The history of secret societies has long been an area that has been the preserve of the sensationalist press. This is all the more strange because this phenomenon interweaves the lives of many peoples and countries with thousands of invisible threads. Secret societies have existed in all times and in all nations and in many different forms. They can be found in the tribal communities of ancient times, in the Middle Ages and even in modern times. Each such society or organisation usually has its big and little secrets. Ritual rituals and signs or omens have a particularly important place in their workings, as this is the only way to keep their activities secret.
It has always been the case that there have usually been several different secret societies in a country, although often with similar objectives. In the ancient world, there were the famous secret societies of the Egyptian and Indian priests, the Jewish Essenes, the Celtic Druids; in the Middle Ages, the Templars, the Assassins of the “Old Man of the Mountain”, and in more recent times, the Italian Carbonari, the anarchists and Bolsheviks of Tsarist Russia, the Irish Fenians and the Orangemen. They also include ritual fraternities such as the Freemasons and criminal organisations such as the Sicilian Mafia and the American Cosa Nostra.
A brief overview shows how different the objectives of these organisations were and how different the situations in which people were willing to join them were. Perhaps the only important question is why they acted the way they did. Perhaps because they were attracted by their secrecy? Or because they were interested in their goals? Were they perhaps driven into the unknown by the fact that they were forced to join such a society?
Some of these companies had or have many members, but restrict entry and only accept new members on an exceptional basis. For example, the Ku Klux Klan does not accept Jews, Catholics or foreigners into its ranks. One of the ways in which secret societies try to maintain the loyalty of their members is by referring to their legendary origins. For example, among the many theories about the origins of Freemasons, there are those that refer to the ancient Greek mysteries, while some theories also mention pre-Christian Roman craft associations, medieval guilds and the English royal dynasty of the Stuarts.
Similar motifs can also be traced in the ritual practices of some secret societies. For example, the crucifixion of Christ was the subject of the initiation ceremony of the third degree of Carbonari, and the initiation ceremony of the “Old Order of Foresters” was based on the story of Robin Hood. However, secret societies were not confined to the white man’s habitat. One need only think of the Mau-Mau movement in Kenya, which fought against the English in the 1950s. Last but not least, there are the numerous Chinese secret societies, whose origins and existence are associated with many mysteries. However, it is also possible to unravel these, and so the existence of Chinese secret societies seems less mysterious than it really is, and above all more understandable.
On 8 October 1813, around midday, a handful of men armed with swords and knives burst through the eastern gate of the Imperial Palace in Beijing. Before the guards could sound the alarm, an even larger group of armed men burst into the Forbidden City from the other side. Chest-to-chest fighting broke out, with several hundred Imperial Guard soldiers losing their lives. The rebellion was put down only in the evening. But this was only the peak of the rebellion, for a few days before, fighting had broken out around Beijing and soon spread to the whole north of the country. It took a month before the regular army managed to quell them. More than 70 000 rebels fell, their leaders belonging to a secret sect called the Eight Diagrams. But this was only one fragment of a wide range of disturbances caused by secret societies in China.
The origins of secret societies go far back in Chinese history, in fact to the Han Dynasty (207 BC to 263 AD), when the Emperor had 800 mandarins killed on the mere suspicion of opposing his policies. To protect themselves from similar acts, people started to set up secret societies. Their members swore to help each other and identified each other by mysterious signs and words.
Such events also form the backdrop to what might be called the historical dimension of Chinese secret societies. It is with this background in mind that the reaction of the current Chinese authorities to the Falun Gong movement must be understood, although not condoned, because in the history of Communist China, this movement, which has escaped the control of the authorities, is unprecedented in its mass. In China, secret societies have been hotbeds of social unrest and political rebellion for as many as 1800 years.
In the 14th century, the secret White Lotus Society thus wiped the Mongol Yuan dynasty off the political map. The first emperor of the following Ming dynasty, himself one of the leaders of the rebellion, was the one who, after taking power, immediately issued an order banning all secret societies, aware of their pernicious influence. This ban remained in force until the beginning of the 20th century.
