Japan’s Biggest Yakuza Mob Group Splits Under Money, Police Pressure

Alexander Martin at the Wall Street Journal offers a piece on the yakuza organized crime syndicates in Japan.

TOKYO—The Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s largest and most powerful yakuza crime syndicate, is undergoing a major split on its 100th anniversary after years of police crackdowns and financial strains, raising fears of a bloody gang war.

News broke in late August that groups within the Yamaguchi-gumi were parting ways with its sixth-generation don. The result is the creation of a rival syndicate, also based in central Japan.

Experts say the split reflects the harsher environment facing the yakuza following the adoption of anti-gang laws that have choked off revenues. Gang members are finding it harder to make money from traditional sources like protection rackets.

“Clampdowns against the yakuza have been enforced at all points, making it increasingly difficult for them to rack up profits,” said Yoshiaki Shinozaki, an attorney with decades of experience fighting organized crime.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/japans-gangsters-find-extortion-no-longer-pays-forcing-yakuza-split-1441773870

Note: The above spells out yakuza in Katakana.   
    

The Case Of The Yakking Yakuza

Jake Adelstein, the author of Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan, offers a piece at the Daily Beast on the arrest of a Japanese crime boss.

TOKYO, Japan — In southern Japan, where violent gang wars continue for years, everyone has a long memory and forgiveness is rarely given. But sometimes justice is served.

This week the Japanese National Police Agency used evidence from a cold case dating back 16 years to arrest the heads of Japan’s “most violent” yakuza group—the Kudo-kai—on charges of homicide. The cops have made dismantling the Kudo-kai a police priority and want to deliver a message to the remaining 300 full-time members that resistance would be futile. Japanese authorities also have won the support of the United States in this battle. In July, the U.S. Treasury Department designated the Kudo-kai a transnational criminal organization, noting it was Japan’s “most violent yakuza syndicate,” and froze the assets of the same top executives now under arrest for murder.

On September 11, the Fukuoka Prefectural Police Organized Crime Division and the riot squad stormed the headquarters of the Kudo-kai and the home of the group’s leader, Satoru Nomura, age 67, and arrested him for his role in conspiring to murder Kunihiro Kajiwara, a leader in the local fishing industry. The Kudo-kai’s second in command, Fumio Tanoue, 58, initially escaped arrest, but turned himself in to the police on September 13.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/16/the-case-of-the-yakking-yakuza.html

You can also read my Crime Beat column on Jake Adelstein's Tokyo Vice via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/03/tokyo-vice-american-reporter-on-police.html

Where Have Japan's Yakuza Gone?

Jake Adelstein, author of Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter On the Police Beat in Japan, and Nathalie-Kyoko Stucky offer a piece on the current state of Japan's organized crime group, the yakuza, for the Daily Beast. 

The number of yakuza, Japan’s organized crime group members, hit its lowest record since the country’s first anti-organized crime laws passed in 1992, the National Police Agency announced this week. The number of yakuza had hovered around 80,000 for almost 18 years up to 2011 but the nationwide criminalization of paying the yakuza or doing business with them has dealt a blow to these quasi-legal organizations. However, like many things in Japan, the statistics and the reality are always slightly askew.

According to the National Police Agency, yakuza membership peaked in 1963, at approximately 184,100 members. Since the implementation of the anti-organized crime laws in 1992, the number of active members “has been approximately at the same level” of roughly 80,000. But by the end of 2011 membership was starting to seriously decline down to 70,300 members. (32,700 regular members and 37,600 associates.)     

Their primary sources of revenue are extortion, racketeering, financial fraud, blackmail, stock market manipulation, drugs, the entertainment business, sports industry, film and television production, and providing labor and security to the nuclear industry. The yakuza were traditionally federations of gamblers (bakuto) and street merchants (tekiya). They acted as a second police force in the chaos after the Second World War, gaining some legitimacy. They are called boryokudan, 暴力団 (violent groups) by the police but they refer themselves “yakuza” “gokudo” and as ninkyodantai 仁侠団体 (humanitarian groups) and claim that they contribute to preserving peace in Japan, and emergency aid when natural catastrophes hit the country.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/09/where-have-japan-s-yakuza-gone.html

You can also read my Crime Beat column on Jake Adelstein and his book Tokyo Vice via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/03/tokyo-vice-american-reporter-on-police.html