: most narratives of women and the yakuza today still have a tendency to focus on their exploitation by male agents of organized crime syndicates. In doing so, they fail to give adequate mention to autobiographical texts, interviews, and representations in popular culture that help illustrate the frequent appearance of active and empowered women gangsters. The complexity of these women’s lives and experiences – as wives, mothers, girlfriends, lovers, and even as participatory agents of crime – are commonly seen in manga, where the yakuza are an oft-depicted force that work their way into the plots of countless serials. Gangsters transcend the boundaries of genre and appear in both boy’s comics (shōnen manga) and girl’s comics (shōjo manga), in comics for teenage and adult men (seinen manga) and ones for women (josei manga). The yakuza seem to exist in every genre at once, adapting to the accepted conventions of what particular audiences, age-groups, and publishers expect.

In the pages that follow, I analyze two case examples in girl’s comics that showcase the ways in which women yakuza challenge or run contrary to the widely accepted male-centered understandings of organized crime and criminality in Japan. Works such as Morimoto Kozueko’s Gokusen or Nakamura Yoshiki’s Tokyo kureijī paradaisu (Tokyo Crazy Paradise) help to illustrate the roles and importance of women in yakuza organizations and families, reflecting real-life autobiographical and life narratives by women themselves, which stand in stark contrast to statistical data, academic studies, and popular non-fiction written by men that assert women hold little to no power or roles of consequence in criminal organizations.

With these points in mind, this article explores discourses and understandings of yakuza women in Japan. I ask: how might we account for the silencing of women? What processes reinforce patriarchal frameworks and ways of knowing (including, in this case, scholarly ones) to achieve the silencing of women despite obvious visibility in public discourse and as historically real actors? Finally, how might we begin recovering these silenced voices by turning to Japanese manga in particular? I begin by outlining extant scholarship in Japan and abroad that addresses women in organized crime, revealing some of the reasons behind their silences in scholarship. In doing so, I show the different ways women and their associations with organized crime in Japan have been framed for readers. Proceeding to a selection of autobiographical writings and published interviews with women in Japan, I illustrate ways that such interviews run contrary to assumptions and expectations of women connected to organized crime in Japan. Finally, having examined the silences in scholarship and of women themselves, I turn to focus on two examples of women yakuza in manga, arguing that reading these popular treatments against existing discursive accounts reveals that they should not be dismissed as mere entertainment and fantasy. Rather, when viewed against the bulk of scholarship and non-fiction about organized crime, it is evident that these and other comics make silent voices and stories audible to a wide and varied audience.

Discourses of women, gangsters, and criminality

Many studies of the yakuza have adopted frameworks of criminology, participant observation, and cultural studies. For example, Kersten (1993) analyzes juvenile gang traits and behaviors against the yakuza, underscoring the lack of an (in)formal promotion structure or connection between the two. Similarly, youth gangs (members aged 14–20) and bōsōzoku (approximately translated as “biker gangs,” with members generally aged 17–20) are often seen as socially deviant groups that are related to the yakuza, particularly in the Japanese mass media and by the police. Drawing on extensive use of bōsōzoku informants, Sato (1991, 169) notes that while yazuka have attempted to recruit members from biker gangs, many bōsōzoku members saw this as inferior to legitimate work and job prospects. In cases when yakuza applied coercive measures to recruit bikers, or bikers embraced associations with yakuza, these members were “openly ridiculed by peers and seniors” (1991, 169). Sato’s work ultimately suggests that while some bikers did indeed become involved with organized crime at some point, there is a significant gap between biker and gangster subcultures, particularly in 1980s and 1990s Japan. Nonetheless, while noting the existence of “bōsōzoku girls,” including a female subsection in the group he studied, Sato touches upon them only tangentially, and in his discussion they are generally regulated to the role of girlfriends to the male bikers (1991, 170–176). Similarly, Jacob Raz’s study (1992) complements the work by Sato and others by taking a criminologically-informed approach with rich ethnographic detail based on his year-long embedment in a local yakuza organization, including visits to members’ homes. Many of his informants discussed their family life in some detail, though here, too, it is the voices of men discussing the roles of women which are heard most clearly (1992, 215–217).

Even in the domain of popular culture, surprisingly few authors have examined yakuza women, something which Coates (2017) makes clear in her study of female yakuza films. Coates (2017) argues that many scholars have “missed the vital role that female characterizations have played in the genre’s engagement with the changing social and political climate of Japan” (2017, 354), even in the face of widespread popularity amongst theatre-goers, and she sees this as symptomatic of this wider tendency. The wildly successful Gokudō no onnatachi series of films are emblematic of this. Tōei Studio, for example, refused to include the films as part of the yakuza genre, and its then-president remarked, “there are no real yakuza women” (Schilling 1996, 41).

