Narrating against dominance: Women and organized crime in Japanese discourse and popular culture

Globally, women have often been marginalized in discourses about organized crime and are typically cast as passive agents exploited by men in their daily lives. Rather than accepting this stereotype as given, this article traces various discourses and lived experiences of women involved in Japanese organized crime. In the case of Japan, common understandings of organized crime often refer back to the stereotypical roles filled by men with reference to popular culture: as gangsters, gamblers, goons, or thugs. Engaging existing scholarship that examines women’s participation in organized crime, this paper interrogates women’s experiences and participation through the lens of Japanese manga featuring stories involving female criminality, complemented by nonfictional accounts drawn from collections of interviews and autobiographies. Whereas most discourses and narratives concerning organized crime in Japan suggest women are disempowered or passive agents, narratives by women themselves suggest that women connected to organized crime wield significant influence and authority in certain situations. I suggest that women’s agency in the real world of organized crime can be seen most clearly in Japanese manga and popular culture, which – while fictional – in fact makes the actual voices and stories that inform them widely visible to a broad audience, thereby giving voice to these silenced actors.