Hollywood has long fetishized Japanese gangsters, with their full-body tattoos, missing pinkies and harems of buxom groupies. Ever since Sydney Pollack's "The Yakuza" in 1974, the colorful mafiosi have provided regular fodder for directors including Ridley Scott and Quentin Tarantino.
Curiously, studios are again abuzz with a flurry of Japanese mob projects. Warner Bros. is developing "The Outsider," about an American prisoner of war who joins the yakuza after World War II. Robert Whiting's 1999 book "Tokyo Underworld," which has gotten nibbles from Martin Scorsese, is being made into a U.S. cable-television series. Perhaps most timely of all, Jake Adelstein's 2010 memoir, "Tokyo Vice," is coming to the big screen, starring Daniel Radcliffe of "Harry Potter" fame.
Adelstein's life story as a crusading Tokyo reporter who exposed the yakuza's infiltration of Japan's economy has remarkable echoes in current events. Banking giants such as Mizuho Financial Group Inc. are getting busted for making loans to yakuza-linked figures, amid a broadening investigation. It's long past time Japan stamped out the well-connected gangs Adelstein likens to "Goldman Sachs with guns." Their eradication, in fact, should be an important part of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's drive to increase competitiveness.