One other notable exception to this dearth of scholarship focusing on women is Rié Alkemade’s detailed interrogation of the “sub-subcultural world” of women in the yakuza. Drawing on popular films as well as informants, Alkemade (2014, 30) makes clear the extent to which, on the one hand, women are highly objectified by men and seen to be incapable of managing accounting and finances. On the other hand, her interviewees strongly caution against overgeneralizing yakuza wives as a homogeneous group. As she concludes (2014, 45), it is “near impossible to place these yakuza wives into clear-cut patterns regarding their background and initial yakuza encounters.” Though recent trends cited by Alkemade suggest that scholarship about organized crime has successfully overcome most of the male-centrism pervading the scholarly literature to-date, the same “cannot be said for research specifically regarding the case of Japan” (2014, 2). Scholars have tended to shy away from understanding women’s romantic encounters from their point of view; empirical evidence documenting the extent of women’s involvement in criminal activities is generally lacking, and the lifestyles of women other than yakuza wives are rarely, if ever, discussed.

From these and other works we can understand that there is a paucity of sources for recovering the roles of yakuza women, particularly unmarried women. Claims made about them are often based on scant or unreliable information, usually rely on male informants, and/or conform to gendered stereotypes and expectations. Therefore, it is valuable to establish the patterns of women’s discursive marginalization and how this has shaped our understanding of women and their roles in organized crime. Authors often depict the lives and activities of yakuza women in three different ways. The first and arguably most common constructs women as victims in narratives about organized crime, drawing on official government and human rights works examining criminality, sexual trafficking, and exploitation. This official knowledge – produced by government bodies such as the Ministry of Justice, National Police Agency, prefectural police agencies, and the judicial system – suggests that women with ties to organized crime are largely exploited victims who are generally incapable of committing the same kinds of crimes that men do. While Japanese governmental agencies are perhaps reluctant to acknowledge or confront the serious problems of human trafficking and sexual exploitation, international scholars, NGOs, and government agencies worldwide have convincingly argued that “Japan’s sex industry is controlled and run by the yakuza” (Dean 2008, 171), with references to yakuza and criminality almost always shorthand for male actors and male participants in crime.

The second way that women are depicted frames them as inconsequential functionaries related to organized crime. For example, autobiographies and memoirs authored by yakuza men typically disempower, domesticate, and sexualize the women in their lives. With many of these men writing for what we may logically presume to be a male audience, authors such as Abe Jōji see women as objects for men to sexually conquer and possess. In one work, Abe (1987) does so both in written narrative and with crudely drawn, sexually graphic illustrations. While such narratives may lend insight into how yakuza men perceive women, readers can learn very little about the hopes, desires, or motivations of women who become friends, lovers, or wives to these men. The goals, hopes, or desires of women beyond that of romance, passion, or money, as viewed through the male gaze, are all too often effaced.

Finally, the third way women are seen acknowledges the existence of yakuza women involved in criminal activities, but as rarities and outliers with little agency. Mizoguchi Atsushi, who has written prolifically about criminality and the yakuza in Japan, suggests that women who “become foot-soldiers and bosses” were merely “unusual cases” not worth exploring in further detail (Mizoguchi 2011, 69). Elsewhere, one of the more widely known examples of a woman becoming a boss is the case of Taoka Fumiko and her elevation to the head of the powerful Yamaguchi-gumi (Yamaguchi syndicate). Her ascension was helped in part by her talent, but ultimately secured because no suitable male candidate existed at the time. Taoka’s temporary appointment was meant to allow a suitable male candidate to emerge and replace her (Kaplan and Dubro 2003, 118–123, 114–116). Thus, while not unheard of, the general opinion of yakuza men disparages the involvement of women in gang politics. Indeed, as one informant interviewed by Mizoguchi (1998 [1993], 178) notes, “[m]ore often than not, the involvement of women causes problems.” If, like Taoka, women manage to overcome this stereotypical view by men as a potential “problem” in gang politics to be managed or excluded, the best women may hope for is to be a placeholder for a future male candidate.

Agency and authority

Nevertheless, not all authors agree that women are simply problems to be managed. Otomo (2007, 211–212) suggests that women in positions of authority are more common than is usually assumed, albeit in particularly gendered ways. Otomo observes that while women may not become bosses themselves, they typically exercise influence “proportional to the power of their husbands or lovers.” Even if we view gangs’ structures of power in this way, locating women who clearly support Otomo’s observation is difficult, namely because they rarely figure in dominant narratives by authors, scholars, or the news media, either in Japan or overseas.

Common understandings, such as human trafficking narratives advanced by the U.S. Department of State, NGOs, journalists, and activists overseas have been challenged by some women in Japan themselves. For example, in her study of female Filipino migrants in Tokyo, Parreñas (2011, 5) describes situations where “sex work” does not directly equate to “prostitution.” Moreover, many of the common fears and stereotypes associated with the yakuza “[were] not reflected in the attitude of most hostesses” interviewed during her fieldwork who knew and interacted with male gangsters (2011, 3). Many went on to become girlfriends, lovers, or wives of yakuza men, as was the case with Lolena (a pseudonym), related by Ieda (2007b). Entering Japan as an entertainer and working in various Tokyo clubs for five years, Lolena’s journey to Japan and her life shares significant similarities with other Filipino women who migrated to or were trafficked to Japan. As others attest to, many of her frequent customers turned out to be members of the yakuza. While apprehensive of yakuza customers at first, she reflected on her conflicted feelings by noting that “because he was yakuza he was scary, but he was also kind. [Actually], whether or not he was yakuza didn’t matter to me. I wanted to marry him anyway” (Ieda 2007b, 71). Discussing her three children, Lolena revealed that:

The two oldest know that their father is yakuza, but not the youngest who is nine … Because my husband is kind and gentle at home, the kids love him. He’s always watching his gangster films at home but treats me and the children nothing like the men in those films, who are always shouting and yelling (2007b, 73–74).

