The new HBO Max series, Tokyo Vice, introduced us to various interesting new terms, including ‘yakuza’ and ‘oyabun’. There’s a lot of history associated with these terms. In fact, even the series was inspired by memoirs written by a real-life journalist, Jake Adelstein.
Jake Adelstein worked for one of the most well-known newspapers in Japan, Yomiuri Shinbun, where he covered the police beat. During his time, he covered the activities of the yakuza, an equivalent to the Mafia in the United States.
The yakuza still has a strong impact on every aspect of Japanese life. The yakuza hit its peak in between 1900 to 1960, when it took over almost all aspects of Japanese commerce and governance. There are various terms that are closely associated with yakuza, among which oyabun is an important one.
To understand the meaning of ‘oyabun’, we first got to understand what ‘yakuza’ means. Yakuza, also referred to as boryokudan, refers to the members of violence groups or Mafia-like organizations in Japan.
Yakuza is a term that is used to refer to individual gangsters, Mafia-like organizations, as well as Japanese organized crime in general. These members typically have a lot of body tattoos and follow samurai-like rituals.
These individuals or groups are involved in organized crime all over the world and have a major hold and control over various agencies, businesses, restaurants, bars and factories in major Japanese cities.
The yakuza is involved in various kinds of criminal activities, including prostitution, smuggling, drug trafficking, gambling, extortion, and blackmail.
The leader of any Japanese organized crime gang or a group of individual gangsters or yakuzas is referred to as ‘oyabun’. The word ‘oyabun’ literally means boss or a parent status. Their followers are known as the kobun.
The yakuza hierarchy is like a family, and the conglomerate generally follows an ultranationalist ideology. Earlier, the discipline followed by the yakuza involved the members or kobun cutting off their little finger and presenting it to the oyabun. However, this practice has been discontinued over time.
The key to the yakuza family hierarchy-like structure is the relationship between the oyabun and kobun. The oyabun-kobun relationship is like a father-son relationship. The oyabun is the leader of the gang, who is supposed to guide and protect the members or kobun under him.
The oyabun-kobun relationship has been portrayed openly in Tokyo Vice, including the display of various rituals and its working. The two important oyabans in the competing Yakuza families in Tokyo Vice are Shun Sugata as Ishida and Ayumi Tanida as Tozawa.
Tokyo Vice does not openly name or refer to any real-life yakuza members, but it implies who some members are in real life. The portrayal, however, is no less genuine and factually accurate.
The structure of the yakuza, the oyabun-kobun relationship, the hierarchy and the power of the yakuza are portrayed as it was in the 90s. The display of power between rival gangs is also displayed in the series, as two factions continue to sabotage each other. This too, is real in the organization’s history.
So, Tokyo Vice is an interesting attempt in portraying the darkest reality of Japan and gives a closer look at the open secret of Japan, yakuza.
About Tokyo Vice
Tokyo Vice is an HBO crime drama series created by J.T. Rogers based on Jake Alderstein’s 2009 book of the same name.
It follows a fictionalized Alderstein, who becomes the first Western-born journalist to work at a renowned Japanese newspaper. Here, he teams up with a veteran detective to uncover the crimes of the yakuza.
The cast includes Ansel Elgort, Ken Watanabe, Rachel Keller, Show Kasamatsu, among others.
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