Organized Crime

Hello Kitty, yakuza working in the nuclear industry, coffee and cigarettes, 2012 was a year chock full of news. Here are some of our favorite stories we ran in 2012.

Because of Japan's personal privacy protection laws, created by the LDP to discourage magazine reporters for writing about their scandals and organized crime ties, I'm limited in what I can…

This week Kazuo aka Kazuya Uchibori, the de facto head of the Inagawa-kai, Japan’s 3rd largest organized crime group, turned himself into the Tokyo Metropolitan Police. He was wanted on…

To give you an idea of the scale of organized crime front companies in Japan, in Tokyo alone, there were over 1,000 at the end of 2010. And those are…

In post-war Japan, people would sign a life insurance contract. And go straight out, and kill themselves under the nearest train. Eventually, the life insurance companies started putting in one-year…

On July 26th 2012, the National Diet approved the revisions of the Organized Crime Group Countermeasures Law (改正暴力団対策法). Under the new laws, the police can specially designate organized crime groups…

"The Inagawa-kai is a yakuza group and our family motto is one word 我慢 (gaman/endurance). This is a time when that motto is very important--in the face of a rain…

Portions of this article were previously posted on The Atlantic Wire and have been updated. After the arrest of a yakuza boss for his alleged role in supplying workers to TEPCO’s Fukushima Daichi…

Sumiyoshi-kai boss arrested for dispatching yakuza to Fukushima Nuclear Plant. The expert panel indicated that having ex-convicts, criminals, debtors and yakuza working at nuclear power plants might be a bad…

U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement have announced that they will share more than $60,000 in assets seized from yakuza Susumu Kajiyama with the Nevada Gaming Control Board.