Yakuza: From Samurai to Slot Machines

The Yakuza trace their lineage back to the 18th century samurai, left masterless following political upheaval, who turned to lives of crime. After centuries, the Yakuza is still going strong, following both tradition and new avenues of illicit revenue.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark with me as always as Charles W. Chuck Bryant, right,
and we have a guest producer, Matt here today in

(00:22):
the yes, in the leather wing back to the director's chair. Matt,
who has gotten family before. Oh yeah, that's right. Do
you know lines and scissors just back together? Yeah? Nice.
Don't look at him, he's right here. I didn't know that.
That's great news, Matty. It feels weird to talk to
you without looking at you, but I've been instructed to

(00:43):
do so. That's the whole point to just feel weird,
all right, that's the point of life. Well, that's great. Yeah,
you guys need to get a website together, Matt. He
shakes and said, yes, yes, it's like we've got a
MySpace page. It's funny that that's still being financially supported
enough that it's up that you can still access MySpace. Yeah,

(01:05):
but have you seen some of the other stuff that's
still up, Like my Space has a long way to
go to fall off the radar. I'm interested to see
when that happens, and maybe there'll be some sort of event. Yeah,
can you tell him? Stalling? Yes? Okay, Well that means
everybody else can tell too, then, so we should probably
start chuck. Um. Have you ever seen the Simpsons episode, uh,

(01:30):
the Twisted Life of Marge Twisted World of Marge Simpsons,
The one where she starts selling pretzels? I think, so
it's hard to keep them all? You know? Straight? It is?
It is? Well? Um, in it, Marge decides to make
some extra scratch by selling pretzels. Right. She know she's
a part of an investment club, and um, the investment
club gets a little crazy and I think she's forced

(01:52):
out of their Peta Fleeta Peta franchise, Peter Peter food truck. Basically,
she gets forced out, so she goes off on her
own starts selling pretzels. Well, she gets in bed with
the mob inadvertently, and when the mob comes to calling
just in time and they're they're storming the front door.

(02:13):
Is it the mob guy that's always fat tony? Um?
The fleet of Peter ladies show up and they want
their cut of her turf. I believe, um. And it
turns out that they've gotten in bed with the yakuza. Yes,
the Japanese mafia and um as the mob as the
yakuza and the mafia are about to battle. The door

(02:35):
shuts and all you can hear some stuff, and then
the door opens and everybody's like laying debt and it's
pretty awesome. That's a troop. But after reading this article
how the Yakuza works, I would say that, um they
probably had they spoken before they fought, would have found
that they had a tremendous amountain common and possibly wouldn't
have even fought at all. Yeah, maybe they would have

(02:57):
had some wine and sukey or some sushi and pasta
and broke bread together or whatever. The Japanese version of
bread is bread. Okay. So that's the intro to how
yakuza works. Very nice, that's a good one, it is.
And reading this article, you're right, I was kind of like,

(03:19):
you know what, it's just like the American mafia. It
is so there's like a there's a model out there
for organizing crime, and somebody figured it out at some
point in time. Maybe it was the Japanese, maybe it
was the Sicilians, maybe it was all independent, but the
point is it's out there, it's established. Don't try to
mess with it. It's it's perfect, yes, as far as

(03:41):
organized crime goes. I guess you're right. Uh, the origins
of the Yakuza depending on which history you're following. Um,
if you listen to some of the clans and their clans,
I guess it just gave that away. Well, clans families say, Um,
they might say like, we have noble origins, and we

(04:02):
descended from the Ronin and we're more like your American
Robin Hood, although he was an American, your English Robin Hood.
We're like Kevin Costner, and um, our lineage is like
very proud and honorable. Um. Probably a little bit of
an inflated story. Um, because the other side of the
coin is that they descended from the kabuki mono the

(04:25):
crazy ones. Yeah, and these are basically we're like masterless
Ronan after the samurai. They were just crazy kids. Well
they were masterless samurai and they would go around doing
bad things with their swords because they didn't have a
what's it called again goal in life? Now the master
the Oh yeah, I was about to say that, but

(04:48):
I can't believe I did that. From memory, I had
it you was gonna be so proud, but I doubt
it myself. Oh you had damio. I had it my brain,
but I doubted myself, which will make emily prod. So
you've got some some political upheaval. I think a time
of pieces what it was, and the samurai became basically
useless and lazy. Um yeah, I guess that made them

(05:11):
cranky because they started to do crime, or they just
kind of went into business, which is something the samurai
didn't need to do because they were the political elite
for a very very long time. Um, they did their
jobs too well. There was a lasting piece and then
political people and then all of a sudden there's kind
of out on the street. So yeah, they're either going
crazy cutting the heads off of peasants for no good reason.

