A REPUTATION for unpredictability and violence keeps journalists away from the yakuza, but a vicious turf battle between two rival gangs in this southern city has made them reluctant media fodder. The two-year war has produced seven deaths and over 20 shootings and bombings.

Now, in a remarkable act of collective courage that has electrified the fight against organised crime in Japan but divided this city, local people are taking the gangsters to court.

“The yakuza are using weapons like the kind you see in the Iraq war: grenades, bombs and guns that can shoot people from 500 metres away,” says lawyer Osamu Kabashima, who is representing the 1,500 plaintiffs. “My clients have had enough. They want to live in safety and peace.”

In the most notorious episode in the war, a gangster walked into a hospital and pumped two bullets into an innocent man mistaken for a rival.

In another, outside this, the head office of the 1,000-member Dojin-kai gang in a busy shopping area, a machine-gun ambush sprayed bullets in all directions.

Those attacks finally snapped the patience of locals, who have banded together to drive them out, using a civil law that allows them to challenge businesses that “infringe on their right to live peacefully”.

Win or lose, the legal fight will go down in history. “This is the first time that citizens are trying to expel the head office of a designated gangster organisation,” heralded the liberal Asahi newspaper, which called on local businesses and government leaders to support the plaintiffs and “drive the yakuza into extinction”.

That seems unlikely. Japan’s National Police Agency estimates that there are more than 84,000 gangsters in the country’s crime syndicates, many times the strength of the US Mafia at its violent peak.

A single group, the Yamaguchi- gumi, is the General Motors of organised crime, with nearly 40,000 members in affiliates across Japan and a high-walled central compound in one of the wealthiest parts of Kobe city.

Fan magazines, comic books and movies glamorise the yakuza, who operate in plain view in a way unthinkable to western observers.

Dojin-kai’s headquarters is public and known to any Kurume taxi driver. Signs pasted on the doors of the six-storey building politely explain that the organisation has temporarily moved and provides its new address on the other side of the train station.

The tangled relationship between the yakuza and legitimate businesses, particularly real estate, suggest the mob has metastasised into Japan’s economy and society and will not easily be removed.

In March of this year, Suruga Corporation, a listed company, was revealed to have paid more than ¥15 billion (€110 million) to a firm linked to a Yamaguchi- gumi affiliate. In return, gangsters removed tenants from five properties Suruga wished to acquire, taking on average 12 to 18 months to empty a building.

“We cannot make profits unless we sell land quickly,” Takeo Okawa, director of Suruga’s general affairs department blithely told the Asahi newspaper. “Speed is our lifeline.” Suruga reportedly made ¥27 billion (€198 million) in profit by selling on the property.

The Dojin-kai’s new headquarters, immediately identifiable by its business nameplate, is a two-storey compound in one of Kurume’s better neighbourhoods. The acting boss sits in a conference room dominated by portraits of deceased chairman Yoshikazu Matsuo in ceremonial kimono, murdered last year.

“We have always had a strong relationship with local people, so this is a bad situation for us,” he explains. “It is obvious that they are being manipulated by the cops who want to crush us.”

The police, who declined to go on the record, deny this, as does lawyer Kabashima.

“No ordinary person wants to live beside these gangs,” he says. “There is a school close to the site of the machine-gun attack. What if the bullets had hit children?”

Kabashima and his family have lived in fear since he was outed in the media last year, but he says his foes are “not stupid enough” to attack him. “They cannot move against me without severe consequences.”

The yakuza has long occupied an ambiguous position in Japan. Like its Italian cousins, it has murky historical links with the county’s ruling party, the Liberal Democrats. A reputation for keeping disputes to itself and not harming “non-combatants” protected it from the ire of citizens and the attentions of the police.

That ambiguity was supposed to have ended in 1992 when the government introduced the toughest anti-mob legislation in a generation, punishment for yakuza excesses during the booming 1980s when it shifted into real estate and other legitimate businesses.

However, the state still hasn’t made membership of a criminal organisation illegal, or given the police the anti-mob tools long considered crucial in other countries: wire-tapping, plea- bargaining and witness protection.

“The authorities and the yakuza have achieved a kind of balance where they basically accept each other’s existence, but pretend otherwise,” says Suzuki Tomohiko, a journalist who specialises in crime writing.

“It’s very Japanese. The 1992 law was a kind of performance for the public.”

A new police White Paper warns that the yakuza has moved into securities trading and infected hundreds of Japan’s listed companies, a “disease that will shake the foundations of the economy”, it says.

Experts claim the Yamaguchi- gumi, in particular, has become a behemoth with resources to rival Japan’s larger corporations.

The lack of legal tools to fight the yakuza is painfully obvious in Kurume, where the law only allows the plaintiffs to challenge hoods within a 500-metre radius of their homes.

