Yakuza Quotes

[...]one should act as if the things he cherished the most were already lost or broken.

CIA. NSA. FBI. DEA. ICE. Cartels. Mafia. Yakuza. Bratva

Honor without power was a useless decoration and power without honor was the simple flexing of muscle

Voodou isn’t like that. It isn’t concerned with notions of salvation and transcendence. What it’s about is getting things done. You follow me? In out system, there are many gods, spirits. Part of one big family, with all the virtues, all the vices. There’s a ritual tradition of communal manifestation, understand? Voodou says, there’s a God, sure, Gran Met, but He’s big, too big and too far away to worry Himself if your ass is poor, or you can’t get laid. Come on, man, you know how this works, it’s street religion, came out of dirt poor places a million years ago. Voodou’s like the street. Some duster chops out your sister, you don’t go camp on the Yakuza’s doorstep, do you? No way. You go to somebody, though, who can get the thing done. Right?

You have to watch your step with women these days, Pops. She could be involved with Yakuza or something. Even some of the girls in my class -- you should hear the stuff they talk about. Fifteen years old, and there's nothing they don't know. We're not in the age of Peace and Love anymore.

Bukan kulit luar yang penting, tetapi menjadikan pengalaman kita menjadi sesuatu yang terbaik bagi jiwa kita.

The Japanese Mafia. Tell me something, Jason, you ever hear anyone describe our thing as 'The Sicilian Yakuza'? Huh?

When I got home, I took a bat and examined my back in detail in the bathroom mirror. This tattoo would be for myself and no-one else. It wasn’t just because I was about to end my relationship with Iro, it was because I wanted to make some serious changes deep down inside me… My torso - my back and front – and my shoulders, breasts, and upper arms were decorated with a vibrantly coloured work of art. I knew it had been the right thing to do… When I looked at that beautifully crafted tattoo, I was filled with a sense of total contentment I had never experienced before. I felt as though I had been set free.

Granting that there is some truth to the theory that defects in society give rise to the emergence of criminals, I still maintain that those who use this theory as a defense of criminality are overlooking the fact that there are many people in this defective society who survive without resorting to crime. The argument to the contrary is pure sophistry.

but don't worry about the yakuza.

Listen, you gotta understand one thing about me. I hate cops. They're worse than the yakuza—worse than the SDF. They're awful, the things they do. They strut around and love nothing better than tormenting the weak.

I had long since cut ties with that world, like a yakuza stepping out of the game and washing his hands of it once and for all. I had no more use for dreams. Dreaming was for the moviegoers, fingering their pulpy paper tickets. Not for me.

Japan is a startling clash of the deeply traditional and the spiritual. The intensely current and the superficial. It’s ancient, but futuristic. Conservative, yet hedonistic. Sleek skyscrapers graze the clouds like trees seeking sun in a man-made rainforest. Their concrete foundations often fertilized by the bodies of locals run afoul of the yakuza. It’s a homogenous island nation with a quaint surface and a Twin Peaks underbelly. The polite, insular, and eerily innocuous, living symbiotically with the perverse, extroverted, and bizarre. Fashion-forward and fashion-retarded. You could make similar generalizations about most cultures of course, but Japan’s beautiful contrasts were better than most."--Parker Choi

The five largest criminal syndicates—Japan’s Yakuza, the Russian Bratva, Italy’s Camorra and ’Ndrangheta, and Mexico’s Sinaloa—have globalized the reach of their operations and rake in an estimated $1 trillion per year as they bridge the supply and demand for rhino horns, counterfeit currency, synthetic drugs, and prostitutes.

Once in the mob, always in the mob. The tattoos mark you for life.

Vodou says, there’s God, sure, Gran Mèt, but He’s big, too big and too far away to worry Himself if your ass is poor, or you can’t get laid. Come on, man, you know how this works, it’s street religion, came out of a dirt-poor place a million years ago. Vodou’s like the street. Some duster chops out your sister, you don’t go camp on the Yakuza’s doorstep, do you? No way. You go to somebody, though, who can get the thing done.

Ryu laughed. "You know what I mean. A absentminded as you are, it's a true wonder you can be so focused when it comes to kendo." "I'm also focused when I draw." "Yeah. The problem is you're still drawing even when you don't have an actual pencil in your hand.