(05:32):
They're wandering around not cutting the heads off of peasants,
but they're samurai and you don't want to look at
them wrong. Or there samurai who are selling apples on
the street now, which is new to them, or running
gambling casinos, gambling houses, brothels. Yeah, making money from like
ill repute or legitimate ways. But the point is you

(05:55):
have these people who are coming into the mark it,
who are coming in from the outside, outsiders, exactly like c.
Thomas Howell or Ralph Macho. Let's stay gold yakuza. Um,
and that's the Yakusa still wears that today, kind of
as a badge of honor. They're outsiders in Japanese society. Yeah,

(06:18):
which we'll talk about the Korean yakuza later. Does that
always say Korean? Now Korean? Yeah, you're from Georgia. You
sound like Hank is Area doing Billy bod Thornton and Homegrown. Um.
So the name yakuza, I thought this is pretty interesting.
It actually reinforces that outsider status because it came from

(06:39):
a game called ocou. Sounds good to me. And uh,
it's similar to what we call back iraq. Uh. And
that the second digit of the hand is where you
get your point value. It's very numerological, Yes it is,
so you add up your cards. Yeah, and the second
digit is what counts like in back ireq. Right, so
if you have three is or something like that, you'd

(07:02):
have eighteen in your hand would be worth eight because
it's a second number. The last digit, yeah, sixteen would
probably be more appropriate because that's actually two digits. A
six is just one digit. You know what I'm saying. No, Well,
if it's a two digit number, it would be based
on the second digit, right, is it a two digit number,
I would think it'd be like zero six. No, I

(07:23):
think it's the last digit of your hand. So like,
for example, if you have a in this case, you
have um an eight and nine and a three that
equals twenty, that your hand is worth zero. So it's
the second digit or the last digit, right, But as
sixteen would be worth six, Yes, but I guess there's

(07:44):
no sixteen. There's if you headed three fours, Okay, I
see what you mean. So you take if you have
a hand of three cars, you add them up and
then whatever the last digit is. If it's a single digit,
it's that. If it's if it's a two digit number,
it's the second digit. Boy, there are gamblers out there
just like I hate you. No, they're probably just like guys.

(08:04):
Stay at the casino, yeah, stick to the shows. So anyway,
eight nine in three equals twenty. That is zero points.
That is a very bad hand. It's a worthless hand.
And the Japanese words for eight nine and three yeah
kua yakuza, meaning worthless or pointless and in the vernacular
very round about probably incorrect way of explaining that. So

(08:26):
you've got a group of people who know their way
around a sword who suddenly are selling um pachinko cards
or women yeah um or opium all bet um, and
they are they're very proud of this outsider worthless status.
You know, they're making themselves anti here us, against the

(08:48):
world exactly. Um. If you are a cop, though, you're
probably going to refer to the Yakuza as the boy yokudan,
which is basically is a degenerate gangster has no sense
of values or tradition. That's right, and that's a very
big insult. You wouldn't want to call a yukos a
member that, no, unless you you know we're arresting them,

(09:11):
and even then you may want to avoid it. Yeah.
I saw that name thrown thrown around a lot and
depressed though, So people aren't shy about it. I mean,
I'm sure it's like being called a mafia member hood
or yeah, a thug or in in the U S
a degenerate gangster who has no sense of tradition or values,

(09:34):
that's right. However, this article who wrote this was his
Ada figures Um. He points out that the most direct
ancestors come from the eighteenth century. He called them quasi
legal businessmen, and they are known as bakuto and techia
is a gambler, Yeah, gamblers, peddlers, Um, not like the

(09:58):
highest repute, I would imagine. Yeah, the is the peddler. Yeah,
and I don't think they were either, But they were
enterprising businessmen who knew how to make a buck however, Yes,
and eventually they decided, you know, if we organize ourselves
into these clans, it might be better for business. Yeah,
and they did, And a lot of the clans still
have the names of these bakudos and techias today. Can