But it was not very successful, as the events of 1813 show, and even more so the Boxer Movement of 1900, which was not directed against the Chinese Emperor, but against the presence of foreign troops and Christian missions. In the early years of Communist rule, from 1949 onwards, the dismantling of secret societies was one of the priorities of the new authorities. A fundamental idea pervaded the philosophy of the secret societies.
For centuries, secret societies have nurtured the idea that the present world is dominated by moral decay, resulting in suffering and misery. Instead of this world, an era is supposed to dawn which will do away with natural disasters, wars and calamities caused by evil men. Although the secret societies had religious aims in the beginning, there were always enough elements in them from which an independent political dynamic could emerge. That is why the authorities persecuted all secret societies, not only those that pursued political aims. The Falun Gong movement is also seen in this light by the Chinese authorities.
Boxer uprising
Secret religious sects in China were very often transformed into political organisations, and this transformation later also marked an important stage in the development of Chinese triads such as the Red Arrow, the Little Daggers and the Yellow Words. In a period when China was increasingly subjugated by European powers, many secret societies made it their task to abandon, at least temporarily, the struggle against imperial power and concentrate on the persecution of hated foreigners. Thus, at the turn of the century, the Boxer movement emerged.
Their real name was the Fists of Righteous Harmony. The members of the Society believed in supernatural forces and in their own invulnerability. During elaborate rituals, they uttered magical phrases and twitched their limbs, followed by ecstasy, foaming at the mouth, and then fell into a trance from which they awoke convinced that they were invulnerable.
In the beginning, the Boxers attacked isolated Christian missions and wondered why no one was persecuting them for it. But after initial hesitation, the 64-year-old imperial widow who had taken over the regency in China began to support them as they fought against the intruding foreigners. As a result, her popularity among the population grew. However, after the Boxer Rebellion collapsed and Beijing was occupied by foreign troops, the imperial dynasty lost all its influence and could no longer control events in China. So, in 1911, what was bound to happen happened. The politician Dr Sun Yan Sen, with the support of the most famous secret society in China, the Triad League of Heaven and Earth, proclaimed a republic.
In July 1900, the colony of foreigners in Beijing was once again gripped by fear and terror. People were terrified by the brutal murders of some Europeans and the looting of their property. In the countryside, insurrectionary groups hostile to the foreigners, called Boxers, had taken up arms against them. As a result, more than 3 000 foreigners and their Chinese servants crowded into the diplomatic quarter in Beijing. The siege of the foreigners in Beijing and the Boxer uprising lasted 55 days, until the arrival of British, American, Russian, French and other intervention troops and the escape of the Manchurian Imperial Court.
The boxing movement first emerged in the northern coastal province of Shandong, long known as a centre of social unrest. American Christian missionaries were the first to report groups of well-trained athletic men as “boxers”, so called because they had undergone military training and were in a trance, brandishing large swords and praising the power of the gods. They were convinced that a million more “god warriors” would join them in their fight against the invading aliens.
In this province, many military-religious societies already existed in earlier years, paving the way for them to rise to the top by upholding traditional values and rejecting foreign influences. Thus, one of the leaders of the Boxer Movement was also a true traditional Chinese in his way of life. As a Red Lantern Zhu, he began his career as a travelling healer specialising in skin diseases, and became very popular because he did not ask for payment for his treatment.
Although women could not join the Boxer movement, they did have their own special units. Popular legends attributed to them the ability to fly and walk on water, and they could set fire to strangers’ houses, doing something that the male members of the Boxers could not.
The main cause of dissatisfaction was the missionary activity of foreigners, as it was permitted by agreements made with the Imperial Court. This allowed missionaries to spread the Christian faith throughout China, buying land and building churches on it. In November 1897, Boxers attacked a German mission and killed two priests, and in October 1898, a group of Boxers attacked a Christian community in the village of Liyuantun, where a Buddhist temple had been converted into a Christian church. It was also at this time that the slogan ‘Support the Emperor and drive out the foreigners’ first appeared.
