(the) Road to the Deep East

Amazingly, not only guns or drugs, modern yakuza trades pantie and bra.

Osaka Police arrested 4 yakuzas including 48 year-old boss of the group and committed them for trial. According to yahoo news, these yakuzas swindled 1400 bra and panties (about 1 million yens) of a retailer under the name of a fictitious company, and sold them for the 20-30% of the cost.

(article from yahoo news)
http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20080629-00000936-san-soci

The oyabun(boss of yakuza group) testifies that the person whom he accommodated with money did it himself, so this incident must be what is called 'ハメる' in yakuza term. Namely, his rival group tricked him.

This incident also connotes that yakuzas can take part in our daily life easily in Japan. At least, it's sure some yakuza related people sold a bra to somebody.

And another news infers that yakuzas have already found their way into the Web.

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Last Thursday, a mysterious person who calls himself Takashima from Masaki Corp. asked the administrator of 2channeler to delete a thread because the thread was filled with slanders to the company. However, this 'company' was actually the yakuza group in Fukui prefecture.

'This group is bad because they don't think of young members important'
'So, the branch members don't trust the executives'
'They make too many rules for proper members(*直参, zikisan)'
'But nobody follows them because proper members because zikisans are so lazy'

(original thread from 2channel)
(the thread a yakuza requested to delete it)
It is also amazing that some people in 2channel knows about the internal problems of a yakuza group and these comments are precise and can irritate the yakuza group like this.

Yakuzas are selling panties and seeing 2channel - this is not from the fabricated news from WaiWai or Mainich, but the part of the truth of this country.

It seems the influence of yakuza on the Web is not as strong as in reality, though. The request was rejected soon because it is not sufficient for the requirements to delete the thread from 2channel, but just in case, you'd better watch out. Yakuzas may be reading your blog to steal your pantie.