(10:21):
you name one the Yamaguchi Gumi clan. There's the biggest one, right, yeah,
eight thousand members yeah. Um, and we should also say that, um,
the the that clan, if it has eighty thousand members,
it's probably assembled in well, usually Yakusa has assembled in

(10:42):
one of two ways. It's a straight up clan and
everybody's related, everybody knows one another, or it's a kind
of a confederation of clans. So if you have eighty
thousand members, it's probably the latter of the two. Yeah,
I would imagine. So the Yamaguchi Gumi clan would be
the nominal umbrella clan several other smaller clans that are
structured very much like a mafia family with a dawn

(11:04):
at the head, but in this case it's called a
kumicho yep. And it follows that UM a rough pyramid
structure working its way down to uh. I guess the
lowest or the highest man on the totem pole, which
would be uh, just the you know, the heavy, the
thug sure carrying out the tough. The tough assignments the

(11:25):
guy with the baseball bat. Yeah. I was about to say,
they might use something else but bare. So they might
use two baseball bats and make them like whirl And
the only reason you know that is because of Tom's ellick.
Uh no, no, no. There's a story about the KFC
colonel that they threw in the in the river and

(11:46):
I think osaka um Okay. So we've got the hierarchy.
And the key to this hierarchy is something called the
oyaban Coban relationship, and that is um much like I'm
about to say, much like the mafia, but much like
any structure where you have seniority, ideally you have a

(12:07):
relationship between the higher ups and the people directly beneath them. Um,
and that is the case here with the oyubon coban
is the higher up. It's like a father son relationship
or a den master cub scout relationship mentorte. Right. What's

(12:28):
what's significant about this is that everywhere within them, the
yakuza structure, this clan structure, everyone plays both roles except
to the very top and the very bottom. So you
are the ayubon, the father to the guy below you
or the guys below you, and you're the koban to
the guy immediately ahead of you. Yeah, like, let me

(12:50):
let me show you how to how to clean your
gun properly, right, or your sword? Do they still you swords?
I imagine there's a couple that still use swords, throw
back kind of thing. They don't these guns that much?
Oh no, No, I actually have a stat because I
just got a little curious about gun violence. Six guns
for every one thousand people in Japan, compared to eight
hundred nine for one thousand in the USA and UH

(13:17):
In two thousand and eight, there were only eleven gun
deaths in Japan completely and in the US that's twelve
thousand that same year. I'm surprised, it said Lowe. That's
pretty high. Um, I know, yeah, I'm saying I'm still
surprised that low The thing about Japan is like they
don't have a lot of crime, especially violent crime, but

(13:38):
when they do it is gruesome, like little elementary school
kids cutting the heads off other other ones and like
planning it on the gate outside of the school. People. Yeah,
people like I'm just killing spreez and like bathing in
the blood of their victim and all that. Just like
the craziest stuff. It's like this very like straight lice

(13:59):
culture that like has very strict rules. Every once while
somebody just pops and like really bad things happen, but
it's very infrequent. Yeah. Um. And I did find out though,
about two thirds of the gun deaths, which I guess
would only be about four people, Oh no, two thirds
would be what like uh uh yeah about that they

(14:26):
come from the from the Yukuza, which really yeah, like
most of the gun violence is attributed to them. But um,
there was a pretty good point in this article later
on that, um, they don't really have to use violence
or even the threat of violence because a lot of
the um extortion schemes that they carry out are based

(14:47):
on Japanese politeness. Yeah, I think the implied threat of
violence is there though, Oh it definitely is. But they'll
be like, we want you to or we strongly feel
that you should contribute to this chairit that's not a
real charity. Um, so maybe you should write a check.
And people are like, well, of course, I want to
help these throwing this golf tournament this weekend. It'd be

(15:08):
really great if you were there at about nine am
off the green piece a million dollars. Alright, So back
to the oyaban Koban. When they submit their relationship, it
has done in a ceremony where a third person I
guess named Spider pours up some drinks um, pours sake um,

(15:28):
and I believe they drink from their own glass. Then
they switch and drink from each other's glass. And then
the oyabun is allowed to get hammered, and I guess
the koban isn't. No, he just sits there and SIPs yeah,
and I guess cleans up after whatever happens with That's
exactly how they do the um. That's how you get
a sponsor in a but they use coffee instead of sake.