Unable to read or write Japanese, finding work and taking care of the children after her husband was arrested became a major challenge for Lolena. Her story connects to recent work by scholars like Parreñas studying migrant/trafficked communities and explicates details about home life and children that rarely figure largely in these studies or those specific to the yakuza. Although Lolena was not herself involved in the activities of her husband’s gang, her testimony helps shed light on the domestic lives of yakuza men and women where women such as herself exercise significant agency.

To complement stories like Lolena’s, we may turn to the experiences of Japanese women for corroborating perspectives. The story that Azami (a pseudonym) relates in Ieda (2007a) describes similar conditions and circumstances of working in clubs and bars, and eventually marrying a yakuza member (Ieda 2007a, 14). The life of Anzai Chizue also bears resemblance to Lolena’s story, having also worked at a club and taking a yakuza patron at the age of 20 (Anzai 1988b, 24). Unlike Lolena, Anzai would go on to participate and even run a number of criminal ventures. Hamano Emiko’s autobiography (1989, 100–102) also describes her racketeering activities: for instance, shaking down locals for protection money. Collectively, interviews and autobiographical writings make clear that many women were not necessarily coerced by yakuza into a life of sexual slavery or prostitution; nor were their relationships simply a matter of sexual conquest by men as Abe Jōji would lead his readers to believe; nor were these women wholly or partly subservient to men. In fact, they exercised significant agency both inside and outside the domestic sphere. As Otomo (2007) rightly points out, women may “act as accomplices … or serve as an ‘interim’ figure when their companion is imprisoned or dies.” They may also, as we have seen, participate in other significant activities as well.

In briefly introducing the above interviews and autobiographical works, what becomes clear is that in narrowing the depiction of women connected to organized crime as prostitutes, sex workers, or victims, we run the risk of disempowering and silencing others.³ Such marginalization is a phenomenon not unique to Japan: rather than recount this tendency in full, it suffices to note that criminologists writing about the subject in other national and global contexts have often observed that women have “always been active in organized crime,” yet are quick to lament the fact that little research has been carried out (Siegel 2013, 52). Though Alkemade (2014, 2–4) and Siegel (2013) are optimistic that scholars are rectifying the absence of women as significant actors in histories and studies of organized crime, other criminologists are more critical of the extent to which broader feminist gains across academe and society have been reflected in the discipline. As Chancer (2016, 307–308) notes in the introduction to a special issue addressing this point, many serious barriers remain including the recognition of female scholars’ work compared to male counterparts, and the “superficially incorporated” use of gender into criminological analyses – despite strong sympathies to feminist traditions and insights. Naegler and Salman (2016, 359) underscore these observations with reference to Alkemade’s work on yakuza women, writing that “this wariness to engage with feminist theory seems curious as [Alkemade] shows strikingly the highly gendered character of women’s daily experience in the male-dominated Yakuza.” They conclude by noting that, “[d]espite engaging with femininity and masculinity, and gendered relations, Alkemade’s analysis never fully sheds its ‘hegemonic masculine lens.’” Both authors urge scholars to carefully reflect on the “masculine lens” used by criminologists through which women’s lives and experiences are often understood (2016, 360).

These concerns broadly inform my analysis in the following pages. Reflecting on the marginality of women, and in the context of the Italian mafia in the United States, Calder (1995) observed over 25 years ago that “mafia women have real lives significantly more complex and active” than common understandings – or even official depictions – would lead us to believe. He added that women “should no longer be portrayed as mere passive, tangential and inconsequential functionaries of organized crime.” In the case of Japan, Otomo (2007) has likewise argued that most popular understandings of yakuza women (or the “lady gangster” as he puts it) fail to accurately reflect reality. Indeed, former gangster Anzai (1988a, 94, 96) affirmed that women play important roles in helping conceal crimes perpetrated by men, assist in money laundering, pimping, and manage profits from various legal and illegal business ventures.

Consequently, scholars face several challenges when examining the spaces women occupy in organized crime. In his study of fiction and non-fiction concerning mafia women in the United States, Calder (1995) writes about some of the difficulties in analyzing women participating in organized crime, beginning with the so-called “methodological hurdles” scholars encounter such as anecdotal information and an overreliance on government records and statistics. Such problems are amplified in discussions of the Japanese “lady gangster” when we follow Otomo’s lead and divide representations concerning yakuza women into two distinct groups. According to Otomo the first group of representations, i.e. popular understandings, are those transmitted in mediums such as film, but also presumably include fiction, magazines, manga, etc. (2007, 205). The second group of representations, i.e. reality, reflects what Otomo sees these women actually doing in their day-to-day lives, based on interviews and autobiographical literature (2007, 211, 213–214). This division is a useful point of departure when grappling with questions concerning women and the yakuza, but it fails to reveal the nuances and relationships between these groups of discourses about yakuza women. Moreover, Otomo’s dichotomy suggests that one set of narrative representations (the popular) is in some way exaggerated, flawed, or untruthful when viewed against the other set (the real). By framing them this way, we run the risk of obscuring the importance of popular representations for what they tell us about yakuza women, which many (male) authors raised thus far neglect. We may also consequently discount the autobiographical texts and interviews (Otomo’s reality) upon which popular understandings are often founded. This dichotomy also neglects a key point: most writings, both scholarly and popular, which explicitly or inadvertently exclude women, contribute to shaping our knowledge and understanding of these women by affirming or imposing their silence.