Western diplomats with missions in Beijing’s special diplomatic quarter demanded protection from their governments and an international team of 435 soldiers arrived in Beijing and began preparations to defend the diplomatic quarter. On 11 June 1900, however, a German diplomat captured a boy suspected of spying for the Boxers and hanged him for no reason. In response to this unreasonable act, thousands of Boxers poured into Peking from outside the city, burning the houses of Christians and burning some of them alive. The siege of the diplomatic quarter began.
As the situation of the besiegers – 473 foreigners, 409 soldiers and 3,000 Chinese Christians – became increasingly untenable, a group of 2,000 armed soldiers and sailors led by British General Seymour marched towards Beijing to help the besieged. They were supposed to take a train from the coast to Beijing, but the line was broken, so they decided to continue on foot. This angered the imperial government. It was on the verge of preventing foreigners from entering the country, and some of the imperial troops joined the Boxers in laying siege to the diplomatic quarter. But more and more foreign troops – thought to number around 20,000 in total – began to disembark in China and infiltrate towards Beijing.
On 14 August 1900, the Diplomatic Quarter was liberated. But on their way to Beijing, foreign troops committed outrageous atrocities; killing, raping and pillaging. Beijing, Tianjin and other cities in northern China were occupied by foreign troops for more than a year.
The Boxer Rebellion itself was something unreasonable in Western terms and reinforced the view of foreign observers that the Chinese were inherently prone to clandestine activities. Chinese hatred of foreigners can already be traced back to the Chinese uprising in the First Opium War in 1842. This led to a real competition between the Western powers to see who could force the weakened Chinese empire to sign a more favourable treaty and concession, granting them special, almost colonial privileges in certain areas of the country as foreigners.
The last of these acts of blackmail was the German occupation of Tsingtau harbour. Years later, it was in this town that the boxers made their first public appearance, and it was thus possible to learn more about them. They were the first foreign-hostile movement of modern times in China, yet they had a much older tradition to draw on.
Secret societies, such as the Boxers in China, were just one of several categories of secret and semi-secret organisations that flourished in China. These could be charities, loan societies, trading companies, guild organisations, as well as family associations. For a long time, such developments were similar to those in Europe, until Europe took a major step forward with the Industrial Revolution.
China has not done so, and has stuck to its traditional social organisation. However, it is not possible to explain the functioning of some of China’s secret societies by relatively recent history alone. According to Chinese tradition, the Emperor was the sole person and absolute ruler who decided on the conduct of all executive power, legislation and the judiciary. As the ‘son of heaven’, he was inviolable and infallible. But at the same time he had to be a moral example and a symbol of justice to his people. A ruler who neglected these duties could be resisted and even deposed by the people.
The idea of the emperor’s righteousness, however, was closely linked to the structure of the universe as the Chinese understood it. Natural disasters, such as floods or celestial signs like comets, were therefore clear signs to the Chinese that the Emperor was neglecting his duties. There were also times when this was a sign of a general uprising against the Emperor.
In the 9th century, the usurper Wang Mong introduced sweeping reforms in taxation, money lending and land ownership. All this led to severe resistance from the population. A secret society called the Red Eyebrow Society, so called because of the way its members dye their eyebrows before a fight, therefore set itself the task of ousting the usurper from his throne. This secret society played an important role in the popular uprising that ended with the usurper’s murder. After the victory, however, its members began to engage in banditry and theft, so that they had to be destroyed by the regular army.
As the Hong dynasty consolidated its power, a vast bureaucratic apparatus developed, which was particularly influential in the countryside, where imperial power had traditionally been weakest. As this area was often outside the control of the central authorities, private organisations emerged which, in addition to trade, were also involved in crime and therefore had to be secret. The success of any such clandestine organisation depended heavily on the reliability of its members. Therefore, the use of rituals was only one of the guarantees of loyalty and secrecy. This was all the more important if such a ritual introduced the members of the organisation into the supernatural world.