(15:51):
Really yeah, very nice. Uh. Oh I mentioned the Koreans.
They are they only make up point five percent of
the population, but I could I was trying to find
a good number. I found ten percent of the yakuza.
That's a pretty big disparity, huge disparity. And apparently it's
because in Japan, UM Koreans are are looked down upon

(16:16):
in many circles and disrespected and and you know it's
it's racial uh bigotry, Yeah, pretty much. And so they're
outsiders and so they identify I think, with the Yukuza
well definitely, and then that that that further strengthens the
yakuza's um sense of being outsiders as well. Uh. It's
also um, very good for business to have Koreans in

(16:38):
your gang because a lot of smuggling between Korea and
Japan goes on. Yeah, so it's practical as well as prideful. Um.
And if you're a woman, UM, don't count on playing
ball very much in the yukuza because you are marginalized
and you're not going to be doing a lot of

(17:00):
work unless it's um it's a prostitute or the servant. Sadly, yes,
with one exception. Should we go to that exception? Yeah,
might as well. Uh, Fukio Taka, um Fukio Taka, Fumiko
sorry Taka was the wife of Kazuo Taka. Man, I've

(17:20):
been screwing their names up left and right now. You
were good up until this point. Fu Fumiko Taka, I
had it totally wrong. Um she was the wife of
Kazuo Tatoka. And um he basically he ran the Yamaguchi Gumi,
which it's like such an adorable name, but they'll kill you.
I know. It sounds like a little Teddy Bears of right,
or like a whole line of teddy bears that are

(17:42):
like slightly different from one another, but you have to
collect all eight hundred and there's trading cards to um
So he ran that clan from World War Two to
the eighties and then he died. Uh and actually, in
translated from the Japanese that was like perfectly spoken turned
into tarsan um not bad run. So he died of

(18:05):
a heart attack in the early eighties, and Fumiko took
over and became the first woman oyobon ever and she
she held power for a few months is not very long, no,
but like she was it the only one. No one
had ever done it since like the eighteenth century, eighteenth
or nineteenth century to the eighties, no woman had ever

(18:28):
taken over despite kill Billy, there was no woman in
power at any point except for Fumiko, and even for
a few months. It's pretty significant, as I understand. Yeah,
I wonder I have to look into that why she was,
if she was removed or if she was just like
this eight for me, right, I have no idea why
she didn't maintained power, but she didn't, but she held

(18:52):
the claim together, as I understand, for several months. That's right. Um.
One thing you do not want to do if you
are in this oh ya bon koban relationship is the
koban is disappointed oh yabun because you could um take
part in the you be zoom you be zoomi, I
would say, you be zoomi. And that is when um,

(19:12):
you basically screw up. They give you a knife and
a bandage and say you know what to do, just
go do it, and you do it. You cut above
or at the first joint of your pinky finger, and
um you take it after you've bandaged it up and
stopped screaming um. And you take the finger and you

(19:35):
present it to the Ayubon say I'm really sorry, let's
just forget this ever happened. Can you please take me
to the hospital. And he's like, yeah, right, it looks good.
And I'll bet if you really wanted to mess with
your oban is it oban? Um? Yeah, oban. It is
like old lady, I believe like grandma, Um, don't hand

(19:57):
her your pinky. Uh, we'll be to just like pop
it in your mouth and eat the guy. Wouldn't that
just kind of like consolidate like any fear that the
person had for me, it would um. And apparently it
is a symbolic weakening of your ability to hold a sword.
I say, it's not a very smart thing to do

(20:18):
to like physically, you know, give someone a physical disadvantage.
That's on your team, right, but I'm not making the rules. Well,
it makes sense it weakens your ability to hold the sword.
But in that sense, it also it makes you more
dependent on the other CLAM members to help protect and
defend you. Like, I see your point, but I think
it's cool, Like symbolically it's very cool, I think. Yeah.

(20:42):
And apparently, if you keep messing up, then they will
um go down more sections of your finger. Then if
you lose all your pinky you're still screwing up, they'll
move to your other finger. At that point, I guess
you should probably rethink you're, you know, way of doing
things like, Um, do you remember the geeky guy from Greece?
Uh no, No, he was like just a peripheral character.