“It’s not easy to kick them out of town,” laments one, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We’re demanding that they stop using the building as a place of gathering. They own the building, it’s their property and we can’t make them give it up.”

Even if it moves, the mob will simply pop up somewhere else in Kurume, admits a senior official at the city office, which is backing the plaintiffs. “I guess it is correct to say that Japanese people have learned to live with the yakuza,” said the official, who also requested anonymity.

Unchallenged, the Dojin-kai will invest huge untaxed profits in real estate, eventually taking over whole blocks.

“We have to hope that even if they relocate, the residents of the new area will challenge them again,” says the official. “The yakuza are strong on a one-to-one basis, but they are extremely weak in the face of collective action.”

Kurume’s latest problems began in May 2006. Long-time Dojin-kai boss Seijiro Matsuo suddenly announced his resignation, sparking a war of succession with splinter group Kyushu Seido-kai that detonated in front of the Kurume headquarters with an AK-47 rifle attack.

Not everyone is rooting for the plaintiffs. “We’re not against the people going to court but if they win, the yakuza might relocate close to us and that would cause problems for my business,” says Yuichiro Okamura, who owns a small restaurant beside Kurume station.

The owner of a vegetable shop next to the Dojin-kai building said the plaintiffs should let sleeping dogs lie. “The yakuza have never done anything to me, but the people in that building have much better manners than some of the youngsters around here today.”

Communities stand up to Japanese mafia – Tuesday, October 14, 2008 – The Irish Times – This story was found at: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2008/1014/1223921127194.html

In a surprisingly stark admission of the crisis, the National Police Agency (NPA) says it is locked in a battle for the “economic soul” and international reputation of Japan.

Police investigations suggest the yakuza have become voracious traders and manipulators of listed Japanese stocks, and – via a network of about 1,000 apparently legitimate front companies – occupy hefty positions on the shareholder registers of many companies that may not even be aware of the connection.

The new activities of the nation’s largest crime syndicates, said one veteran expert on the yakuza, has effectively turned the mob into “the biggest private equity firm in Japan”.

In a white paper on the subject, the NPA warns that the yakuza’s switch from “old fashioned” crime rackets like drugs and prostitution to mainstream financial markets is “a disease that will shake the foundations of the economy.”

The Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission has privately compiled a watch list of hundreds of companies suspected of direct or indirect links to mafia money. The list, seen by The Times, includes more than 200 publicly traded companies, many of which are household names in Japan.

The issue has become so acute that the Osaka Stock Exchange has been forced to introduce an entirely new screening system to establish which companies now have direct mob links or large quantities of yakuza money on their shareholder register. Scores of companies, says one exchange insider, face the threat of being delisted.

As well as flagging the risks of a yakuza invasion of financial markets, the police white paper also sounds alarm bells over the real estate and construction sectors. The greatest risk, says the official report, is that the yakuza now match the operational strategies of mainstream global corporations and outsource much of their financial chicanery to “co-operative groups”.

But even as police and regulators rush to address soaring yakuza interference in the securities industry, close observers of the Japanese mafia believe the problem may now be well beyond control. The sophistication of the crime gangs has grown exponentially in recent months: many have begun hiring newly out-of-work traders who have been laid-off by large financial houses feeling the squeeze of the credit crunch.

According to one in-depth investigation by the state broadcaster NHK, a few yakuza gangs even operate their own stock dealing floors where millions of dollars worth of shares are traded every day. A newly published book on the subject, Yakuza Money, claims that the presence of skilled ex-bankers, ex-stockbrokers and ex-accountants on the yakuza’s extended payroll has dramatically increased the mob’s income stream and made it virtually impossible to discern the difference between legal and illegal funds as they flow through the Japanese markets.

One of the key recent developments, said Joshua Adelstein, an author and consultant on the yakuza, is the emergence of mob-backed auditing firms. It is by getting these auditing firms to sign-off false company accounts, he said, that the yakuza were now able to manipulate both the apparent earnings and stock prices of numerous small listed companies. “The police are worried, but the police are understating the problem,” he said, “organised crime has made tremendous inroads into the Japanese financial sector. The bad guys now have everything in place to manipulate the stock market.”

Yakuza target Japan’s financial markets – From Times Online – August 27, 2008 – Leo Lewis, Asia Business Correspondent – This story was found at: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/article4619166.ece

Beside the dons, two other Japanese criminals received transplants between 2000-2004, a period when several hundred Californians died from want of a new liver.

Tadamasa Goto, who heads one of the main Yakuza crime families in Tokyo, received the life-saving operation in 2001 after the Federal Bureau of Investigation helped him to enter the United States. Goto had originally been barred from the country, but the FBI helped him acquire a visa in the hope that he would turn informant.