But even Taoist and Buddhist organisations – even if they were only concerned with spreading their faith – were for a long time subject to persecution by this or that imperial government. So they too organised themselves as secret societies. All these secret societies were in constant revolt against the central authority of the Emperor, and so by the middle of the 19th century China had already had almost 100 years of political and religious revolts. All these uprisings by secret societies called the Eight Diagrams, the Nine Abodes and many others, which were active between 1786 and 1788, or the White Lotus uprisings in 1794 and the Heaven and Earth Society and others, were bloodily suppressed.
Particularly important was the White Lotus Society, which started out as a religious organisation, but soon took on political aims due to constant persecution. One of its branches, the Unity Sect, emerged even during the Japanese occupation in World War II, and spread its network across much of China. Many Chinese can thank it for saving them from Japanese suffering.
What were the Chinese triads, so well known and often described? The first triad was founded in 1674 by five monks in response to a treasonous act by Emperor Kang-Hsi. Fearing an invasion by rebels from a neighbouring country, he called on the help of 128 monks from Shaolin Monastery who were skilled in martial arts. The monks did indeed drive off the rebels within a few months, but in gratitude the Emperor, on the pretext that the monks were traitors who wanted to take his throne from him, destroyed the monastery and killed the monks. Only five monks managed to escape, and after many adventures and miraculous rescues, they later formed the Triad Society and vowed to remove the traitorous Emperor from his throne.
The Triad welcomed members into its ranks after an elaborate ceremony involving 36 types of oaths of allegiance and the drinking of a few drops of the new member’s blood together, followed by the symbolic presentation of water and fire, the “rebirth” of the candidate and his or her entry into the Triad through the triple doors. One of the complex questions about the history and organisation of the Triads is the extent to which all these secret groups bearing the name were united in a common movement. Today, there is no such common organisation, only a number of separate organisations.
It is well known that the founder of the Chinese Republic, Sun Yat Sen, was himself a member of the Triads, and that he was actively assisted by the Triads in the Chinese diaspora. It is therefore not surprising that in the early years of the Republic the Triads were still quite influential and were an excellent lobbying tool. But the road from systematic and illegal funding of politicians to the onset of criminality is usually not a long one. As a result, the Triads soon acquired the stamp of being dishonest organisations, and their involvement in crime soon resulted in a struggle for domination by individual groups, which then constituted a large part of their activity. Between 1946 and 1956, precisely because of their secrecy, many politicians tried to use the Triads in the fight against communism, but without much success.
Triade
What we know about the Triads today is mainly information provided by Chinese expatriates, as the Triads migrated abroad after the Communist takeover in China, wherever Chinese expatriates made new homes. The name triad itself is a relatively modern concept, derived from English, as the symbol of the Chinese secret societies is a triangle surrounding the Chinese character hung, which stands for the union of heaven, earth and man.
In the 17th century, the Hung Mun triad, also known as the Tien Tei We (Heaven and Earth Society), wanted to dethrone the Manchu dynasty, and in the 19th century, the San Hwoo Hui triad (Trinity Society) wanted to do the same. The majority Han population of China has always considered the Manchurians as foreigners on Chinese territory. Hierarchically organised triads have always had strict control over their members. They were committed to secrecy, cultural integrity and ritual, with an initiation ceremony and secret signs of recognition. In this sense, the triads were similar to the Freemasons.
The most comprehensive report on the Triads’ activities was published in 1960, written by Inspector Morgan, an English police inspector who had served in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was the only area, apart from neighbouring Macao, where we can speak of modern-era triads on Chinese territory. Morgan described in detail the functioning of the seven most important triads, their sphere of influence, the organisation of their headquarters and the functioning of their branch organisations.
