In Oicho-Kabu, a Japanese card game similar to Blackjack, the highest score you can receive before going "bust" is 19. In Japanese, the word "Yakuza" is actually three numerals--ya (8), ku (9), and za (3)--which add up to 20, meaning a worthless card hand. The Yakuza are Japanese society's worthless ones: the misfits, paupers, and criminals with no hope of ever fitting in, who join a "family" of other worthless ones and proceed to TATTOO THEIR ENTIRE LITTLE YELLOW BODIES as a stark emblem of their difference.

These cats are hardcore. When a Yakuza member has disobeyed or displeased his Kumicho (the Yakuza's equivalent of an Italian Don), he is required to slice off one of his fingertips and send it to Kumicho as an apology. He is commanded to do this every time he offends him. Jerking off becomes really difficult after a few offenses.

The Yakuza arose in the early 1600s as a reaction to the Hun-like pillaging of Japanese towns by restless, unemployed Samurai. The Yakuza were townsmen who provided protection...at a price, of course.

More than perhaps any other Mafia, the Yakuza are folk heroes within their home country. They have traditionally been patriotic to the point of bald fascism. They seem to operate smoothly with Japan's government and business sectors. Their strength ballooned in Japan's post-WWII social morass when forced rationing by American occupational troops gave birth to a giant black market. Although their membership peaked in the early 1960s, Japan, with less than half of America's population, still hosts more than three times as many organized crime members as the US. Some say that the Yakuza are as powerful as the Italians, if not more so.

Summary: A REAL cool Mafia, but they're really short.

Someone once summarized the difference between La Cosa Nostra and the Russian Mafiya: Piss off an Italian, and he'll kill you. Piss off a Russian, and he'll kill you and your entire family. The Red Mafia is known for its heavy-handed shakedown tactics and its brutal torture/
mutilation murders of those who've crossed them or refused to pay tribute.

The latter-day Russian mafioso grew out of the traditional hardcore Russian felon, or vor, who tattooed his kneecaps to show he'd bow to
no man, who loyally followed a Thieves' Code which, if broken, prescribed death for the offender.

Russian communism engendered a huge black market upon which the Red Mafia parasitically blossomed. Organized crime feasted upon the dying Soviet Union's economy like ants on a piece of birthday cake. Aided by official corruption, the Russian Mafiya is thought by many to have become the world's richest and most powerful organized crime group, currently operating in fifty countries. It has been estimated by Moscow's police chief that 95% of his own officers receive Russian Mafia bribes. Others have stated that roughly four of every five businesses in Moscow are forced to pay between ten and twenty percent of their income to the Mafiya. Some estimate that a full quarter of Russia's Gross National Product is gobbled up by the Mafiya's illegal activities.

The Mafiya's leader, Semion Mogilevich, has a degree in economics and has steered his minions toward lucrative schemes such as high-tech computer hacking and credit-card fraud. There are loud murmurs that the Red Mafia also traffics in all those stray biological, chemical, and NUCLEAR weapons left scattered about after the East Bloc fell apart.

All in all, it's a pretty cool fucking Mafia!

Southern peckerwood drug-runners and extortionists who, from 1968 to 1978, whacked more than FIVE TIMES as many victims as La Cosa Nostra did during the same period, dispassionately dumping
bodies throughout Dixie's forests and swamps. Legendary Tennessee Sheriff Buford "Walking Tall" Pusser dedicated his life to fighting the Dixie Mafia. Certain anti-government theorists claim that Bill Clinton was somehow entangled with them.

A flock of "alienated" Colorado Goth kids, two of whom in 1998 smoked over a dozen high-school classmates in a violent eruption of anti-jock rage, giving hope to nerds and misfits everywhere.

OY, votta Mafia dis is! Primarily the brainchild of Meyer Lansky, the silently powerful Jewish Mafia (aka Kosher Mafia) should be commended for being able to keep itself out of the news better than the Eye-talians do. In addition to Daddy Lansky, the Kosher Mafia boasted other famous shtarke gangsters such as Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel (pictured at right), Dutch Schultz, and Mickey Cohen. Bugsy Siegel was a murderous psychopath credited with founding Las Vegas and spawning a silly Warren Beatty movie. Jewish mafioso Arnold Rothstein fixed the 1919 World Series, resulting in the infamous Black Sox Scandal. Note: Some anti-Semites also refer to the modern Russian Mafia, since its ranks are said to be largely
composed of Russian Jews, as the "Jewish Mafia."