Japanese Yukuzas Moving Ahead With the Times

Everyone has to move ahead with the times, even the famed (or notorious?) Japanese yakuzas.

They plan to become more "structured" by dividing their members into two categories - "business experts" and "violence experts."

In a September Reuters report, former yakuza member Manabu Miyazaki was quoted as saying: "As the world becomes more borderless, (yakuzas) will need experts who can deal with this too, speaking Chinese and English."

After all, like Japan as a whole, gangsters are aging, and fewer young people look to organized crime as a career option. Police figures showed that in 2005, fewer than 20 per cent of yakuza were in their 20s.

Pointing out that today's young dislike "the tough life", Miyazaki added: "They think being a yakuza is like joining a company. There's a joke about a young man going to a gang office and asking what the salary was, and would he get insurance."

Even though fewer are joining the yakuzas, Miyazaki made it clear that the latter-day samurai groups will not disappear altogether. She also warned that those who do join yakuzas "will be very logical, very scary - and much, much more dangerous."

Okay, so they'd be even more scary and dangerous. But lots of questions remain unanswered. Such as, do yakuza members get insurance or not? And will they still continue to get full body tattoos?