Most of these groups started out as trade unions, charities or sports organisations. For example, the officially registered Fuk Yee International and Commercial Association, which operated mainly among Chinese speakers of the Hoklo dialect, was just a front under which one of the triads operated. The leaders of both organisations were the same, but the triads’ objectives and the means to achieve them were secret. All that was known was that the company had 12 branches that looked after their members.
Many of the members of the officially registered company were Chinese, as it was possible to get employment and social assistance through the company, and to arrange the often very complicated funeral ceremonies. The monthly membership fee was only one dollar, which was not much even for poorer Chinese. Of the company’s 1 000 or so employees, as many as a third were members of triads.
Thus, it was not difficult for both organisations – the company and the triad – to control the large part of the Chinese community that spoke the Hoklo dialect. Hong Kong’s growing urban population and its livelihood problems resulted in the triads making huge profits from it all. So new triads emerged and old triads tried to break into each other’s turf. In such circumstances, people were almost forced to join triads in order to secure a job, to protect their property or even their lives. Thus, before 1941, nine per cent of Hong Kong’s population was in the triads; by 1958, it was 15 per cent, while the urban population had tripled.
On the eve of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, there were three main political streams among the Triads; pro-China, pro-Japan and neutral. The former helped many Chinese to make their way into the liberated territory. With the rapid Japanese military advance, the second stream gained in importance, and was later joined by a third.
The Japanese took advantage of this and used the help of the Triads to maintain order and prevent sabotage actions. This, together with public support for prostitution, gambling and drug use, only strengthened the power of the triads. In the uncertain times after the war, the triads had a monopoly on the provision of jobs, and it can be assumed that the situation was similar in mainland China until the victory of Mao Zedong in 1949. After the Communist victory, a veritable avalanche of refugees poured into Hong Kong, and with them came the secret societies of the Triads from central China.
The refugees from the southern provinces of China were heavily dominated by members of the various triads, while the refugees from the north were dominated by the Green Pong and Red Pong triads. The Green Pong in particular soon became a real nuisance in Hong Kong. Its members, who were the first to reach Hong Kong, set up a special reception centre for refugees from the North, claiming links with the British colonial administration. In this way, they were able to provide refugees with accommodation, food, employment and schooling for their children. Those who did not join them, they claimed, would be deported back to Red China.
The refugees, who usually did not speak a word of English, trusted them and willingly gave them their savings. At this time, Green Pong also started to engage in organised drug dealing, robbery and theft. Despite the best efforts of the police, since the departure of the British colonial administration, the Green Pong had controlled much of the drug dealing and prostitution, all the tourist guides and tailoring workshops.
With the illegal immigrants, another important secret society called K-14 arrived in Hong Kong in the 1950s. By 1954, it already had 80,000 members and had developed into a brutal criminal organisation that was soon threatening the second tier.
For those who have not experienced it, it is hard to imagine the impact that the triads had in Hong Kong. Today, it is smaller, but not insignificant. There are tens of thousands of small shopkeepers in the city itself. For them, two things are vital; the assurance that their shops will be safe, and the integrity of their stock. This can only be guaranteed by membership of a triad or by paying weekly security ‘charges’. Since Hong Kong was returned to China, China has worked to reduce the impact of the triads. Sometimes it has been more successful, sometimes less so, despite very harsh penalties for anyone suspected of doing so.
Although their work was illegal, this did not always mean that the Triads were hostile to the existing authorities. Sometimes it happened that local authorities were just as corrupt as secret societies, only much less organised. And completely ineffective. In such cases, the effective control of secret societies over social life was still better than a state of no control. Thus, in the early 20th century, in the town of Dairen in northern China, the Red Beard Secret Society did what was actually the duty of the local authorities, but which were organisationally incapable of doing anything of the sort; it collected taxes, issued various licences and settled disputes.
Such cases were not rare in an era of weak central authorities and rampant corruption in the bureaucracy. Sometimes governments have also made a conscious decision to leave the organisation of municipalities to private initiative. This was particularly the case in the mid-19th century, at a time of great emigration of the Chinese population to South-East Asia and America.