A complete back tattoo, stretching from the collar of the neck down to the tailbone can take one hundred hours. Such extensive tattooing, then, became a test of strength, and the gamblers eagerly adopted the practice to show the world their courage, toughness, and masculinity. It showed, at the same time, another, more humble purpose - as a self-inflicted wound that would permanently distinguish the outcasts from the rest of the world. The tattooing marks the yakuza as misfits, forever unable or unwilling to adapt themselves to Japanese society.

get wound up. Kimura was a short, stocky fellow with a tight-permed hairstyle reminiscent of the yakuza from my internship story. When he was sober, he was a great guy. He was a mean drunk, however, and he’d been putting it away all night. He kept picking on me as we entered the next izakaya, and once we were sitting down, he looked over at me and sneered. “I look at you, Adelstein, and I can’t figure out how we lost the war. How could we lose to a bunch of sloppy Americans? Barbarians with no discipline, no culture, and no honor. It beats me. Long live the Emperor!

Revenge requires taking oneself apart from the noise of men and of things, even from what resembles them; only the twisted soul remains. The consequences of my actions can not be remedied nor can they be wiped away. Eight deaths I must atone for in the afterlife. I’m cursed in both worlds. But one more job and my obligation ends. One more kill and I am free. – Akira Sato, Twisted Threads

his job was to bring that truth to light. It wouldn’t be easy. The place was under heavy guard, with professionals involved. Yakuza? Perhaps. Businessmen, those involved in real estate in particular, are often involved in secret negotiations with yakuza. When the going gets rough, the yakuza get called in. It was possible the old dowager might be making use of their influence. But Ushikawa wasn’t very certain of this—the old dowager was too well bred to deal with people like them. Also, it was hard to imagine that she would use yakuza to protect women who were victims of domestic violence. Probably she had her own security apparatus in place, one that she paid for herself. Her own personal system she had refined. It would cost her, but then, she wasn’t hurting for funds. And this system of hers might employ violence when there was a perceived need. If Ushikawa’s hypothesis was correct, then Aomame must have gone into hiding somewhere far away, with the aid of the old dowager. They would have carefully erased any trail, given her a new identity and a new name, possibly even a new face. If that was the case, then it would be impossible for Ushikawa’s painstaking little private investigation to track her down. At this point the only thing to do was to try to learn more about the dowager. His hope was that he would run across a seam that would lead him to discover something

Their forces equal in a kind of match Shigure had never been in before, the kind of match where your opponent wanted you to win while you wished for nothing other than to die at his hands.

I had been watching the yakuza for over a month now, and knew his routines. I’d learned that he liked to vary the times of his workouts, sometimes arriving at the gym early in the morning, sometimes at night. Probably he assumed the resulting unpredictability would make him hard to get to. He was half right. Unpredictability is the key to being a hard target, but the concept applies to both time and place. Half measures like this guy’s will protect you from some of the people some of the time, but they won’t save you for long from someone like me.

Vodou says, there’s God, sure, Gran Met, but He’s big, too big and too far away to worry Himself if your ass is poor, or you can’t get laid. Come on, man, you know how this works, it’s street religion, came out of a dirt-poor place a million years ago. Vodou’s like the street. Some duster chops out your sister, you don’t go camp on the Yakuza’s doorstep, do you? No way. You go to somebody, though, who can get the thing done.

Kurtz grabbed the front of the thug’s shirt and jerked him out of his seat. He dragged the wounded prisoner down the center of the helicopter, between the girls. Reaching the back of the chopper he punched the button that activated the clamshell doors. They swung open with a hiss and the wind whipped into the aircraft. No one could hear what Kurtz said to the prisoner; he held him by the front of his shirt, their faces inches apart. The Yakuza thug glanced over his shoulder at the ground racing by underneath. He turned back and said something in a panic, his face a mask of terror. Then he disappeared, dropped from the back of the helicopter. Kurtz hit the button for the doors and they closed with a snap, returning the cabin to a more tolerable level of noise. Then he walked between the two lines of stunned teenagers and sat back down next to Bishop. They stared at him in shock. “Mori-Kai,” Kurtz said flatly. “Does that mean anything to you?

The Yakuza have people in every level of government. They are part of our life. We either learn to live with it or we end up dead.

The first Yakuza sedan screeched to a halt mere inches from its bumper. The driver of the Mercedes honked his horn and wound down his window, yelling angrily. The police car gave an almost apologetic wail of its siren and backed out of the entrance, leaving a gap. “Pretty bloody clear who’s running the show,” murmured Bishop. “I’m not sure this was a good idea,” responded Saneh. “This was your idea.

And then Shin started to make gentle love to me. Every touch drove me wild and I began to moan and beg him to do it harder. Suddenly he stopped and looked at me. "Shoko! You're high right now, aren't you?" "What?" "I can tell when you are. Your reactions aren't the same at all." His words made me feel dirty. The innocent version of me, the girl who had walked happily hand in hand with Shin, no longer existed.

The two Yamaguchi henchmen who had slid the doors shut joined the group. They were dressed in the dark suits and white shirts that seemed to be the uniform of traditional Yakuza. Bishop shook his head. “Some tailor’s making a killing off you guys.” Kenta looked at him blankly. “Never mind. Go on.

