Japan fighting gangsters’ influence in politics, entertainment, sports circles


Nobody laughed when a gossip weekly linked one of Japan’s most popular comedians and variety show hosts to Japan’s top crime syndicate recently.

Friday magazine ran pictures of Shinsuke Shimada consorting with the yakuza after he himself admitted to doing so and abruptly retired last month.

The episode underlined the huge presence that gangsters still have in Japanese society despite recent attempts to curb their influence.

The yakuza ― as gangsters are popularly known here ― are not outlawed, but police keep tabs on their activities, moving in only if they flout the law.
 
As a veteran who hosted several top-rated shows every week, Shimada should have known better. People like him, who have extensive links in society and a huge impact on it, are among the favorite prey of the yakuza.

So too are politicians and well-known sportsmen.

Several years ago, Shimada badmouthed the yakuza on one of his shows. In response, local gangsters blasted the TV station day and night through loudspeakers. The concerned comedian asked a professional boxer with ties to the yakuza to mediate. The harassment stopped but he became beholden to the gangsters.

At a press conference, Shimada claimed that his association with the gangsters was not really serious enough to land him in trouble. But he obviously did not tell all.

On Sept. 9, Friday carried incriminating photographs showing Shimada at parties and golf tournaments involving the yakuza that suggested he and the gangsters were more than passing acquaintances.

Earlier this month, Japan’s police chief Takaharu Ando told reporters: “It is extremely regrettable that an entertainer who has huge social influence should mix with the yakuza.

“We will do whatever we can to help the entertainment world sever its ties with the underworld.”

But some of those ties could be hard to break.

Japanese gangsters, or more often their front organizations, have come to play a major role in providing the logistics needed by entertainers to stage concerts around Japan.

Their numbers, although on the decline, certainly cannot be ignored.

The Yamaguchi-gumi, the biggest and wealthiest syndicate in Japan, has 35,000 regular and affiliate members ― almost half of Japan’s gangster population ― and is dominant in the western half of the country.

The Sumiyoshi-kai, the second largest, is a loose confederation of small gangs with 20,000 members. Its headquarters are in Tokyo and the gang is mostly active in eastern Japan.

The third largest is the Inagawa-kai with 15,000 members. Based in the Tokyo-Yokohama area, it is one of the first yakuza groups to venture outside of Japan.

Although their origins are unclear, the yakuza are said to have evolved from groups of shady peddlers and gamblers in 18th-century Japan.

Today’s syndicates are ruled by bosses who enforce a strict code of justice and demand absolute loyalty and respect from their members.

The yakuza, who are fond of tattoos and demand “errant” members to amputate their little finger as an expression of apology, are a scourge to the economy in general.

They rake in billions of yen in revenue from such activities as extortion, running gambling dens and sex-related businesses, illegally importing guns and drugs, manipulating the stock market, bid-rigging and bank fraud.

The ubiquitous food stalls that sell yakitori and other Japanese tidbits at annual shrine and temple festivals around the country were once a virtual monopoly of groups with links to the yakuza.

Last year, sumo wrestling, Japan’s national sport, was in tatters after wrestlers were found helping gangsters get ringside seats and betting on professional baseball games through illegal rackets that channel their profits to the yakuza.

As punishment, 10 wrestlers were suspended and one champion banned for life. To regain public trust, the Japan Sumo Association vowed to sever all links with the yakuza.

But the gangster population has already slowly declined over the years, especially after a 1991 law that allowed the police to step up monitoring of syndicates.

The police have also been closing in on syndicate elders. Yamaguchi-gumi’s current head Shinobu Tsukasa was jailed in 2005 for illegal gun possession and released only in April.

The recession in Japan has also hit the yakuza, pushing many gangs to expand to China and South-east Asia to link up with foreign syndicates.

But surprisingly, not everything about the yakuza is bad. The Yamaguchi-gumi, for example, helped in relief efforts during the 1995 Kobe earthquake as well as the earthquake-cum-tsunami disaster in north-eastern Japan in March.

Residents who live near the Yamaguchi-gumi’s headquarters say young gangsters are civic-minded, helping to clean up choked drains and even sprucing up the neighborhood.

Although the yakuza refer to themselves as “chivalrous organizations,” most people see them as “anti-social forces.”

In recent years, local governments have stepped up efforts to rid their communities of the yakuza’s influence, using local laws that make it an offence to knowingly do business with the yakuza.

These laws are aimed at weakening the gangsters economically, forcing at least the smaller groups to disband.

Department stores in Osaka for instance have declared they will no longer accept orders from crime syndicates for the purchase of seasonal gifts to be sent to their business associates.

Car dealers nationwide have also pledged not to sell new vehicles to gangsters.

Next month, Tokyo will be among the last prefectures to enforce local laws requiring businesses to abstain from dealing with the yakuza. To publicize the new law, Tokyo police last month descended on the Kitazawa Hachiman Shrine in Tokyo’s Setagaya district during its annual festival to hand out fliers to worshippers.

The shrine successfully purged the yakuza from its premises 20 years ago. Since then it has counted on residents to manage the food stalls at festivals. As chief priest Tsugihisa Yajima said: “I hope the new law will give a push to the momentum now building up towards getting rid of the yakuza.”

By Kwan Weng Kin

(The Straits Times)