Lost Decades And Joints, And The Hard G In Hagiography

Early on in David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro's Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld the authors make it clear that there's so much more to the Japanese mafia than boffo all-body tattoos and clipped digits, which is fine — I'm sure that's the case — but isn't it the most interesting thing about the Japanese mafia? And since that's probably true, when writing a book about the Yakuza, it's going to take a lot to get people to disinterest themselves in that rich detail about Japanese underworld life.

It's a tall order made that much taller by the academic nature of the text. Look, no one would have begrudged them a full-color glossy picture insert spread in the middle of the book there (some consider such spreads a joy in and of themselves), even for an academic book. It pulls readers in. It breaks things up a bit. There's the opportunity for a multi-media tie-in. But no, the authors stick to the serious, sober discussion of the continuing scourge of the Japanese underworld.

And even though the book is dense, and the font frustratingly diminutive, and the leading dishearteningly un-leaded, there are still many opportunities therein to have your mind blown, chopped pinkies or no.

For example, sadly, most societies seem to frown on organized crime, and their ranks are pushed underground, in the so-called "underworld," that liminal space reserved for devilry, soil-dwelling insects and Kate Beckinsale. Not so in Japan, where the Yakuza is surprisingly above-board, advertising their headquarters, handing out business cards and even holding press conferences. It's a cultural acceptance that, like seemingly so many things about Japan, outsiders can't quite figure out. And which also in part informs the reader why the definitive book about the Japanese underworld had to be written by American journalists.

The other great thing about the Yazuka is their hagiography. By selling drugs, trafficking in sex slaves and generally swinging their dicks around, are modern day Yakuza a generally destabilizing influence on society? Sure. But their origin story is perfect: during the Meiji era gangs of middle-class heroes protected the populace from out-of-work Samurais who acquitted themselves poorly by terrorizing villages with their mayhem, swords and top-pate ponytails. According to Yakuza lore, these "chivalrous commoners" were the forbears of the modern Yakuza. This self-concept became part of the Yakuza code, and helped inform the Yakuza commitment to always remain courteous to civilians, which, as mentioned above, may or may not run counter to the nasty byproducts of Yakuza business (addiction, sex slavery, human trafficking, etc.).

Speaking of vice, what is it about organized crime that always seems to default to gambling, prostitution and drugs? Aren't there other business opportunities for gangsters? Oh, right — banking.

I don't think I was misreading — it's possible, but I was pretty lucid when I read this part — but there seemed to be an awesome buried lede in the "Collapsing Bubble" chapter whereby a lot of the shitty loans that sank the economy in 1990-91 and led to Japan's Lost Decade (or two) went, or basically went, or kind of a lot went to the — fucking! — Yakuza for shit like golf courses nowhere in particular. Which is awesome, and which is something that I don't think Paul Krugman really ever touched on.

And then there's the Yakuza film genre, which was similarly infiltrated by the Yakuza. I don't know if it's as weird as the North Korean film industry, but it seems pretty over the top. Incidentally, I think the one dude is missing a joint at 1:20:

Speaking of finger cutting, which is mentioned in Yakuza but not perseverated on, who the fuck came up with cutting someone's finger anyway? Do these people not type? Or if they do, do they not type semi-colons, Ps, apostrophes or quotes? No paragraph breaks? Is the dirty little secret of Yakuza literature (which of course exists) that it rolls along without carriage returns, sort of like the last fifty pages of Ulysses?

Of course we know the answer to where it came from: just like every other fool ridiculous "ritual" or "tradition," it comes from some psychotic kid whose whole reason for being in the world is to come up with stupid shit to do with one's body. The same kid in summer camp who contorted his scrotum for the entirety of Spruce cabin graduated to the insane blood brother pact, and then went on to haze underclassmen with vodka and Sharpies. From there it's not that large a leap to cutting off the first joint of your pinkie.

I just want to know, Who? Who came up with this? And why pinkie? Is the pinkie the least necessary of all the fingers? What about the ring finger? Maybe the middle finger, like Rahm Emanuel (did you know that he was only being stubborn about it?)? The whole thing is ridiculous. After all, the thing you have to remember about ritual mutilation is that it has to mean something; get it right, or not at all.

What Richard Linklater Hath Wrought

There's a point in Meg Jay, Ph.D's The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter–And How To Make The Most Of Them Now where the clinical psychologist author is counseling a patient (or a composite type of "patient") about the fact that she needs to consider her biological clock:

"Can you get married and have a baby now?"

"No! Dr. Jay! I'm not even in a relationship!"

And then it hits you: this author shares the same name as a certain Hall of Fame player from the 70s and 80s who combined the ability to glide through the air with an almost artistic dunking style. Dude, if I had the last name "Jay" and some sort of doctorate degree — even a lousy juris doctor or doctor of education — I'd be using that title all the goddamn day. I can't believe it wasn't until the epilogue that I realized the import of her last name and title.