Casolaro’s proposed chapter titles for The Octopus provide a glimpse into the trajectory of his research: Chapter 1: 1980—The Most Dangerous Year. Casolaro’s notes include sub-divisions entitled “Death of Paul Morasca, Death of Fred Alvarez,” “Resupply of Contras,” “Casey,” “Vesco,” “John Nichols,” and “Transition—Mideast.” Chapter 2: Backing up: The Post War Years. 1944-1950. When they met. Kim Philby. Chapter 3: Tag Team Compartments. 1959: Patrice Lumumba, Fidel Castro, Europe, Albania, Golden Triangle, China, Formosa. He also brackets “Moriarty, [Marshall] Riconosciuto, Fat Tony.” Chapter 4: 1966: Making Friends With the Terrorist Underground. Dealers, Drugs & Money [additional unreadable line]. Chapter 5: What Went Wrong With Nixon and the Windfall/Surprise. Chapter 6: 1975: Australia With PM Houghton. Chapter 7: The Asian Underground. Chapter 8: Oil [unreadable] Controlling Countries. Chapter 9: The Big Crime—ICN, Yakuza & Terrorists, Triads. Chapter 10: 1980. Chapter 11: The role of Mossad. Chapter 12: KGB Underground. Chapter 13: Wackenhut. Chapter 14: Mideast—Beirut. Chapter 15: Iran Shah, Helms. Chapter 16: Iran & Iraq.

I lowered my gaze from the sky to the trees and caught sight of the cast-off skin of a cicada falling to the ground. I'd heard somewhere that cicadas only had a lifespan of a few weeks. Their precious, short life was spent braving the heat of summer, single-mindedly calling out for a mate, then, when they finally stopped singing, they slipped from that tree that had been their home and returned to the ground. They leave behind the only home they've ever known and die.

That I was apparently into body building at all at this stage in my life probably meant affairs with young women, for whom a youthful physique might ameliorate the unavoidable emotional consequences of sleeping with an older man in what at root would be little more than an exchange of sex and the illusion of immortality for Ferragamo handbags and the other implicit currencies of such arrangements. All of which the yakuza would understand, and even respect.

Everyone looked up, as startled as if there had been an explosion—even the new guy who had been so clueless just an instant earlier. Still bellowing expletives, the yakuza strode directly to the bench-press station, doing a good job of using his voice, either by instinct or design, to disorient his victim. Everything about the yakuza—his words, his tone, his movement and posture, screamed Attack! But the man was too frozen, either by fear or denial, to move off the line of assault. And though he was holding a ten-kilo iron plate with edges considerably harder than the yakuza’s cranium, the man did nothing but drop his mouth open, perhaps in surprise, perhaps in inchoate and certainly futile apology.

Quelle insegne luminose assiepate sulle catapecchie del Golden Gai stanotte sembrano le bandiere attorno a un monumento decrepito, dedicato a una metropoli che ha saputo resistere alle bombe, al fuoco, alla cenere e lo ha fatto con i denti e con le unghie, con i fuorilegge, con la yakuza, le puttane, il gioco d’azzardo, i ladri, gli assassini, con tutti quanti i figli del disastro, armati di coltello e tenuti svegli dall’acquavite mescolata alla voglia di rivalsa, affogati e raggrinziti nella bile come una rapa daikon nell’aceto di riso.

During one of the rest periods, I felt people pause in their workouts, felt their attention shift. The atmosphere in the room changed. I looked over and saw someone in a poorly fitting double-breasted navy suit. It had wide lapels and overly padded shoulders. The kind of suit that’s supposed to impart a swagger even when you’re standing still. He was flanked by two burly specimens, more casually dressed, with yakuza punch perms. From their size and deportment I assumed they were bodyguards. They must have just come in. The guy in the suit was talking to Washio, who was paying close and somehow uncomfortable attention. I watched, and noticed other people doing the same. The newcomer couldn’t have been more than five-feet-eight, but his neck was massive and I put him at about eighty-five, ninety kilos. His ears were deformed masses of protruding scar tissue that would stand out even in Japan, where such scarification is not uncommon among judoka and kendoka.

Caine took another breath, then kneeled next to the first yakuza. He patted the body down and removed a small but heavy Kimber automatic pistol, a wallet, and a cellphone. He did the same for the other bodies. The other yakuza carried a similar cellphone, but was armed with a Spyderco folding knife. The other two men carried no ID or cellphones of any kind, just identical Beretta pistols fitted with silencers.