(21:05):
He wore glasses and he like, oh yeah, yeah. Can
you imagine that guy after like two months in the Yakuza,
you'd have like nothing left. He just runs into walls
all the time. Yeah. I wonder what he's doing now,
I have no after playing the nerd in like eight movies. Yeah,
all right, Josh, what does what do the Yakuza do?

(21:29):
And I'll go ahead and set you up by saying
they kind of do the same thing as the American
mafia and the Italian mafia and the Bulgarian mafia and
the Russian mafia, which I want to say, Um, do
you remember how like the post Soviet Russia just fell
into utter like lawlessness and the mobs stepped in. Apparently

(21:50):
the Yakuza went from like relative outsiders to like political
powerhouses at the end of World War Two for much
the same reason. It was just there were there were
organized crimes and the kids in place that we're ready
to fill the power vacuum that happened after the Japanese
government was um cleaning up the mess. Well yeah, um,

(22:13):
and and that's the same thing that happened when the
Soviet Union crumbled. But that's how the yakus I got
where they are today. Opportunists. Yeah, interesting in the right place,
in the right time, as another way you put it. Uh, yeah,
that's true. Um, so apart from gambling, prostitution. Um, you
got your smuggling, you got your firearms, you got your porno. Uh,

(22:33):
you've got the age old m you've got the age
old protection fees, which means pay me and I won't
beat you up. Yeah, it's put way better than that,
but that's what it amounts to. Yeah. Um. They also
uh recently have killed people, um, eleven of them. Well, no, killed.

(22:54):
They don't get into politics that much, but they In
two thousand seven, the mayor of Nagasaki was shot and
kill old senior member of the Yamaguchi Gumi clan and
U two thousand seven, Wow, like murdered in cold blood
on the street and um, but it wasn't exactly a
yakuza thing. Like he was a senior guy in the Yakuza,

(23:17):
so he ain't messing around. But apparently what happened is
he was driving his car through a public works site
and drove through a hole and like damaged his car
and could never get any restitution from the government, and
he got mad and went and killed the mayor. And
they think that's what it had stemmed from. How Pesci asked,
I know, yeah, that's very Peci asked, although he petch

(23:40):
she would have been smarter because this guy was you know,
I don't know. He wrestled to the ground and it's
a big hothead and that's true, but he never got
napped like that. But this guy got nabbed, and they
tried to make it a yakuza thing, and they were
kind of like, no, not really, he was in the Yakuza.
He was just picked off about his car. We're in
no affiliated with this act. So I'm sure that they

(24:02):
wish they would have fixed his car at that point.
I wonder what kind of car it was. It's just
like an accord. Yeah, maybe it was probably not a
Chevy or afford. That's my guess. Um. Sometimes these guys
segue into real work, legal work, invest in the stock
market in semi legitimate ways. Yeah you can. I mean

(24:25):
you can do it legitimately, like you can just take
your your illegal winnings and invest in the stock market.
Or you can be like, um, I think this company
could make more money under my personal direction, buy some stock,
get some dirt on some of the board of directors,
and and then send some of your under links to

(24:48):
a board meeting and be like, oh, we would hate
so much for these pictures of you with your mistress
to get out. Um. So I think now our boss,
the Kuban, why is what's it? Why? Why won't to
get that? Why in there? Our our kyaban is now

(25:10):
the the head of the board of directors of this company. So? Um.
In pop culture, yakuza is huge in the that is
a huge. Yeah, I think there was an age. It's weird,
it's huge, it's crazy. You need my missing wise, I
guess so that's what happened. Um, huge on the small
and big screen. Like if you think mafia movies are

(25:30):
big here and nothing like the yakuza, right, and they're
very much idealized over there, like even more so than
we we do the Italian mafia here in our movies. Yea. Um.
I looked up lists of the best ones, and it's
sort of you know, obviously, if you're doing opinion list
like that, it's gonna arrange. But when I saw consistently

(25:51):
listed is like, the best is a five part series
called Battles Without Honor and Humanity, And I want to
check this out. It's supposed to be amazing. I'm writing
it that they compared it to the Godfather trilogy. Um,
I imagine they mean one and two only unless the
third one of this one started the director's daughter who

(26:11):
was a lousy actor and Andy Garcia but happened to
be a great director. Yeah, yeah, she's pretty good. Um
Andy Garcia, I liked the Yeah, I know, it's just
it's weird to see him in the Yeah, I agreed. Uh,
what what's another one? Um, well, that's that's the one
I had at number one. So I didn't like list
them all out because everyone had their own opinion. I'm

