You aren't bio-ified here yet so a lot of shit's up in the wind, but I figured I'd try and gel some things into place. Blame it on my watching Samurai Champloo again.
Mugen kicks ass, Be Tee Dubs.
How did the Yakuza show up, anyway? There's, like, thirty-six thousand different interpretations and dates as to when this whole boryokudan shit started. What's your take on it?
To Hannibal
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IamLEAM1983
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IamLEAM1983
- Site Admin
- Posts: 3710
- Joined: Tue Jan 08, 2013 4:54 am
- Location: Quebec, Canada
As Hannibal
"Eh. You could ask Holden, Wallace, ol' Yaks if he's still around - they'd all tell you the same basic stuff.
You'll always hear the same stuff about how the Yakuza came down from self-sufficient gamblers who decided to, um, unionize, more or less. Can't pay up your losses at the dice? Then mister Bookie had himself a coupla Pax Tokugawa-Era goons looking to cut you down to size. Those pro gamblers would've moved on to bigger pastures and smelled bigger fish - and I did see it happen once or twice. S'kinda surreal, really. Saw one guy go from being a scrawny nobody with a few coins to his name to a still-scrawny Wilson Fisk wannabe in tabi shoes, flanked with three ronin on either side. Then there's the Doorman Hypothesis, seeing as Yaku za basically refers to the guy who serves as the pro gambler's lookout. As soon as he'd spot the authorities, everyone would scram. My guess is the lookout got wise in a few instances and started demanding bigger cuts of the profits, citing his service as being essential...
Then, there's the cold, hard, ruthless fuckin' truth. What I saw - well, kinda, hehe - and what every slant born somewhere before Mutsuhito Meiji started Westernizing shit saw.
See, it's kinda hard to earn a living when your tools are outlawed, when your boss lost his title and when his merry band of rich sociopaths were all executed as traitors to the new Shogunate. You can't fight, can't find bodyguard work - you can't even kick booze hounds out of a fuckin' brothel, 'cause your reputation precedes you. Now, think about what you hear about snipers, how they're trained to kill, to expect the act of putting a bullet into a guy's head as being some sort of release. They want it, kid - they need it. No kill means no release. No release means tension and tension?
Take it from me, tension can drive a man nuts. So the nutsos, what do they do? Try Grand Theft Rice Basket, was a real popular game in the tail of my first stint in Japan! That and, well, they'd generally go back to being sick fucks who'd cut the limbs off blind men and peasants just to test out their new pointy stick. Nobody could oppose them before, nobody would oppose them now - if they ran fast enough.
So picture a few of the less pent-up idiots. They have skills, they have brains. What comes next? A friendly old game of Gimme half your month's earnings or I'ma cut your daughter open like an overripe melon.
They still do the same today, just with mortgage payments and business loans instead of swords. Oh, and the idiots ink themselves 'til their liver fails. Darwinism at its finest, folks!"
You'll always hear the same stuff about how the Yakuza came down from self-sufficient gamblers who decided to, um, unionize, more or less. Can't pay up your losses at the dice? Then mister Bookie had himself a coupla Pax Tokugawa-Era goons looking to cut you down to size. Those pro gamblers would've moved on to bigger pastures and smelled bigger fish - and I did see it happen once or twice. S'kinda surreal, really. Saw one guy go from being a scrawny nobody with a few coins to his name to a still-scrawny Wilson Fisk wannabe in tabi shoes, flanked with three ronin on either side. Then there's the Doorman Hypothesis, seeing as Yaku za basically refers to the guy who serves as the pro gambler's lookout. As soon as he'd spot the authorities, everyone would scram. My guess is the lookout got wise in a few instances and started demanding bigger cuts of the profits, citing his service as being essential...
Then, there's the cold, hard, ruthless fuckin' truth. What I saw - well, kinda, hehe - and what every slant born somewhere before Mutsuhito Meiji started Westernizing shit saw.
See, it's kinda hard to earn a living when your tools are outlawed, when your boss lost his title and when his merry band of rich sociopaths were all executed as traitors to the new Shogunate. You can't fight, can't find bodyguard work - you can't even kick booze hounds out of a fuckin' brothel, 'cause your reputation precedes you. Now, think about what you hear about snipers, how they're trained to kill, to expect the act of putting a bullet into a guy's head as being some sort of release. They want it, kid - they need it. No kill means no release. No release means tension and tension?
Take it from me, tension can drive a man nuts. So the nutsos, what do they do? Try Grand Theft Rice Basket, was a real popular game in the tail of my first stint in Japan! That and, well, they'd generally go back to being sick fucks who'd cut the limbs off blind men and peasants just to test out their new pointy stick. Nobody could oppose them before, nobody would oppose them now - if they ran fast enough.
So picture a few of the less pent-up idiots. They have skills, they have brains. What comes next? A friendly old game of Gimme half your month's earnings or I'ma cut your daughter open like an overripe melon.
They still do the same today, just with mortgage payments and business loans instead of swords. Oh, and the idiots ink themselves 'til their liver fails. Darwinism at its finest, folks!"