Goto’s gang is so powerful that the American journalist who first discovered the truth about the transplants has been placed under police protection.

The UCLA Medical Centre in Los Angeles says the gifts were made after the surgery took place and had no bearing on their decision to give the men new livers.

A hospital spokeswoman told the Los Angeles Times that there was no reason to question the source of the money, which was channelled into liver research. The hospital even put up a plaque outside the centre reading: “In grateful recognition of the Goto Research Fund established through the generosity of Mr Tadamasa Goto.”

The man who performed the transplants was world-renowned liver surgeon Ronald Busuttil, the executive chairman of UCLA’s surgery department.

Dr Busuttil later examined Goto in Japan, the gangster’s lawyer Yoshiyuki Maki said.

Both he and the university have insisted they did not know about the history of the men and that in any case patients should be treated according to their medical need rather than their morality.

The scandal has caused much debate in the US over transplant rules. Charles Grassley, the Republican senator who sits on a major hospital finance committee, said he was “worried about the credibility of the transplant system.”

Japanese mafia dons donated £50,000 after jumping queue for US liver transplants – By Angus McDowall – Last updated: 10:27 PM BST 31/05/2008 – Story from Telegraph News:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2058177/Japanese-mafia-dons-donated-and16350%2C000-after-jumping-queue-for-US-liver-transplants.html

The Tokyo District Court found Osamu Yano, 58, guilty of ordering the shooting of a rival gang member in 2003 in a bar in Maebashi, 100 kilometres (62 miles) northwest of Tokyo, in which three bystanders were killed.

Yano, who has links to the underworld syndicate Sumiyoshi-kai, was also found to have orchestrated the fatal shooting of a gang member at a Tokyo hospital in 2002.

The court upheld the prosecutors’ demand for the death penalty despite a plea of innocence.

“The defendant’s responsibility is greater than those who actually carried out the orders,” said Presiding Judge Yoshifumi Asayama.

“The chagrin over the three who were unrelated to the mafia groups is beyond imagination,” he said.

Japan is the only major industrialised country other than the United States to use the death penalty, which enjoys strong support among the public despite criticism from human rights groups.

Japanese “Yakuza” gangsters are closely monitored but have been largely tolerated by the authorities and control vast business interests, particularly in the entertainment industry.

Police say a crackdown has led to a decrease in violence in recent years, but there have been several gang related killings this year, including the shooting of Nagasaki mayor Iccho Ito by a mobster in April.

Japanese court sentences mob boss sentenced death – AFP – 10.12.2007 – http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iQ1gIhU4Xnw3UyqTLvXC7JFOcf9A

More than 140 officers are searching the massage parlours, sex shops and bars of Kabukicho after 12 sightings of fugitive Tatsuya Ichihashi, 28, since September 18.

The area is controlled by the Yakuza, the Japanese Mafia, and police think they may be hiding Ichihashi. Lindsay, 22, from Brandon, Warwicks, was killed after giving him an English lesson at a coffee shop near his Tokyo home. She was found strangled and buried in a bath full of sand on the balcony of his flat on March 26. Police let Ichihashi walk free from his home after going there to question him.

A Tokyo police source said: “There was a growing fear Ichihashi had killed himself but the sightings have convinced us the Yakuza is helping him. The feeling is he’ll slip up soon. That’s why a huge team are working 24 hours a day.”

Lindsay’s father Bill said: “We are encouraged by these sightings and we urge people to stay vigilant.”

TOKYO MAFIA HIDES LINDSAY STRANGLER – EXCLUSIVE – By Nick Owens – 30/09/2007 – http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/sunday/2007/09/30/tokyo-mafia-hides-lindsay-strangler-98487-19870684/

The elaborate dragons, phoenix and a medieval courtesan with one breast bared and a knife between her teeth are a symbol of Tendo’s childhood as the daughter of a “yakuza” gangster and her youth as a drug-using gang member.

The author of Yakuza Moon, a bestselling memoir just out translated into English, the 39-year-old Tendo says that police efforts to eradicate the gangsters have merely made them harder to track.

Shoko Tendo’s tattoos stem from her childhood as the daughter of a yakuza gangster. Photo / Reuters.

“The more the police push, the more the yakuza are simply going underground, making their activities harder to follow than they ever were before,” she says.

Police say full-fledged membership in yakuza groups fell to 41,500 last year, down from 43,000 in 2005, a decline they attribute to tighter laws against organised crime.

The number of yakuza hangers-on, including thugs and members of motorcycle gangs, who are willing to do their dirty work, though, rose marginally to 43,200.

More shocking for many in Japan, where gun-related crime is rare, were a handful of fatal shootings by yakuza this year, including the killing of the mayor of Nagasaki.