(26:32):
gonna search some one out. As far as the West Goest,
Black Rain, that was a good yakuza movie, Okay, I
was trying to think of one of my first thought,
like an idiot was big trouble in Middle China, and
then wait a minute, what's wrong with this picture? But um,
and I couldn't think of any accusa black Rain of course. Yeah,
that's the only one I can think of, unless if

(26:52):
you suspect as I do, that Mr Nakatomi was involved
in the Ya Kazan Die Hard. But that's kind of
like a sub sub sub plot, a side bet if
you will. Yeah, I just remember, I don't remember much
about black Man. I just remember lots of motorcycles, that
was pretty much it. And raining, it was raining black Um.

(27:13):
So I guess you already mentioned Kazu h. I know
it's hard, isn't it. He's not even my favorite though,
and neither is Fumiko Yoshio Kodama. And I guess we're
just touching on the fact that they do get involved
in politics a little bit. Well, this guy got involved
in politics a lot. Um. He was a war criminal

(27:35):
during World War Two. He was dealing with China and
Um was imprisoned, and then after the war, um the
occupying American forces freedom Because I guess if you were
an enemy of the Japanese state, you were an ally
to the US, and he actually kind of proved to
be an ally. He made contacts with the CIA and
deals with them, and basically consolidated power using the CIA

(27:58):
and the occupying military. Not too bad. And he had
made most of his connections in prison, right Yeah. But
I think also he had a pretty extensive smuggling network
um to basically get materials from China to Japan to
Selim a grossly inflated prices um. And if you haven't
a smuggling network, you have pretty much by proxy and

(28:19):
espionage network. So this guy had like his own little
intelligence military wow, going under his wing. Yeah. And like
al Capone, he was finally brought up on like financial
uh charges, but died I think right before he uh yeah,
before he could stay draw right, But before he died,
he had a lot of power and a lot of
political influence, and he used to as a right wing

(28:42):
nationalist um. And apparently the Yakuza goes through bouts or
periods of certain clans are known to be very nationalistic um,
which is kind of weird because that flies in the
face of like Korean membership. But I wonder if some
clans like don't have Korean members the nationalist ones. Yeah,
which is weird. Um so Japan these days, Uh, they

(29:04):
say their tolerance is pretty low. Um. In the nine
they passed Um. What remember we talked about the Rico
Law in the UM. I guess it was the Mafia
podcast And basically it beefed up a lot of the
penalties um for crimes conducted as yakuza. Um you know,
more jail time that kind of thing. Well, one of
the hallmarks of the Rico Act is the higher ups

(29:26):
can be held accountable for the crimes canoe the guys
further down the ladder. And apparently Japan has that similar
clause or statute. So I guess the various oh ya
bon would be responsible for whatever the underlings did, for
whatever the kobun did. Yes, very nice, um. But apparently

(29:47):
that act worked in a way and didn't work in
a way because uh, some say it caused some of
the clans to restructure and move into different areas where
they overlapped with other clans for the first time, caused
some turf wars, more bloodshed and um. So it made
it harder for police to like, you know, get good
information because all of a sudden, it was kind of

(30:08):
thrown into turmoil, and apparently it's had very little effect
on their income because I think like two thousand four,
Yakuza as a whole made an estimated like thirteen billion
dollars in revenue according to Japan Times. It's a lot. Again,
that's a it's uh, let's see. I think it's a
trillion and a half youn Wow, that's more than a

(30:30):
fistful Uh, very nice, well, Clan Eastwood reference. That was
a Jerry Zucker fistful of yun from Kentucky priv movie.
Oh that's right, well, which was a cleaning east Wood reference. Okay, Um,
Clin Easwood and his invisible obamatre. Man, Yeah, I guess

(30:50):
there's really nothing you can say than politics is getting
pretty surreal here in the US. His performance are it is? Uh,
and I guess we need and wrap up with um
the two twos that they wear very interesting stuff. Man,
have you seen this? I have their usually full body
like multi colors sitting here, Torso, but I saw nakedness,

(31:12):
like every square inch covered? Really did you? Or you know?
They showed people from the rear at least. Yeah, we're
in the diapers we'll know these people. They were just
totally naked, bare bottom. Do you see these guys? Yeah. Um,
when I was in Japan with you me, Um, they
have little baths and one of the rules of the
baths it's like, if you have tattoos, you can't come