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Chinese diaspora
For a long time in Singapore, the official policy was that secret societies should only regulate affairs among the Chinese population, which gave these societies great power. Although the vast majority of secret societies in the Asian Southeast belonged to the triads, their very distance from the motherland made them no longer anti-Chinese, at least not until they began to financially support Sun Yat Sen, the founder of the Chinese Republic.
These societies operated in public, but their ritual was secret. They were officially registered as voluntary associations to organise the paperwork for incoming Chinese immigrants and acted as the internal police of the Chinese community. In any case, they set up their own administrative apparatus, which was much more efficient than the British colonial administration. But by the 1890s, the influence of the secret societies in Singapore was already so great and too obvious that the British decided to ban them. So they went underground and continued to operate in the same way as their brethren in Hong Kong had done. There are several such societies still operating in Singapore today, with at least 10 000 members, even though Singapore is already an independent country.
Similar rumours can be heard from all overseas Chinese settlements. In the late 1820s, many Chinese emigrated to the west coast of the USA, attracted by stories of Californian gold. California was then flooded with large tent villages and wooden houses of gold miners, sprouting up like mushrooms after a rain. The inhabitants of these canvas and wooden towns were many Chinese, who did only hard labour; they were cooks, laundrymen, porters and railway workers and the like. Chinese immigrants who found themselves on Californian soil had to live on foreign soil and without any knowledge of English. They were therefore easy prey for those of their countrymen who paid their passage across the sea. They were seized by the local triads, which appeared wherever large numbers of Chinese had settled.
One of the first triads on Californian soil was the Five Provinces Triad, which by 1854 already had 35,000 members, almost all of them Chinese male immigrants in California. Under the umbrella of charity and social action, it engaged in the same racketeering business as the triads in China, except that the triads in the USA were now called tong, after the Chinese word for hall or gathering place. In the 1850s, rival tong societies staged miniature wars with axes and clubs against each other. The tong societies also split into different branches and groups, which then specialised in different areas of activity. At the same time, as it became clear to a growing number of Chinese immigrants that their future and that of their children lay in the USA and no longer in their homeland, the secret societies began to lose their relevance. Their former influence was gone. They were simply closely linked to a period in Chinese history that lasted more than 1000 years.
Since 1911, the secret societies have had little influence on the politics of the Chinese Republic, although both Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek are known to have had contacts with them. Modern politics today is no longer based on power, but on political concepts. Neither the White Lotus nor the other triads have succeeded in developing their own political concept. The victory of the Communists on the Chinese mainland has finally pushed them into the background, so that their stronger action can only be traced in the diaspora. Technological and economic developments today make it possible to control social developments much more intensively than was possible in the past, regardless of which political option is in power. Secret societies, however, had control over only a limited number of people and were therefore already doomed to a slow loss of influence.
Falun Gong
For many years, the Chinese authorities have been fighting the Falun Gong movement with all means and persistently. They refer to it as a dangerous sect, and in this way try to gain understanding for their repressive behaviour. In reality, their fear is based on the belief that this movement could grow into a mass political organisation that would undermine the monopoly of the Communist Party. On 25 April 1999, more than 10 000 supporters of this movement gathered in front of the Government Palace in Beijing in a silent demonstration. The security police reportedly took no notice of this gathering, which made the authorities’ surprise all the greater.
The demonstrators were mostly elderly men and women, but this did not stop the authorities from declaring the movement a dangerous secret sect, controlling the thinking of its members, talking nonsense, illegally collecting donations and organising secret subversive groups. Arrests and sentences to imprisonment and labour camps followed, and social stigmatisation and job loss were almost the lightest of punishments. This was the case almost everywhere in China where Falun Gong members gathered in peaceful protests.
