Yakuza (やくざ or ヤクザ), also known as gokudō (極道), are members of traditional organized crime groups in Japan. Today, the yakuza are one of the largest organized crime phenomena in the world. In Japanese legal terminology, yakuza organizations are referred to as bōryokudan, literally “violence groups”. Yakuza members consider this an insult, as bōryokudan is a term which can be applied to any violent criminal.
There is no single origin for all Japanese yakuza. But it is usually said that Yakuza organizations developed from different elements of traditional Japanese society like retainers samurais of the Edo period (1603-1837) who began to be paid with rice, which they sold to markets for cash, instead of being paid a direct salary.
The term “Yakuza” comes from a Japanese card game, Oicho-Kabu (played with hanafuda or kabufuda cards), and means “good for nothing”. Similar to baccarat, the values of the cards are added together and the last digit of the sum is taken as the score.
The worst hand in the game is a set of eight, nine and three, which gives a sum of 20 and a score of 0. In traditional Japanese forms of counting, these numbers are called Ya, Ku and Sa respectively, thus the origin of the word “Yakuza”. In modern Japanese counting, eight, nine and three could be pronounced “hachi-kyu-san,” a name by which the yakuza are sometimes called in Japan today.
Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakuza
