Asian Organized Crime

There was a time - once - when the nation was not preoccupied by turbaned men determined to reach heaven and the promised seventy-seven virgins. In that day, efforts were made to curb the ongoing serious problem of criminality within the Asian communities in the US and Canada. The Center for Asian Crime Study (CACS) still exists (asiancrime.org) through the efforts of a few. Unfortunately men like Lieutenant Jack Willoughby (New Orleans PD), Special Agent Ken Sanz (Florida Dept of Law Enforcement), Cordell Hart (CIA), Commander Mario Lamothe (Montreal Police Department) and many others retired without leaving trained successors because the world no longer cared. Others like Sergeant Tom Purdue (San Francisco PD) died on duty with their boots on. Unsung experts such as William Cassidy, retired to private meditation. They can not be replaced but nobody is interested in doing that today. We seem to be able to focus on one thing at a time as a culture.

Japanese Culture and Police Work

My long and intense study of Asian Crime, Heaven and Earth Societies and the earliest formation of triads, secret societies and of the interaction between those societies later in Chinese history with various police organizations raised questions that had obscure answers. One question dealt with means of restraining prisoners while keeping them mobile enough to walk yet rendering them unable to escape. The question was answered not from a Chinese source, but from Japan.

Many centuries ago, long before handcuffs were invented, early Japanese police officers (Doshin) used "kinbaku", a Japanese term that means "to tie tightly".  As the Japanese are want to do, the art of restraint took on an artistic flare and today special hand-made ropes called "asanawa" are used. Classic asanawa are 7 meters long and between 6 and 8 mm in diameter. A master in the art of kinbaku is called a "kinbakushi" (rope master). Classic kinbaku as practiced by the doshin and samurai does not use knots. I suspect they wanted to use the rope again and didn't want to get in a position where they'd have to cut it off. Additionally, tension is easier to maintain when there are no knots (so it's not as easy to slip out of it as it would be if knots were used).

Today, the art of rope binding has taken on a more erotic flare and the term for binding for pleasure rather than to restrain a criminal is "kinbaku-bi", meaning beautiful bondage.

In the modern world, police worldwide use handcuffs, however there was a more elegant age.

Lost in Translation?

Since nobody does this particular type of police work anymore, 

I thought the nostalgia was worth the post.