When considering women’s lives and roles, I suggest that Otomo’s framework can be clarified and expanded upon in the following manner. The reality pertaining to yakuza women that Otomo acknowledges is one necessarily based on a narrow archive. In this “real” archive, we are able to see the central roles that women play in legal and illegal businesses operated by the yakuza, the criminal activities that they witness and participate in, and their lives at home. In direct opposition to this archive of autobiographical sources is an additional category – the dominant discursive field of organized crime writing today. Dominant discourses, largely written by men in governments, NGOs, the academy, etc., bar women from having a place of significance in the criminal underworld by preferring to treat them as invisible or presupposing them as victims. Many of these works lead readers to believe that a majority of women play little role in the day-to-day activities of individual gangs. As Calder suggests to us in the context of the Italian mafia in the United States, most authors in this category would rely on anecdotal information when discussing women and treat women’s lives and activities as aberrations, exceptions, or of little interest to audiences. This is clearly seen in how second-hand information from male informants is often used by authors writing in the Japanese context, and that women, when they are mentioned, are typically weaved into these narratives by either casting them as “good girls” corrupted by organized crime, or as tangential figures to a narrative. Recalling that while this framing is borne out to some extent by interviews and autobiographical works in the “real” archive, it is an overly simplified understanding and representation of how and why women become associated with organized criminal groups in Japan. In addition, they grossly understate the activities of many women and discount women who actively exercise agency as members or participants in the activities of these organizations.

Popular understandings: Narrating and adapting women’s experiences in manga

Shifting analytical focus to examine the “popular” archive allows us to consider how silenced women’s voices are given voice. Although these popular narratives, as Otomo notes, have a tendency to exaggerate certain aspects of yakuza life due to their fictive and entertaining nature, they often deal with a wide range of subjects related to and involving the criminal underworld that are not restricted to women’s narratives. They provide a counterbalance to dominant narratives which neglect women’s agency and roles in the underworld. These popular narratives challenge the hegemonic discourses of organized crime in Japan by “making visible the experience of a different group” and help expose “the existence of repressive mechanisms” which are controlled through discourse (Scott 1991, 779).

As I have argued above, the lack of attention to these (and other) women belie the small but growing number of narratives collected through interviews, autobiographies, and social commentaries. Yet, as we have seen in the context of Japan, the dominance of discourses that place men at the center of organized crime have the tendency to push these kinds of non-conforming voices to the margins or silence them entirely, making them difficult for reading publics to engage with. Consequently, I suggest that one of the most (if not the most) visible and widely circulated mediums that reveals these stories and experiences is manga, where we see challenges to the dominant male-centered depictions of the yakuza. This is accomplished by synthesizing parts of these existing (male-centric) understandings with material and ideas garnered from interviews and autobiographical texts by women, and by placing women at the center of the narrative. Though the works I examine in the following pages do not entirely correct the “hegemonic masculine lens” earlier noted by Naegler and Salman (2016, 360), they make the narratives and ideas articulated by yakuza women visible to an audience far wider than the original texts and sources themselves. The wide circulation of manga and its adaptation to other mediums of popular culture such as film and television make it an appropriate vehicle to examine broader representations and understandings of yakuza women. Indeed, its wide reach provides a greater measure of assurance that these themes and ideas are not merely transmitted to a narrow audience or readership, as may be the case with the original (auto)biographical works or dominant discourses examining broad or specific aspects of organized crime in Japan, both past and present.

While the sources belonging to Otomo’s “real” grouping are rarely acknowledged in overt terms by manga authors, intertextual links and references evidence some knowledge of these works. Ultimately, the widespread visibility, distribution, and influence of manga allows mediated versions of these stories to influence public perceptions and understandings of yakuza women. This is because, in the words of Ito (2005, 456),

… manga does not exist in a vacuum. It is immersed in a particular social environment that includes history, language, culture, politics, economy, family, religion, sex and gender, education, deviance and crime, and demography. Manga thus reflects the reality of Japanese society … [and] also depicts other social phenomena, such as social order and hierarchy, sexism, racism, ageism, classism, and so on.

This capacity of manga to reflect larger societal concerns, phenomena, and beliefs has utility when considering the roles women play in organized crime. Manga, as Ito suggests (2005, 465), is reflective of aspects of Japanese society, politics, or culture at the time of publication.⁴ Moreover, through use of visual and narrative elements, manga can “depict various ideologies and … attributes” by “immers[ing] us in an artistically and symbolically constituted world worthy of critical engagement and discussion” (Ropers 2011, 263). With the frequent absence of women’s voices in existing non-fiction and academic discourses, the space that manga narratives occupy is an important counterweight to discourses which have a tendency to marginalize women’s voices.

