In 2011, the Japanese prefectural governments passed Organized Crime Exclusion Ordinances which prohibit companies from doing business with members of organized crime groups.

While it’s unreasonable to expect convenience stores to screen every customer for criminal ties, it does make entering legal contracts extremely difficult for members of groups such as the yakuza.

It’s uncertain if this was intentional in the planning of the ordinances or not, but they have been making life increasingly more difficult for yakuza members as more and more services are based on contracts. For example, many yakuza members are finding themselves blackballed when it comes to getting new smartphones, and now it looks as if their days of driving on expressways are numbered as well.

In Japan, expressways require a toll, which traditionally is fed into a machine or toll booth operator who then grants entry. In 1997, Japan introduced the Electronic Toll Collection System (ETC) which allows cars to just whizz through tolls and pay when their transponder detects entry on high-speed roadways. ...continue reading