Community Outreach: Yakuza Style

Japan's largest Yakuza group Yamaguchi-gumi have launched a website in an effort to improve its image with Japan's public. 

What the hell! Hello I'm from local crime syndicate and I'm here to help.  Help relieve you of all your financial wealth.  It will all be done with a smile I'm sure.

 Japan's biggest organised crime syndicate has launched its own website, complete with a corporate song and a strong anti-drugs message, as the yakuza looks to turn around its outdated image and falling membership.

The clunky-sounding Banish Drugs and Purify the Nation League website is an offering from the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest yakuza grouping.

It includes shaky footage of members making their new year pilgrimage to a shrine. The soundtrack is a traditional folk-style song with lyrics extolling the virtues of the "Ninkyo" spirit – an ideal of masculinity that battles injustice and helps the weak.

"Nothing but Ninkyo, that is the man's way of life," say the lyrics. "The way of duty and compassion, bearing the ordeal for our dream."

Another video shows men with crew cuts pounding sticky rice for a new year festival, and there are galleries of pictures showcasing the cleanup work members did in the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami and the 1996 Kobe earthquake.

Yakuza and its anti drug message how quaint.  All the while they busy selling the drugs they're supposedly imploring you from taking.  They also helped with the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami by running illegal employment agencies and ripping off workers wages.