Up to this point I have focused on textual sources illuminating the lives and lived experiences of women and how these women have been written about by others. I continue this textual critique in the following pages while also incorporating an analysis of representative visual imagery. On the one hand, attentiveness to the narrative content is critical, because as Roman Rosenbaum (2012) astutely notes, the danger of focusing on manga’s visual aesthetics makes it “very easy to forget the complex [written] allusions, metaphors and allegories … that are encoded in graphic narratives.” This is especially so given the rich intertextual nature of writing for girls in Japan. As Aoyama and Hartley (2010, 3) and other scholars have shown, girls’ writing has developed over the course of the twentieth century as authors and readers look to subvert dominating patriarchal ideas about how woman should act and behave. Girls’ literature (and manga) is replete with intertextual links that help “construct and define the exclusive shōjo [girl’s] world within which the writer, the protagonist, and the reader share the same texts woven into the primary texts” (Aoyama 2005, 57). On the other hand, we should not entirely forsake an examination of imagery as it, too, reveals important points concerning how the kinds of lived experiences detailed in the previous section are imagined and presented to broader reading publics.

One popular manga featuring gangster women is Morimoto Kozueko’s Gokusen, which serves to illustrate certain aspects of yakuza history and contemporary life in Japan.⁵ While yakuza can be found in virtually all genres of manga, ones that emphasize the roles women play can be seen most prominently in the genres of shōjo and josei manga – a direct reflection of their readership and interests.⁶ Gokusen, a portmanteau of the words gokudō (the underworld) and sensei (teacher) sees its plot revolving around the public and private life of protagonist Yamaguchi Kumiko, a new teacher at Shiroin Gakuin high school which has a reputation for misfits and troublemakers. Attesting to its huge popularity, Gokusen spawned three live-action TV series on Nippon Television, an anime series on the same channel, and a feature film.⁷ Consequently, Gokusen is one of the most popular manga concerning yakuza in the past two decades and is a useful source for examining and critiquing how different discourses concerning yakuza women have been combined and mediated in popular culture.

Early on, the protagonist of the series, Kumiko, speaks to the reader directly, recalling her childhood growing up in a yakuza family: “If you were a normal girl, you’d faint at the sight of how I was raised” (Morimoto 2000, 36; cf. Tendō 2007, 12–20 passim). To emphasize the stark difference and unimaginability for readers, Morimoto simply grays out panels as Kumiko recounts parts of her childhood. The difficulty of putting into drawing her experiences is multifold: fostered by her grandfather after her parents were killed in a car accident, she was raised by yakuza, as is often reflected in her speech and mannerisms when under pressure.⁸ The absence of any imagery here is critical to impress upon readers her different lifestyle and lived experience. In approaching Kumiko’s childhood in this way, Morimoto effectively echoes the stories voiced by Tendō Shōko who also grew up in a yakuza family and likewise emphasized the incomprehensibility of her life to readers of her memoir. Kumiko and Tendō alike were involved in fights with other children throughout their youths and were clearly marked as different by other children for belonging to a yakuza family.

Another narrative arc echoes the case of Takao Fumiko’s appointment as head of the Yamaguchi-gumi: Kumiko’s grandfather Ryūichirō, the leader of the Kuroda-gumi, discusses passing the reins of power to her (Morimoto 2000, 33). While she initially refuses due to the obvious conflict with her job as a high school teacher, her grandfather takes ill and he places her in charge while he convalesces. It is during this time when Kumiko brokers a peace deal with the rival Nekomata-gumi (Morimoto 2000, 105). Here Morimoto makes intertextual links by visually poking fun at the protagonists in the film adaptations of Gokudō no onnatachi with the dress, coiffured hair, poses, and catch-phrases Kumiko displays throughout the chapter to the shock (or delight) of onlookers (Morimoto 2000, 121). Presenting a photograph of actress Iwashita Shima (one of the key protagonists in the film series) to a hairdresser and asking for the same hairstyle, Kumiko returns home (in the same style of kimono as Iwashita). She briefly shocks members of the Kuroda-gumi who quickly turn to amusement, demanding she pose and repeat Iwashita’s well-known catch phrase several times. After leaving home, ordinary people (the hair stylist, a student she runs into) are also visibly taken aback by her appearance, which physically mirrors one of the most common popular conceptions of a “lady gangster.” Indeed, rather than the sense of amusement which Kuroda-gumi members expressed as gangsters themselves, Kumiko’s changed persona evoked a sense of cutthroat ruthlessness that Iwashita’s character in the films became well known for. That Kumiko is placed in this position of authority and given support by her grandfather is commented upon by other rival groups and the police, who are somewhat bemused and find it difficult to believe that Kumiko, a young woman (affectionately referred to as “young lady” by Kuroda-gumi members) is the successor to her grandfather (Morimoto 2003a, 44). Throughout this and later volumes, these same characters echo common understandings of the “underworld as a world for men,” with emphasis on the fact that the Kuroda-gumi is “a bit different” due to its acceptance of Kumiko as temporary leader and an influential voice in the family (Morimoto 2003a, 58).