As you might take away from the subtitle, Decade is self-help for twentysomethings — for their work life, relationship sphere and a third category, which mostly deals with hectoring women not to wait too long to have children.

I'm being glib about that last part, but it's something you return to over the course of the book. At least as it relates to work — and I think you can make a case that meaningful work lays the groundwork for the self-discovery that happens later — I don't think the liberal arts curriculum of high schools serves children well. Or, more accurately, children won't learn anything about their future career/employment choices in this kind of curriculum.

It's not that the liberal arts curriculum is a bad system but rather that it doesn't do much to focus a child. Which is obviously the point of a comprehensive education. I think there's something important about every child receiving the same educational background — it also fits into the democratic ideal of equality of opportunity — but the other component of preparing a kid to participate in the economy is missing. And not for nothing, but "we" don't track kids. "We" don't prescribe careers for kids at age 14 or 15. "We" don't want us doing that.

So given that normal high schools don't prepare kids well, it should fall on the parents or wider community, whatever that may be, to pick up the slack. You passed pre-calc? Great. What are you thinking about for after you graduate? I don't know if it's not cool or backward looking or counterproductive, but we're real good at not telling children what they can or can't do. There were a lot of double negatives in there, which is part of the problem: If the schools aren't equipped to advise children responsibly for a career or future then parents and whoever else around need to focus their attention.

Which is a long, multi-paragraphical way of saying that it's sad and weird that Dr. Jay's Decade is the closest thing younguns have to good advice.

Most of the advice is relatively intuitive: bust ass and challenge yourself wherever possible; prioritize not being a weirdo who can't meet people or take advantage of connections; key in on your passions and figure out ways to make that lucrative (or at least paying); don't shack up with idiots; etc., etc.

The crazy thing is that we've warped things to the point where it's not intuitive. And parents and people, for whatever reason, don't lay down the hammer like I assume people once did. In theory, it's a good thing that kids have to puzzle out the world for themselves, but in a world where adolescence bleeds into one's twenties and beyond, it's asking a lot to expect children to figure it out for themselves. That doesn't let people off the hook, but just contextualizes the difficulties somewhat.

Dr. Jay's book is filled with composite characters — as a health care professional she's obligated to protect identities — so it's hard to differentiate straw men (and women) from real-life people, but a lot of the kids in the book just make you want to throttle them — and I say this as someone who somehow made it through his twenties not completely moronically, mostly accidentally, and tremendously fortunately. That said, there's a point you get to when you realize that she's talking about upper middle class children. She can't exactly say that, and there's no reason not to just understand that and move on, but at some point, it's kind of glaring and uncomfortable. No question, it's important to take advantage of any connections, no matter how weak, to get a foot in the door, but when you take half a second to ponder the inequities at work and the deficiency of a supposedly meritocratic system, it's hard to feel bad for these people.

So many of the composites circle back to the same outward symptoms of underemployment and goofing. It reminds me of Richard Linklater's Slacker, except that I'm surprised that kids can fumble along for years as bartenders or whatnot, especially with student debt and this or that. Austin in the late 1980s or early 1990s was probably a really cheap place to live. In this era of unpaid internships and six-figure college debt, it seems stressful and unwise.

That's not to say this all isn't really good, important advice — not at all — but rather we've lost something if parents and the people closest to children aren't more explicit about what works and what doesn't. Modeling works, but it might take a while, and kids don't have that long when they go from dozing through high school civics to making meaningful choices about their futures.

The final parts of The Defining alight on the difficulties of family planning when you're still dating into your late 30s. At one point Dr. Jay writes, "There is something profoundly sad about seeing an eighty-year-old grandmother come to the hospital to meet a grandchild. It is crushing to realize there won't be many sunny days at the lake with Grandpa or holidays spent in Grandma's loving presence." Jeez, laying on a bit thick? Of course, she's right — but no one talks like this . . . or maybe they should? Which is worse, profound sadness or a twentysomething's hurt butt? Elsewhere, she recruits a composite with a near-near-death experience to note how he was wasting his goddamn life before he had children. But does George Clooney agree?

Defining is intended for twentysomethings, but it's pretty entertaining for older folks. It's good to hear how you turned out, and why, but it's also good background to scare the fuck out of your kids, friends' kids, and various passersby. And then of course to see how you either fit the descriptions exactly or were lucky as all get out not to get bogged down.

