AKIPRESS.COM - Japan's biggest organized crime syndicate has launched its own website, complete with corporate song and a strong anti-drugs message, as the yakuza looks to turn around its outdated image and falling membership, Focus reported.

The “Banish Drugs and Purify the Nation League” website is an offering from the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest yakuza grouping.

It includes shakily-shot footage of members making their New Year pilgrimage to a shrine. The soundtrack to this is a traditional folk-style song with lyrics extolling the virtues of the “Ninkyo” spirit – an ideal of masculinity that battles injustice and helps the weak.

Another video shows men with crew cuts pounding sticky rice for a New Year festival, and there are galleries of pictures showcasing the clean-up work members did in the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami and the 1996 Kobe earthquake.

Like the Italian mob or Chinese triads, yakuza syndicates are involved in activities ranging from prostitution to extortion and white-collar crime.

But unlike their underworld counterparts elsewhere, the yakuza are not illegal and each of the designated groups, like the Yamaguchi-gumi, have their own headquarters, with senior members dishing out business cards.

They have historically been tolerated by the authorities, sometimes with corrupt police overlooking their violence, and are routinely glamorized in fanzines and manga comics.