Tellingly, Kumiko’s skills or reputation are not the reason for these critical responses from the police and rival gangs. Demonstrating time and again that her leadership, martial arts abilities, and fearless nature set her apart from nearly all other male yakuza, criticism and critique by men boils down to a simple matter of gender with many blithely noting variations on the comment “if she was a guy, she’d make a good boss” (Morimoto 2003a, 67) across the series. Illustrating this point further is that one of Kumiko’s high school students is mistaken by a rival group as the presumptive successor of the Kuroda-gumi when seen together on the street outside a succession ceremony for another local group. This is despite the incongruity of the situation (Kumiko, locally well-known by this point standing beside her grandfather as they speak to the student who is in school uniform), reinforcing the shared assumption that gender trumps blood ties with successor bosses (Morimoto 2003b, 155–157). Nevertheless, we can conclude that her involvement in Kuroda gang wars as an active participant was not mere fantasy on the part of Morimoto either, for as we have seen, statements by yakuza members attesting to the fact (or belief) that women “don’t openly show their faces in the yakuza world” are directly challenged by the voices of women themselves (Kaplan and Dubro 2003, 115).

We are also able to see similar narratives for younger audiences in shōjo manga. By the 1990s, shōjo manga as a broad genre began to eschew the kinds of romantic escapism that helped define it in decades past. Heinze (2012, 111) informs us that around this time “the genre rediscover[ed] reality and realism and acquir[ed] reflexivity – the capacity of the individual to recognize forces of socialization and alter their place in the social structure.” At the same time, the genre began to articulate problems of social and economic stagnation which Japan was mired in at the time (2012, 111). Both sets of observations are readily apparent in Nakamura Yoshiki’s work Tokyo kureijī paradaisu (Tokyo Crazy Paradise, hereafter Paradise). The plot’s core builds on the interpersonal relationship and romantic tension between the young female protagonist Kozuki Tsukasa and the teenage Kuryū-gumi boss she guards, Shirogami Ryūji. In this dystopian future, men greatly outnumber women, and the opening pages of the series suggest that violence against women is endemic throughout the cityscape (Nakamura 1996, 24–25, 75–77, 116–121). The series begins by detailing how 14-year-old Tsukasa’s parents – both police officers – were caught in the crossfire between a shootout by rival yakuza gangs in a dystopian Tokyo in the year 2020. Having nowhere to go with her three brothers, she turns to classmate Ryūji, whose family runs the powerful Kuryū-gumi, with the intent of scrounging a free meal and information to help track down her parents’ killers (Nakamura 1996, 13). Acquiescing to the meal, Ryūji then coerces Tsukasa into becoming his bodyguard (disguised as a man), threatening to reveal her real gender unless she worked off the debts incurred by herself and her brothers. Dressing and passing as a man (with only a few, including Ryūji, knowing she is in fact a girl), Tsukasa is able to become a bodyguard for Ryūji and uses her newfound position as part of the Kuryū-gumi to go after criminals while seeking justice for her parents.⁹ As I detail below, other parts of Nakamura’s story, particularly Tsukasa’s attitude and behavior, speak strongly to the stories by real women in previous sections.

Nakamura’s work does not entirely forsake some of the typical defining elements of shōjo manga: evidencing the importance of human relationships often seen throughout the genre, she emphasizes the romantic and cute elements by miniaturizing Tsukasa as a small, cute character (chibi), through close-ups of her smiling with larger, sparkling eyes as emotive elements, or through full-body portraiture (1996, 86–87; 1999, 8, 31). In instances where imagery is layered (1999, 53) or open-framed (1999, 38), Shamoon (2012, 119) reminds us how these techniques are frequently used by shōjo artists to provide emotional and psychological depth to the characters. Equally, Nakamura promotes Tsukasa as an empowered young woman (1997a, 180–181; 1999, 105–107), encouraging other women to stand up for themselves both physically and emotionally. Her selective use of violence to protect others, be it Ryūji who she agrees to work for and gradually develops romantic feelings for, or other down-on-their-luck individuals, is starkly contrasted versus those (mainly men from rival groups) who use violence to overtly intimidate, coerce, or exploit the downtrodden denizens of 2020 Tokyo. Such a depiction presents a young female protagonist who can take it and dish it out with her fists, knives, handguns, rifles, or explosives, just like any number of rival male gangsters who threaten her personally, her boss Ryūji, or his syndicate.¹⁰ In this fictionalized setting, Tsukasa and other women face the same kinds of challenges that women attested to in their autobiographies and interviews, particularly overt sexism. With Tsukasa meeting and overcoming these challenges head-on, Nakamura presents an empowered narrative for young women that broadly reflects the attitudes and experiences of yakuza women expressed in their own words. And, at times, Nakamura can be seen to argue for and make a case for young women to question and challenge existing societal expectations and gender roles.