When New Jersey Was The World

Back in 2007 we were lucky enough to get to travel to India. Much of India is astonishing: beautiful, chaotic, rich, historical, exotic and a bunch of other florid adjectives that don't immediately come to mind. And then there's the abject poverty that you come across all too often and in really unexpected places. For me, the strangest sight were the shanty towns under the freeway interchanges. Our driver pointed out that they were cooking with dung. When we returned and landed at Newark, we took the shuttle to Midtown and my first thought on the ride back was how clean and well managed the Meadowlands looked.

It's a small thing to think for a fleeting couple of seconds what it's like to live underneath a highway overpass and cook with dung. Then and now I couldn't square it except to say that as a citizen of the world, and a participant in a global economy, that it was important to see it firsthand.

Although I was sincere about this, and believed in what I was saying, the whole response is still pretty hollow; I don't know what I gleaned from zooming over a highway encampment, except that I've never forgotten that image. And there's not much you can "do" about any of it except to notice it: maybe it's not the worst thing to at least talk about stuff like that, so at least more people know about . . . people living under a freeway, I guess? Anyway, you travel through this world for a few weeks and it's eye opening. Then you go back home and reevaluate the New Jersey Turnpike. Traveling can be funny like that.

Goober traveled to India once, too, with work, and they stayed in one of the fancy hotels near the airport in Mumbai. Each morning he'd open his shades and see these shantytowns right by the airport. It was a sight, I gather, he didn't soon forget.

Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity profiles the intertwined lives of several people in one of the shantytown slums by the airport. It's an amazing document for many reasons. For one, it's an astonishing monograph of this place and time; she makes it clear that we shouldn't draw too many conclusions from this one slum, but at the same time it's hard not to see the systemic failures of a hyper-corrupt society.

Beautiful Forevers chronicles life in Annawadi, first settled in 1991 by migrant workers building Mumbai's international airport. Sanitation and housing standards in India are sketchy enough, so you can imagine what a squat by a marsh near the airport must be like. The citizens mostly subsist by picking trash and selling what's useful: cans, bottles, scrap metal, etc. It's a horrible existence, except for the fact that many of them still have faith in their goals and hope about the future; that's the power of the global economy. They often get fucked by the global economy, as when the 2008 downturn obliterated the market for scrap metal. This is a place where children are either breastfed or work. Harsh, brutish, and all that entails.

For me, however, the worst, most dispiriting moments in Behind are when the bureaucrats wield their power to their own corrupt ends. And not in a Russian traffic cop kind of way but rather moments when a cop or a social worker extorts a trash-picking, slum-dwelling, dirt-sleeping squatter for their freedom. It's one thing to be corrupt with people of means but quite another to fuck over those beneath you. I'm not sure what worldview makes this a reasonable, accepted proposition, but whatever is going on in this society is so mind-blowing and depressing that you can't even conceive of it.

Now, that said, there's something very convenient about me — person of privilege who gets to roam the New Jersey Turnpike, that sparkling beacon of efficiency and order, at will — taking out all of my upset on a couple of lowly corrupt civil servants. You kick the dog you have, not the dog you might want or wish to have at a later time. But now that said, there's something agonizing about routine, everyday corruption: it's the single worst societal ill, because it's such an abrogation of the social contract.

In Forevers, the level of corruption is so extreme and so craven, that it's almost a bad example to use, except that I'm sure this happens all the time, or at least there's no guarantee that this is extraordinary. Abdul, the hard-working minority Muslim trash middleman who somehow gets accused of driving a psychotic woman to kill herself, is pressured by a social worker court-something-or-other to pay her off to change the woman's police report. They refuse and he goes to jail, but is saved from the adult justice system by a corrupt doctor, who offers to confirm his "age" for a fee. It's ruthless and unrelenting and supremely depressing.

Part of what feels good about complaining and griping is that the moral right is on your side. When society breaks down such that you can't gripe about routine transgressions of the social contract — an overly zealous parking agent, a poor waiter, etc. — it makes you feel small. It should really go with out saying but there's a compelling irony in using unimportant things to protect yourself from feeling small. That's what it's all about, though, right?

At some point reading the Beautiful you wonder how it is that this well-spoken American lady with such a soft, welcoming name is uncovering this gritty slice of Mumbai. The reveal comes in the Author's Note, when you find out that she actually went there and interviewed, observed and reported, day after day for more than three years. Three years. Let that sink in like your foot in a sewage-filled swamp by the airport: three years. It's a feat of reporting that I don't think many can touch. I'm Googling to see if Jacob Riis even went this far (it's unclear to me, after a minute or two of looking). On the one hand, it's like, thank you, Katherine Boo, you illuminated this faraway world that I wondered about. On the other hand, you're like, fuckin' a, seriously? You did what? And for how long? Pretty intense. And now I want Ben Mamafreaking Affleck to star in the optioned screen adaptation . . . oh, am I getting ahead of myselves? Apologies.