Their parents had been progressive by nature.  They had taken their daughters with them to the Far East on a business trip with the intention of letting the girls see other cultures.  The trip had ended in disaster.  Their parents had been killed by local thieves, somewhere in the suburbs of Shanghai.  The girls had been taken and sold to the Yakuza.  Because their bodies had not been found, and they were not seen after the death of their parents, it was assumed the girls were dead and buried.  That women were still not as important in the culture of their home country had sped the closure of their case. Edith Cromwell spent a lot of sleepless nights that first week wondering about the psyches of the males she worked with each day.  Were they capable of the sort of crimes against women that these poor girls had endured?  The suspicions, the fears that this line of thought provoked could end in alcoholism, drug abuse, even suicide.  Edith decided that she had best just leave it well enough alone.  If not, she would never be able to work with any man ever again.

Yesterday is over, and tomorrow is not here yet, but today is lonely waiting for you.

not from fear, but from the heat that coursed through me as his long fingers rested on my thighs,

Just then, Kazuo Jirocho and Takaharu Saturo walk into the dining hall. They’re members of the yakuza, and everyone knows they’re not here for training. It’s all an act because the yakuza do their own training. Why they’re really here, I don’t know.

Prepare yourself: First, strip down. No bathing suits, no underwear. Cover tattoos (often banned because of their connection to yakuza). Scrub yourself head to toe. Now you’re ready to soak it all up.

Yakuza are the filthiest people in Japan. They are thugs; they are common criminals. They frighten shopkeepers; they sell drugs; they control prostitution; and they hurt innocent people. All the worst Koreans are members of these gangs. I took money for my education from a yakuza, and you thought this was acceptable

Japan’s institutions proved just as fragile as its supposedly unshakeable buildings. In Tokyo, it took politicians several hours to work out what was going on. A cabinet meeting in the morning had been told erroneously that a quake had hit Kyoto, fifty miles from the actual site of the disaster. Communications had collapsed, meaning little information was getting in or out. Authorities dithered about whether they should send in the Self Defence Forces, Japan’s army-equivalent, which was still mistrusted by the public half a century after the war. The rescue response was so haphazard that yakuza gang members … were reported to be firs ton the scene with food and blankets. Into the institutional vacuum poured hundreds of thousands of volunteers whose actions began to see the idea that people, not governments, or bureaucrats, were the ones who could get things done. It was an unsettling turn of events for a population that had, by and large, trusted the authorities for four decades to do the right thing.

Hayatımda ilk defa babamı ağlarken görmek, gerçeğin büyük bir darbesiydi. Bu defa yeniden ayaklarımın üzerine kalkacaktım.

But then, as a child it had never been vampires or banshees he’d had to be afraid of, but the bullying and taunts of other, more popular, children. Yakuza were pretty much the apex bullies of the lot. And no matter how powerful one might grow up to be, the learned fears of a child continued to haunt well into adulthood.

When I reach to pick up the glass pieces, my heart sinks as the distinctive blue-black wave and red maple leaf designs of my irezumi tattoo sleeve show through the transparent wet fabric of my shirt. Despite the deafening silence, the hint of the ink that marks my past wails like a siren, warning all in my vicinity.

Letting the old swagger back into my step lacks the feeling of control it used to give as I walk past neighborhoods of traditional and modern housing.

Because what, you guys are yakuza? Cartel? Mafia?” There’s a moment of uncertainty, and then Staph’s face hardens, and she lifts her chin. “Yes, Meddy, we are. We’re mafia.

the kind of match where your opponent wanted you to win while you wished for nothing other than to die at his hands

The pinball business was dirty, they said; pachinko gave off a strong odor of poverty and criminality

The Japanese have an expression for human relations that are sticky with the mutual obligations and dependencies of the collective life. They use the English word “wet.” Traditional Japanese family relations are “wet.” Yakuza gangs are “wet.” Behavior that is more detached, more individualistic, often associated with a Western way of life, is “dry.” Terayama Shuji was “dry.” Kara was most definitely “wet.

You have an illegitimate bastard. He won’t get the Omertà or the Yakuza crown. You’ll end up with an angry, bitter prince once that one grows up.

Take over the Yakuza. Become so powerful that nobody can touch her. That’s how you protect her.

Become the head of the Yakuza and Romero will jump at the opportunity to give her to you.” I let out a bitter laugh, knowing the secret that ripped me in half. I almost wished I didn’t, but that was neither here nor there. I would let Illias believe it, because the secret of my blood relationship with Reina would die with my mother and me.

I was already the elected head of the Yakuza, but none of it fucking mattered. What good was it to be a king without a queen. What good was power if there was nobody to protect. What was the point of running the Yakuza and taking Romero’s seat in the Omertà if I failed at protecting her?

I serve no one who pretends to be a God!