Naturally we must be cautious not to wholeheartedly embrace all aspects of Gokusen, Paradise, and other popular accounts involving yakuza as truthful interpretations of daily life and happenings. The unrealistic exaggerations that suffuse popular culture, which Otomo cautions against, can be seen in both works. In weaving the narrative of Gokusen, Morimoto taps into certain historical and romantic ideas concerning the yakuza. For instance, when discussing the origins of the Kuroda-gumi during the Meiji Period (1868–1912), Morimoto draws links with the chivalrous heroes from which the Kuroda-gumi descends (Morimoto 2002, 98–103). In modern times, Kuroda-gumi members are shown again and again to “fight the strong for the weak” and are never depicted as being involved in any of the serious crimes which dominate the discursive field today, such as drugs, prostitution, or human trafficking (Morimoto 2001, 2; Kaplan and Dubro 2003, 223–250 passim). Rather, the serious crimes that yakuza are shown to commit in Gokusen – such as selling drugs to students from Kumiko’s school or being involved in prostitution – are attributed to rival local gangs (Morimoto 2001, 171–173). In fact, the activities of the Kuroda-gumi rarely go beyond nameless people or rival gang members being physically assaulted and shaken down. Such a saccharine depiction of criminal groups associated with the Kuroda-gumi sets up a scenario of the “good” yakuza versus the larger number of “bad” groups that are involved in illegal activities. Although the yakuza have been involved at times in what we may term humanitarian endeavors by providing disaster relief after the 1995 Hanshin Earthquake (Fukumi 2010), for example, the scenarios in Gokusen and other manga often defy logic or common sense when presented against dominant narratives and evidence of criminal activity in Japan. In other words, it is important to have an understanding of different aspects of organized crime in Japan as well as common sense in sifting through these narratives.

We should also avoid a straightforward comparison of these stories with reality by solely looking for intertextual references back to governmental, legal, or (auto)biographical sources concerning yakuza women. This is because, as I have noted, there are few works voiced by women themselves or works that significantly allow for women’s agency; and, as Barbara Hartley (2016, 116) has noted in a somewhat different context,

[I]t is cultural production that even today generates the condescension of the hegemon when narrating a tale of the past. There can be a sense that cultural production must benchmark itself against history, must “come up” to history. Yet history’s gaps, as noted in the case of the illiterate mother sending her son to war have long been filled by cultural production. This tendency to weigh cultural production against history, to judge cultural production such as manga in terms of a constructed veracity in relation to history, overlooks the fact that both have important roles to play in our understanding of, not merely the past, but also our social futures.

While Hartley’s argument is focused on narrative strategies to be found in genres of historical manga, her broad point can be applied to Gokusen, Paradise, and perhaps other comics involving the yakuza: namely that attempting to benchmark manga against how it may “measure up to reality” overlooks significant avenues or points that may help us better understand gender, silences, and organized crime.

In this vein, similar to Morimoto’s Gokusen, Nakamura makes a distinction between the somewhat more chivalrous Kuryū-gumi in Paradise that is headed by Ryūji, and other local yakuza groups that are involved in drugs, prostitution, money laundering, and murder (Nakamura 1996, 81–82, 94, 161–163). As a consequence, the same oversimplified suggestion of good versus bad prevails in Paradise for both narrative simplicity and to entertain readers. Compared to Gokusen, Paradise can also be seen as presenting a more complete view of the challenges that yakuza women face while simultaneously emphasizing the assertive and important roles they play, in spite of its younger audience and greater emphasis on humor and romance to advance the narrative. Unlike Kumiko, who partly due to age, experience, and family connections, is respected by men in her immediate social circle, Tsukasa constantly faces harassment by men in the Kuryū-gumi, even when passing as male, and especially from the few who know her true gender. Moreover, if we take the breakdown in law, order, and society that is evident in 2020 Tokyo and read it as an exaggerated representation of the criminal activities and violence perpetrated by criminal groups today, we can begin to consider a few of the forms that sexual exploitation and sexual violence against women might take in the contemporary criminal world. For instance, we see women become both participants in, and victims of fight clubs, human trafficking, and sexual violence throughout the series (Nakamura 1996, 103–111, 120–122; 1997b, 18–24; 2001, 7–12). These examples again mirror the real-life examples attested to by informers seen in previous sections (e.g. Anzai 1988a, 94, 96). Furthermore, they may be reflective of contemporaneous debates concerning organized crime and historical debates about military prostitution that brought conversations about human trafficking and sexual violence against women to the fore in Japan during the 1990s.

Conclusion

Internationally, women have often been marginalized as active participants in discourses of organized crime. In the case of Japan, common understandings of organized crime refer back to the stereotypical roles filled by men: as gangsters, gamblers, goons, or thugs. Although the archive concerning yakuza women is more limited in terms of the number of sources and accounts compared to men, they are far from absent. Whereas official discourses and narratives concerning organized crime in Japan would have us believe women are disempowered or passive agents, these interpretations are in stark contrast to the collections of interviews, autobiographies, and narratives cited throughout this article. In these sources, the framing of women’s roles in the yakuza often draw from a core body of autobiographical writing and interviews with yakuza women. Consequently, I have suggested that we cannot dismiss outright the pop culture representations of women yakuza like Kumiko or Tsukasa. Turning to popular culture challenges the Anglophone scholarship about the yakuza with its tendency to focus on masculinity and the roles of men as defining features (Coates 2017, 353). Moreover, considering such pop culture narratives against the existing autobiographical and participant-interview studies reveals the extent to which the voices of women have traditionally been silenced. Women like Kumiko and Tsukasa give voice to aspects of women’s stories that have, and largely continue to be, routinely dismissed or marginalized in treatments of organized crime, both inside and outside Japan, which largely place men at the center as the only consequential individuals possessing agency and power.

