<story><title>A Dangerous and Costly Photo in Japan</title><url>https://news.vice.com/article/best-of-vice-news-2014-this-may-be-the-most-dangerous-and-most-costly-photo-in-japan</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jpatokal</author><text>So a dash of soy sauce for anybody reading this article without some familiarity with the background: Jake Adelstein is a reporter who shot to fame with his book &amp;quot;Tokyo Vice&amp;quot;, which is about being the first Western reporter to cover the crime beat at a Japanese newspaper, not a small achievement.  However, in the five years since, Jake&amp;#x27;s articles have been basically all yakuza all the time, and tend to imply that the yakuza are everywhere in Japanese society, pulling strings all the time.&lt;p&gt;However, in actuality, the yakuza are slowly fading away.  The police started clamping down pretty hard in 1992 and have kept up the pressure ever since, with many traditional yakuza businesses like protection money, extortion becoming more and more difficult, and increasing societal pressure on yakuza members themselves.  Consequently, yakuza revenues and membership have plummeted, and infighting between groups fighting for slices of the remaining cake (drugs, gambling, illegal prostitution, etc) isn&amp;#x27;t helping.  Here&amp;#x27;s a summary, cowritten oddly enough by Jake himself, although he does somewhat unconvincingly claim that the yakuza are just going underground in response:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/09/where-have-japan-s-yakuza-gone.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.thedailybeast.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;where-have-...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>A Dangerous and Costly Photo in Japan</title><url>https://news.vice.com/article/best-of-vice-news-2014-this-may-be-the-most-dangerous-and-most-costly-photo-in-japan</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>sdoering</author><text>Why is it, that whenever there is a FIFA WC or Olympics, that there seems to be ties to organized crime, poor working conditions, bribery and so on, but nothing ever happens, the games go through (every time) and everybody is watching, what is just a show of &amp;quot;panem et circenses&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Why do &amp;quot;modern&amp;quot; societies accept these kinds of festivities, with all what is surrounding them?</text></comment>