(sometimes also translated as "corporate bouncers", "meeting-men", or "corporate blackmailers") are specialized racketeers unique to

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

, and often associated with the yakuza, who extort money from or

blackmail Blackmail is a criminal act of coercion using a threat. As a criminal offense, blackmail is defined in various ways in common law jurisdictions. In the United States, blackmail is generally defined as a crime of information, involving a thr ...

companies by threatening to publicly humiliate companies and their management, usually in their . If a company does pay , the will work to prevent others from embarrassing the company, either through intimidation or by disrupting the meeting so they cannot be heard. The number of has decreased over the years, and in 2023 there were only about 150 , of whom 30 worked in groups and 120 worked alone.

History

originated in the late

19th century The 19th century began on 1 January 1801 (represented by the Roman numerals MDCCCI), and ended on 31 December 1900 (MCM). It was the 9th century of the 2nd millennium. It was characterized by vast social upheaval. Slavery was Abolitionism, ...

. At this time, the unlimited liability of the management put the managers' personal fortune at risk in case of rumors and scandals. Hence the management hired protection, called , to reduce the risk of such rumors. Even after the Japanese laws included a limited liability, hence reducing the personal risk to the managers, these continued to prosper, and were often used to quiet down otherwise difficult meetings. In that respect, they have even been compared to corporate lawyers in America. In 1984, the law made first steps to reduce the threat from by establishing a minimum number of holdings (¥50,000) in order to be allowed into the shareholder meeting, leading to a slow decline of the number of . In response to this, the formed fake , announcing embarrassing company secrets, fictional or not, from loudspeakers mounted on trucks in order to extort money from companies. In 1994, Juntarō Suzuki, vice president of

Fujifilm , trading as , or simply Fuji, is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, operating in the areas of photography, optics, Office supplies, office and Biomedical engine ...

, was murdered by after he stopped paying these bribes.Sōkaiya and Japanese Corporations
Eiko Maruko, Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies, 25 June 2002

Activities

Disrupting shareholder meetings

Individual acquire enough stock from multiple companies in order to gain entrance to a

shareholders' meeting An annual general meeting (AGM, also known as the annual meeting) is a meeting of the general membership of an organization. These organizations include membership associations and companies with shareholders. These meetings may be requir ...

. There, they disrupt the meeting (and embarrass the company) until their demands are met. For this, the often research the company in detail beforehand to uncover incidents of misconduct or other company secrets, and then blackmail the management so that these issues are not raised in the shareholder meeting or elsewhere. Often, they also invent fictional issues that the company would have difficulty disproving. Modern have developed other, similar methods to accomplish their goals. One less subtle example is the , who disrupt business places with their cries of and praise of the

Emperor The word ''emperor'' (from , via ) can mean the male ruler of an empire. ''Empress'', the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), mother/grandmother (empress dowager/grand empress dowager), or a woman who rules ...

until they are quietly paid to leave.

Other disruption

also form fake groups, announcing embarrassing company secrets, fictional or not, from loudspeakers mounted on trucks in order to extort money from companies. They may also print special newspapers with topics embarrassing to companies, and then ask the company to buy the entire print at inflated prices, or even to subscribe to these newspapers, generating a steady flow of cash.

Preventing disruption of shareholder meetings

have also been used by companies to drown out questions from legitimate shareholders which company officials do not want presented. One infamous case is related to Minamata disease (mercury poisoning), where the Chisso chemicals company managed to close a number of annual meetings within minutes, despite the presence of hundreds of protesters at the meetings. They have also been active against anti-war protesters and other people who may be viewed as a nuisance by the company at a particular time.

Countermeasures

Article 968 of the Japanese corporations code prohibits activity, imposing imprisonment of no more than five years or a fine of no more than ¥5 million for "receiving, demanding or promising a proprietary benefit with regard to" statements or the exercise of voting rights at a shareholder or creditor meeting. A practical countermeasure used by large corporations is to hold all shareholder meetings on the same day, so cannot disrupt all of them.

Background

While in the West a shareholders' meeting is usually an earnest discussion between the shareholders and the management, in Japan it is often more of a ceremony, and the management does not feel the need to truly inform shareholders. In this atmosphere, the are able to prosper. However, with the trend for more deregulation in the Japanese market the business environment for is getting more and more difficult.

Companies that have bribed

Major Japanese companies that have been found guilty of employing include but are not limited to: * Mitsubishi, resulting in a number of arrests * Daiwa Securities Group * Nikko Securities * Nomura Securities Co., with three top executive pleading guilty for multimillion-dollar payments. In this case, the sōkaiya actually owned enough stock to propose one of their choosing as a member for the

board of directors A board of directors is a governing body that supervises the activities of a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government agency. The powers, duties, and responsibilities of a board of directors are determined by government regulatio ...

. * Nippon Shinpan, forcing the president Yoji Yamada into retirement after various executives paid up to ¥80 million to the subsequently arrested Kikuo Kondo of the Sumiyoshi-kai. * Tokyo Electric Power Company * Meiji Seika

References

External links

Japan faces fresh scandal
cnn.com, March 11, 1997
'Sokaiya' scams hit Japan
cnn.com, December 19, 1997
Executive quits over gangster charges
BBC News, 21 November 2002 {{DEFAULTSORT:Sokaiya Japanese words and phrases Japanese business law Japanese business terms Racketeering Yakuza Humiliation