Indeed, one plausible reason why there has been so little work conducted on yakuza women is the assumption that there is little worth studying. Discussions of home life, children going to school, and troubles making ends meet with one’s partner or husband in prison may hold less entertainment value and popular appeal compared to stories of drive-by shootings or gang wars. Another reason, one which Ieda herself encountered, is the difficulty for women to cultivate the necessary contacts in a world that places men as de-facto figures of authority. Although popular culture works like Gokusen, Paradise, or the Gokudō no onna film series based on Ieda’s interviews are, first and foremost, for enjoyment and entertainment, they are all informed to a certain degree on the experiences, lives and motivations that yakuza women have attested to in various forms and genres for decades (Ieda 2007a, 287). Of course, popular culture works are not replacements for interviews or autobiographies and cannot take the place of critical academic studies of organized crime. Rather, what these works can do is draw on rarely consulted archives of personal experience to reinterpret and (re)present ideas, themes, and tropes of the woman gangster to a wider audience. In doing so it becomes apparent, though rarely recognized, that such interpretations by authors such as Morimoto or Nakamura are not completely divorced from the actual lives and events which undoubtedly helped to inspire them.

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Notes on contributors

Erik Ropers

Erik Ropers is Associate Professor of History and Director of Asian Studies at Towson University, Maryland, and author of Voices of the Korean Minority in Postwar Japan (Routledge, 2019). He has published on topics including forced labor, survivors of the atomic bombings, gendered violence, and historical representation in manga.

Notes

¹ An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2013 Mid-Atlantic Region Association for Asian Studies Conference. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and Rachael Hutchinson for raising a number of key observations and suggestions at the early stages of this article.

² There is some confusion regarding how to read the title of Ieda’s book, later film adaptations, and articles written about or referencing both. Differences in reading are linked to the last word, wives (tsumatachi). In the case of film adaptations, this character is glossed to read onnatachi (women) to suggest the broader involvement of women in underworld activities. See the interview with Tōei producer Kusakabe Gorō in Kabuki (1995, 94–95). I will maintain this distinction throughout the article when necessary.

³ I underscore here that I am not advocating the reverse either: that we recognize the agency of these women at the expense of the many who are abused or coerced into exploitive relationships, sexual or otherwise.

⁴ Others, such as Schodt (1983, 120–137), may reasonably disagree by noting the extent to which manga indulges fantasy and imagination. I see this mainly as a matter of perspective with no one correct interpretation. In support of Ito’s point, I would argue that fantasy and escapism may itself be reflective or indicative of certain societal environments at the time driving the need or desire for such narratives. For instance, the emergence of the sekai-kei (“world-style”) genre is variously contextualized by pointing to the apocalyptic nature of the Kobe Earthquake and Aum subway gas attacks in 1995, which shattered the image of a safe and stable Japan; the growing recognition of hikikomori as a serious social issue by the late 1990s; and/or the economic precarity of freeters and NEETs since the mid-1990s. See Tanaka (2014, 49–52) for a discussion on these and related points.

⁵ Originally serialized in the monthly magazine YOU by Shūeisha from 2000 to 2007, Gokusen totals 15 volumes in its collectable tankōbon form and sold in excess of 3.5 million copies (not including serialized sales in YOU or second-hand sales, which would likely add several million more). Refer to the obi (advertising band) of volume 11 for sales figures according to the publisher. While selling several million copies total, Gokusen only made one appearance in monthly sales charts charting the top 20 tankōbon (for volume 11 in June 2005) (Shuppan geppō 2005, 29).

⁶ In terms of age ranges, shōjo manga is typically defined as targeting school-age girls up to the late teens, while josei manga is geared towards women from the late teens to 40s. For details on the production, sale, and broader cultural significance of girls’ manga in Japan, see Prough (2011, 1–11).

⁷ Actress and idol Nakama Yukie starred in all three TV series to popular acclaim as well as in the feature film. The live action TV dramas in 2002, 2005, and 2008 had an average national audience of 17.4%, 28.0%, and 22.8% respectively. See Oricon (2009).

⁸ I note here that a different edition (Morimoto 2010) of Gokusen sees minor changes in panel composition and artwork at this point, with her grandfather and other key members of the Kuroda-gumi superimposed over a roaring dragon rather than the greyed-out panels of the original. In both cases the written narrative remains the same. My argument applies in either case: in the 2010 edition, the dragon is stylized to evoke connections to tattoo artwork associated with yakuza and her grandfather (e.g. Morimoto 2003c, 153), and thus speaks to the same incomprehensible childhood experience of the original 2000 version.

⁹ Tsukasa’s crossdressing is less a challenge to conventional gender roles and more a device to move the plot forward. For an analysis of crossdressing in shōjo manga and how it may subvert patriarchal ideas and norms, refer to Shamoon (2012, 119–136) who details one of the most popular and well-known cases of Oscar in Rose of Versailles.

¹⁰ Here it is important to emphasize that Paradise falls into a genre separate to that of the magical girl (mahō shōjo). Unlike magical girls (for example, Sailor Moon, Card Captor Sakura, or Magic Knight Rayearth), Tsukasa does not derive her powers or abilities from an enchanted object or supernatural power, nor does she magically transform into an extraordinary or magical form; rather, her skills and abilities as a bodyguard – e.g. karate, marksmanship, and swordplay – have all been learned over time through training and practice. The implication is that gangster women like Tsukasa have the ability to acquire the necessary skills and training that male gangsters have – to equal them in skill and deadliness or (in the case of Tsukasa) to surpass them.