Yakuza

The yakuza (ヤ ク ザ) is the equivalent of organized crime; It is a Japanese mafia dating from the seventeenth century. The origin of the word is not known exactly, but it is said to come from a card game called Hanafuda, very famous among bakuto, in which the worst hand consists of an 8 (already), a 9 (ku) and a 3 (za). The modern Yakuza has extended its activities to banking and political corruption. This mafia in 2009, the last year of the record, had an estimated 87,900 members in Japan.1