RE: The Yazuka
It's a funny and tricky situation indeed, do their "good deeds" outweigh the intensely illegal/evil things they do? Probably not. Is the Japanese government doing enough to curtail them? Probably not!
They are only openly visible in certain places in Tokyo, for most people (myself included) we hardly ever see them or know they exist.
There are many things that happen in Japan "because that's how it's always been done", you can see that in pretty much every single aspect of Japanese life and culture, games included.
I think the Yazuka are one of those age-old "traditions" that have just gone left unchecked for hundreds of years, and no one in any higher authority is in any race to change that anytime soon. (I wonder why...)
For those interested in learning more about the Yazuka, in English, you wanna be following this guy,
Jake Adelstein.
He wrote a cool book about his undercover life with them, he's also pretty active
on Twitter.As for the TV question, I think I'll save that for the Famicast, I know Matt Walker and I have VERY different opinions on that matter...