Yakuza Culture Question

3 comments

1. I think its about the comfort of non- gang visitors. Yakuza are notorious and my understanding is most Japanese don’t want to be near them. I imagine business owners also don’t want them around because retaliatory strikes were a thing once.

2. The reason tattoos aren’t allowed is that Yakuza used to hold meetings there because of the privacy it provided them. A long time ago, criminals were marked as such with a tattoo, and the resulting association of tattoos with criminals remains. Now of course not everyone with a tattoo is a criminal, but it’s just one of those things that’s very slow to change

3. With the same logic, cafés in America should allow drug dealers to trade in their bathrooms unsupervised. First, you become entangled in their business, you can be perceived as giving them protection, and you become accessory to a crime. Kicking yakuza out is not about “not making them mad”, it’s about covering your ass from the police and other yakuza that might not like you helping them, not to mention avoiding a shootout at your business.