Tendo says the shootings are a result of the legal crackdown on yakuza, which has made it harder for them to ply their traditional trades of prostitution, drugs and bid-rigging.

“They’re being forced into a corner, their humanity taken away,” she says. “All the things they used to do for a living have been made illegal, so life has become very hard.”

Experts say this is especially true for gangsters in less affluent parts of Japan, a reflection of the same sort of income gaps that increasingly plague the nation as a whole.

“Yakuza need a lot of money, but depending on where they are, business isn’t going so well,” says Nobuo Komiya, a criminology professor at Tokyo’s Rissho University. “So they turn to guns.”

Descended from medieval gamblers and outlaws, yakuza were long portrayed as latter-day samurai, bound by traditions of honour and duty and living extravagant lives.

Tendo’s father, the leader of a gang linked to the Yamaguchi-gumi, the largest yakuza group, led a “classic” yakuza life replete with Italian suits, imported cars and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

Raised with strict ideas of honour, she was both spoiled and scolded by the tattooed men who frequented her family home.

But she also faced prejudice and bullying because of her father. In response, she joined a gang, took drugs and became the lover of several gangsters before near-fatal beatings and drug overdoses convinced her to change her life.

Now a writer and mother, Tendo has distanced herself from the yakuza world, which she feels is rapidly losing its traditions.

Being a gang member is not illegal in Japan, and until recently the gangs were known for openness.

Their offices even posted signs with their names and membership lists inside.

Gangs co-operated with police, handing over suspects in return for police turning a blind eye to yakuza misdemeanours, but this broke down after organised crime laws were toughened in 1992.

The largest part of yakuza income now comes from pursuits involving stocks, property and finance.

“What we’re going to see from here on is the yakuza becoming more structured, like the US Mafia, and dividing itself between business experts and violence experts,” says Manabu Miyazaki, a writer whose father was also a yakuza.

Mark of the Japanese mafia – 5:00AM Saturday September 15, 2007 – By Elaine Lies – http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/3/story.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10463658&pnum=0

The National Interpol Office identified the Japanese citizen in the town of Galati, where he lived with his wife. He was arrested, early March, and extradited to Japanese authorities at the end of this week.

Takahiro Kawaguchi, aged 35, is the leader of a “shylock” group and a Yakuza pawn, according to information received by Romanian authorities from the Tokyo Interpol Office.

BUCHAREST, Mar 18 http://www.mediafax.ro/english/articole-free/Japanese-Mafia-Under-Boss-Arrested-In-Romania-636596-9.html

Kudo, 70, was found with head injuries lying on a sofa in an upstairs room when fellow gang members brought him breakfast shortly after 9am, the Kyodo news agency reported.

A gun was found by his side and police suspect he committed suicide, although they refused to give details.

Police are investigating a possible link with the murder last week of another top underworld figure, Ryoichi Sugiura.

Sugiura, a senior member of a group affiliated to the Sumiyoshi-kai, a Tokyo-based gang with a history of violent conflict with the Yamaguchi-gumi, was shot in the head and chest as he sat in his car in Tokyo on February 5.

His death was followed by a series of shootings directed at Yamaguchi-gumi properties and raised fears of an all-out turf war in the capital. Recent reports said the two groups had settled their differences peacefully.

The Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun this week quoted unnamed sources as saying that Yamaguchi-gumi bosses admitted their members had shot Sugiura and offered compensation to his gang.

The Kokusui-kai and the Yamaguchi-gumi ended decades of rivalry in August 2005 when the latter decided to expand its influence in Tokyo, away from its traditional stronghold in western Japan. Kudo, 70, and the Yamaguchi-gumi leader Kenichi Shinoda reportedly ended their differences in a traditional sake-sharing ritual.

With an estimated 1,000 members, the Kokusui-kai is dwarfed by the Yamaguchi-gumi, which has a membership estimated at 39,000. Shinoda, who became Japan’s most powerful don in June 2005 and is now serving a six-year jail sentence for firearms possession, reportedly decided to join forces with the Kokusui-kai to seize control of Tokyo neighbourhoods that Kudo had leased to the Sumiyoshi-kai, Japan’s second-biggest yakuza (mafia) gang.

The most recent shootings are thought to be part of a territorial struggle centred on Roppongi, a seedy district of Tokyo packed with bars, restaurants and commercial sex establishments.

Sugiura’s gang, the Kobayashi-kai, is thought to be in charge of collecting protection money from businesses in Roppongi on behalf of the Sumiyoshi-kai.

Justin McCurry in Tokyo – Thursday February 15, 2007 – Guardian Unlimited – http://www.guardian.co.uk/japan/story/0,,2013706,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=12