With Risk, Japanese City Takes On Once Accepted Fact of Life: Its Gangsters

KITAKYUSHU, Japan — Two years ago, the authorities in this gritty rust-belt region declared war on the yakuza, Japan’s entrenched organized crime syndicates. And that is exactly what they got.

Since this city and other local governments beefed up regulations to take on the yakuza — making it a criminal offense for companies and individuals to do business with them — there has been a death threat against Kitakyushu’s mayor and his family, hand grenades tossed at the homes of corporate executives and a construction company chairman gunned down in front of his wife.

The police say the attacks, and many other lesser threats and intimidation tactics, are the doing of the Kudokai, a gang with more than 650 members that officials call one of the most dangerous of Japan’s yakuza. The attacks have prompted the National Police Agency to propose giving law enforcement more powers to search and arrest gang members.

The yakuza remain a remarkably visible presence in Japan, as they have been for centuries. But law enforcement officials say the violence in Kitakyushu may prove a turning point, by shocking a public that has become increasingly fed up.

Any romantic aura that may have enveloped the gangsters in the past is falling away, the authorities say. They added that the Japanese increasingly see the yakuza simply as mobsters much like their counterparts in other countries, making money from drugs, gambling and extortion, particularly from their favorite target, Japan’s bloated construction industry.

Full Story (NY Times)