(31:34):
in because they don't. I was a little worried, but
I think they figured that since I was obviously American
and I just have like one to maybe. Um. They
they were like, I think you're okay to maybe I
look like, you don't know how many tattoos, but the
if you if you have tattoos, they can't ask you
to leave. And the whole reasons they don't want trouble. Sure,

(31:56):
it's not like the professional wrestling venues where you just
know that it's yakuza owned and controlled. Yeah. I don't
think we mentioned that. That's one of the sectors of
legitimate business that Yuckus often get involved in his pro wrestling.
Pro wrestling, m got anything else on that, Nope, alright,
that's Yakuza. Ever since I was a kid, I always
wanted to be a yakuza guy. If you want to

(32:24):
learn more about yakuza and see some of these tattoo
photos that Chuck's talking about. And this may be the
only article on the site that has a photo of
Jet Lee? Is he in there? What does it say?
What's the caption Jet Lee as rogue in the film War,
which focuses on Asian organized crime. Interesting and there's one
heck of a caption. If you want to see that

(32:46):
caption for yourself, you can type the word yakuza y
a k u z a in the handy search bar
how stuff works dot com. Uh. And since I said
handy search bar, you know what time it is for reels.
It's listening to mal um Josh. I'm gonna call this
uh video blog. I'm trying to plug but I don't

(33:08):
have the name of it. Oh well, that's rough. But
it's from the past, and I like, you know, hey,
stuff you should know team. I've tagged along with you
through four years worth of s Y s K, but
have not yet caught up to the most current editions.
I'm writing you from the dawn of two thousand eleven.
Whoa is this just an old email? Then new um.

(33:31):
In the past, I've seen the rise and fall of
Hiku Theater appropriately celebrated when Josh quit smoking. Yeah, which
is it's been a while now to Plus, I don't
even remember smokey Josh. Now I know it's nice. Yeah,
it's like a whole different thing. Now I'm like judgmental
at other smoker, Josh, as it should be. Uh. And
I've wondered what the W stands for in Charles W.

(33:52):
Chucker's Chuck Bryant. More recently, Chuck has periodically replaced listener
mail with the relatively new Facebook questions. But he points
out that again and he's behind the times a bit
that's been around. Jerry is as enigmatic as ever, having
never actually spoken on air, not true. And Josh has
run a commendable, yet untimely i'm sorry, ultimately failed campaign

(34:16):
at abolishing Handy from the Handy search bar. Yeah. I
just kind of gave into that that was a phase.
But perhaps the Josh, Chuck and Jerry I write too
now are quite different. I won't know until I've caught
it to the present or future, depending on whether you're
reading this from your perspective or mind. Very different. We're aged, yes,
we are. A beard has gotten noticeably grayer. I'm sagging

(34:36):
I needed to write you now instead of waiting until
I caught up. Though, because I've started a video blog,
I need to give credit where credit is due. I
feel like I've gotten to know the gang fairly well
some with us over the course of two fifty podcasts. Uh.
It is this kind of relationship that I'm hoping to
build with my audience two podcasts. He's right behind he'up
on Um. You've been an inspiration for me, and I

(34:59):
hope to form the same kind of connection with an
audience through my video blog or vlog or vlog. More importantly,
I need to thank you guys for all you do
providing something that is real, entertaining, informative, and that has
brought me back for all these episodes. So thank you
for the inspiration. You're a fan for the past, present, future.
Nate bellpof and I tried to plug Nate's vlog, but

(35:19):
he didn't mention it to Nate first rule of thumb
is two pass along the name of your blog when
writing people that can get the name of this isn't
fight Club. I don't even try to look it up
and I couldn't find it. So Nate, if you want
to write in, we'll post on Facebook. Yes and we
leave the tweet it agreed. Okay, And speaking of Facebook
and Twitter, you can join us on Facebook and Facebook

(35:40):
dot com slash stuff you should know. You can join
us on Twitter. Our handle is the very clumsy s
y s K Podcast all one word. You'll never find
it if you're just searching for us, but it's s
y s K podcast. You can also send us an
email to Stuff Podcast at discovery com. For more on

(36:07):
this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff
works dot com h