It is therefore difficult to present a realistic picture of this movement. Its members describe themselves as practising meditation of body and mind, and that this is based on patience, mercy and truthfulness. The movement was founded in 1992 by Li Hongzli, then only 41 years old. The name Falun itself is of Buddhist origin and means the wheel of learning set in motion by the Buddha himself. Gong is a general term for various movement techniques and breathing exercises, including martial arts. These techniques are widespread in China, and in many parks, young and old can be seen strengthening their minds and bodies with various breathing exercises known as Qigoing.
In the late 1980s, the Falun Gong movement was just one of many Qigong techniques taught by various masters, and Li Hongzli was one of the most successful organisers and masters of Qigong. His teaching method was also based on promoting well-being and gaining peace of mind. It is the latter that distinguishes it from the pure physical strengthening of the body. This is why the culture of the inner manners, i.e. the moral consciousness of the unity of the universe, is supposed to be more important than the culture of the body.
Only this has made Falun Gong a mass movement feared by the Chinese authorities. Their language is full of Buddhist and Taoist symbols, even though decades of atheist upbringing have diluted the religious and philosophical traditions of the Chinese family. What remained, however, were elements of traditional Chinese cosmology, philosophy, religion and folklore, which are still familiar to virtually everyone in China today, embedded in the consciousness of large numbers of Chinese people. Falun Gong has succeeded in integrating these traditional elements into a system that is accessible and understandable to everyone.
Man is thus meant to be just one part of an all-encompassing universe. This means, above all, the predominance of a moral order in which the principles of patience, mercy and truthfulness prevail. The spiritual exercises aim at developing these very qualities. And it is precisely these qualities that modern Chinese society cannot boast of. In China’s rapid transformation towards a capitalist society, it is not only sacrifice, kindness and mercy that can be expected. The politics of modernisation in China has also brought with it the rise of corruption, the pursuit of wealth, the loss of moral orientation and much else that even occasional government campaigns cannot prevent.
This moral dimension of Falun Gong is very much in the Chinese elderly, and the solution to this problem offered by Falun Gong is also understandable in the context of traditional Chinese notions that moral decay will bury humanity unless there is a radical change. It is therefore up to each individual to change his or her behaviour and bring it into line with the cosmic principles of patience, truthfulness and kindness. This is what millions of Falun Gong adherents are said to think, although the authorities claim that there are no more than one million. Both are convinced of the correctness of their procedures.
Japanese yakuza
Japan is a close neighbour of China, but its development has been very different. Despite unrest and civil wars, the central government has always been strong enough not to allow secret societies that it did not know what they were doing. It had its opponents, but the aims of the opponents were no different from those of those in power. It was about power and nothing else, and everyone knew who their opponent was.
When the time of modernisation came and Japan’s isolation from the outside world was no longer useful, the samurai also became opponents of the authorities, who destroyed them, leaving them as a historical memory. There was almost no emigration of Japanese from their homeland, so the diaspora was weak and did not develop any secret societies. The Americanisation of the country after the Second World War also offered no reason for secret societies to emerge, because it was such a radical turn in social life that the Japanese had to get used to the newness of it first, and that took them several decades. The only thing that reminds us of secret societies are the yakuza, whom the media think they know everything about, when in fact they know nothing.
The word ‘yakuza’ actually means the worst of all the playing cards. Anyone who receives playing cards of ya (eight), ku (nine) and sa (three) has scored zero points – a card that is worth as little as the social class from which it came. The yakuza do not even call themselves that, but call themselves gokudo, where goku means extreme and do means the way. The extreme way is certainly the best illustration of what they do.
Every 23 December, on the Emperor’s birthday, the Imperial Palace opens its doors. Thousands of Japanese wait patiently to congratulate their ruler. Among the visitors, a group of dark and elegantly dressed men catch the eye; black coats, expensive leather gloves on their hands, some shielding their eyes with dark glasses. They are members of the yakuza, the Japanese mafia.
