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Markets in everything, Japan edition
Mobs are legal entities here. Their fan magazines and comic books are sold in convenience stores, and bosses socialize with prime ministers and politicians.
Here is the full story, which focuses on the continuing powerful role of the mob in Japan. Get this:
The most powerful faction, the Yamaguchi-gumi, is known as "the Wal-Mart of the yakuza" [TC: do they promise "Always Lower Prices"?] and reportedly has close to 40,000 members.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on May 17, 2008 at 09:42 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
You must mean "Always Low Prices" - clearly you don't shop at Wal*Mart.
Posted by: Paul N at May 17, 2008 9:56:27 PM
I just searched "Yamaguchi-gumi" and "Wal-Mart" in Japanese (at Google's Japanese site), but no such reference came up. I've certainly never heard it before. It appears to me that WaPo is just making it up. Now, Japanese media often make comparison between Yamaguchi-gumi and Daiei, which was once the largest supermarket chain in Japan, so perhaps that's the origin of this reference...
Posted by: cica at May 17, 2008 11:02:25 PM
If the writer had written that the "Yamaguchi-gumi" was the "Itoyokado" or "Daiei" of the yakuza, I doubt that the American audience would have had a clue. BTW, Walmart does own the Seiyu Supermarket chain which is a semi-major chain in Japan.
Posted by: Robert Kawaratani at May 21, 2008 8:40:43 PM