Nevertheless, there is no one who would deny them the right to congratulate the Emperor, because it is very important to them. The police know which criminal society they belong to and who runs it. Even the inhabitants of certain areas of the city know that they are the home of the ‘highest’, pointing to a house surrounded by a high wall from which surveillance cameras lurk.
“My neighbour is a gangster” is a common phrase in Japan, and not an uncommon one. It is not forbidden to be a member of the yakuza. The police can only intervene when a yakuza commits a crime. Yakuza are ostracised from society, but they are feared by everyone. On the other hand, many people admire them and devour stories about them, and people are especially attracted by the coloured tattoos on their skin.
The yakuza are descended from the travelling merchants and gamblers of the Edo period (1603-1868). Today, they are mostly recruited from the “burakumin”, a group of Japanese who were discriminated against for centuries for occupations related to blood and death, such as slaughterhouse workers. The other large group that makes up the yakuza are the “zainichi”, Japanese-born Koreans who are also considered social outcasts.
The yakuza say they carry on the tradition of the samurai and pride themselves on their strict moral code. They are very fond of presenting themselves as benefactors who take care of people in need. After the devastating earthquake in Kobe in 1995, they were the first to organise public kitchens, long before the government took it up. They were also on the scene soon after the tsunami in 2011, but not without their own interests in mind as they competed for lucrative construction contracts.
It is an open secret that the yakuza are playing a role in the removal of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, damaged in 2011. After three reactors melted down, the area is still highly radioactive despite decontamination attempts. There was a shortage of workers to remove the dangerous radioactive debris. In the end, only companies linked to the dams were awarded contracts. In some cases, workers were forced to take on this dangerous employment so that they could repay their debts to the yakuza, while their employers deducted the debt from their wages and paid it to their creditors.
Yakuza often pose as serious entrepreneurs and run fictitious construction and waste disposal companies. Recently, they have also been appearing in the entertainment and sports industries and, according to some reports, in politics. In parallel with these legitimate activities, they continue to run their criminal businesses. They raise hundreds of millions of yen every year to ‘protect’ small entrepreneurs and traders, they deal in drugs and they force women into prostitution. According to the police, the income of the yakuza in 1989 was around €10 billion. In recent years, however, the yakuza have expanded their business to include financial fraud and insider trading on stock exchanges.
They are a sworn men’s association, and women, with a few exceptions, the spouses of leaders and mistresses, have no visible role or influence. The hierarchy is strictly defined and the younger members are obliged to respect and obey the older ones. When they seriously transgress, their leader expects them to perform a ritual called yubitsume. The yakuza must cut off one of their finger links, starting with the smallest finger. This is a commonplace for the yakuza, and the severed finger joint is given as a gift to the person to whom the yakuza owes an apology. Of course, many people are embarrassed to be seen in public with their finger knuckles cut off. A company offers them a solution: for EUR 2 300, it can make them a prosthesis made of silicone, the same colour as the severed finger.
As a sign of belonging to their “family”, yakuza often get tattoos, known as irezumi, which are said to be a symbol of strength and virility. Tattooists apply the colour under the skin with the tips of bamboo sticks. Scenes from the world of gods and fairy tales are very popular. The process is lengthy and very painful, and the only parts without tattoos are the parts that peek out from under the clothes. It has to be said, however, that both rituals are losing their meaning, as they damage business as well as private life. Public bathing facilities have already banned those who are tattooed from head to toe. The yakuza do not wear flamboyant dresses, gaudy jewellery or colourful scarves; this way of dressing is a thing of the past, and now they generally only wear dark clothes.
Even so, the public is no longer very supportive of them, and the number of yaks is plummeting, to no more than 30,000 today, three times fewer than seven years ago. Those who were once outcasts have found refuge in the yakuza, but today young people find the drastic ritual of finger-cutting unappealing.
The Yakuza last attracted public attention in 2015. The Yamaguchi-gumi, the largest yakuza association with around 10 000 members, split over internal disputes. The police feared bloody violence, but nothing happened. Have the yakuza perhaps become more peaceful?
