Grassroots anti-mafia organization?

It hardly seems possible, but that’s Japan for you.

Read The Independent Article on The Town that Took on the Yakuza from the September 9th online issue.

Japan’s mafia seemed untouchable – until a group of residents risked everything to launch a court fight to drive the gangsters out. By David McNeill in Kurume City

A well-earned reputation for unpredictability and violence keeps journalists away from the Japanese mafia, or yakuza, but a vicious turf battle between two rival gangs in Kyushu, southern Japan, has made them reluctant media fodder. The two-year war has caused six deaths and two dozen shootings and bombings. Now, in an 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 use weapons you might see in the Iraq war: grenades, bombs and guns that can shoot people 500m away,” says Osamu Kabashima, the lawyer who is representing the 1,500 plaintiffs. “My clients have had enough. They want to live in peace, and they’re putting their lives on the line to achieve it for the sake of their children and grandchildren.”

In the most notorious episode in the war, a gangster hopped up on amphetamines walked into a hospital and pumped two bullets into an innocent man mistaken for a rival. In another, outside here, the head office of the 1,000-member Dojin-kai gang, in a busy shopping area, a machine-gun ambush sprayed bullets everywhere. The attacks snapped the patience of locals, who plan 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, says Japan’s media. “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 praised the plaintiffs and called on the government to “drive the yakuza into extinction”.

That is unlikely. Japan’s National Police Agency estimates the country has 86,000 gangsters, many times the strength of the US mafia at its peak. A single group, the Yamaguchi-gumi, is the General Motors of organised crime, with nearly 40,000 members across Japan and a high-walled compound in one of the wealthiest parts of Kobe City. Magazines, comics and movies glamorise the yakuza, who operate in plain sight in a way unthinkable to Western observers.

Dojin-kai’s headquarters is public and known to any Kurume taxi driver. Signs 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 new HQ, immediately identifiable by its business nameplate, is a two-storey compound in one of Kurume’s better neighbourhoods. After a tense conversation, we’re allowed to talk to the acting boss, who shows us into a conference room dominated by portraits of chairman Yoshikazu Matsuo, murdered last year, and his replacement Tetsuji Kobayashi, who is in jail.

“You can’t publish my name,” says the man, a 35-year-old who chain smokes through the interview. “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 Mr 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?” Mr Kabashima and his family have lived in fear since his name was published in the media last year, but he says his foes are “not stupid enough” to attack him.

The yakuza have long occupied an ambiguous position in Japan. Like their Italian cousins, they have deep if murky historical links with the country’s ruling party, the Liberal Democrats. A reputation for keeping disputes among themselves, not harming “non-combatants”, protected them from the ire of citizens and the attentions of the police. That ambiguity was meant to have ended in 1992 when the government introduced tough anti-mob legislation, punishment for yakuza excesses during the booming 1980s when they moved into property and other legitimate businesses.

But 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: wiretapping, plea bargaining and witness protection, says Joshua Adelstein, author of a new book on the yakuza. “As the yakuza continue to evolve and get into more sophisticated crimes, the police have had a tough time keeping up.”

A new police White Paper warns that the yakuza have moved into securities trading and infected hundreds of Japan’s listed companies. Experts say the Yamaguchi-gumi, in particular, has resources to rival Japan’s larger corporations. The lack of legal tools to fight the yakuza is painfully obvious in Kyushu, where the law only allows the plaintiffs to challenge hoods within a 500m radius of their homes. “It’s not easy to kick them out of town,” laments one. “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 they move, the mob will pop up somewhere else in Kurume, admits a senior official at the city office, which is backing the plaintiffs. “The Japanese have learned to live with the yakuza,” said the official, who also asked to remain nameless.

The Dojin-kai are believed to operate protection rackets, transport firms, sex businesses and loan-sharking across the city. If unchallenged, the mob invests huge untaxed profits in real estate, eventually taking over whole blocks of cities like this. “We have to hope that 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 problems began in 1986-87 when a feud between the Dojin-kai and a local affiliate of the Yamaguchi-gumi claimed nine lives and injured 16 people. Local people organised a protest march on the gang headquarters. The latest chapter began in May 2006 when the long-time Dojin-kai boss Seijiro Matsuo announced his resignation, sparking a war of succession with a splinter group, Kyushu Seido-kai.

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,” frets 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.”

As the legal battle takes off, the gangs appear to be winding down their war. Seido-kai recently announced the resignation of its chairman and the end of hostilities with Dojin-kai in a statement sent to the local police. But the plaintiffs still live in fear of intimidation or worse, and the authorities have given them beepers linked to local police stations. “Unless we take action against them, the group will keep growing stronger,” said one. “We don’t want them in this town.”

People living close to the Dojin-kai building are pessimistic that anything will change without government intervention. “When the gangs moved here we protested to the city and they did nothing,” recalls a woman. “The government didn’t even come to see us. At least the gangsters visited door-to-door to introduce themselves,” she said, explaining how they brought with them pink and white rice cakes, a traditional symbol of good luck and happiness. “It was nothing to be happy about,” she adds.

The stories Jake Adelstein wrote as a crime reporter for a Japanese newspaper have earned him and his family a death threat from one of the country’s most notorious and influential yakuza. Writing a book about crime and criminal culture in Japan is likely to have further enraged the Tokyo uderworld. Adelstein never planned it this way.  

Adelstein, 39, from Missouri, became the first foreigner to be taken on as a staff writer for a Japanese-language newspaper when he joined the Yomiuri Shimbun in April 1993. He had experienced Japan as an exchange student – albeit one with interests in karate and Buddhism – and studied Japanese before passing a newspaper entrance exam and joining the Yomiuri. As with all cub reporters he landed on the police and organised-crime beat, which meant close contact with policemen and gangsters and eventually the material for the forthcoming Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan.     

 “It’s not all about the yakuza,” says Adelstein. “It’s about crime and criminal culture, including human trafficking, murder and serial rape in Japan and how the media here covers it. Consider it a primer of the dark side of Japan as seen through the eyes of a police reporter. It tells you a lot about the Japanese police as well.”

 The impression he initially built up was of Japan’s yakuza groups being similar to the officers charged with bringing them to book. But that has changed, he believes.

 “My impression was that both had their stringent codes of honour and duty and a grudging respect for each other,” he says. “Now, I think, with most yakuza, money trumps everything and the cops don’t have respect for them any more. I have a lot more respect for the cops since I now understand how difficult their job is. How the hell are they going to bust these organisations if they can’t wire-tap, can’t do undercover operations, can’t plea bargain and can’t offer witnesses any real protection? They are handicapped while the yakuza have a tactical advantage, politically and financially.

 “There was a time when the two sides had an uneasy truce,” he continues. “When there was a gang war and shooting was involved, the yakuza quickly offered up someone to the police. Not necessarily the real criminal, but someone. In the good old days the organised crime cops would drop by the yakuza offices, have a cup of tea and get updates on who was rising and falling in the organisation.”

 When Japan’s largest underworld group, the Osaka-based Yamaguchi-gumi, was smaller the police were able to play off various yakuza groups against each other. But that too has changed.

 “The Yamaguchi-gumi is the Wal-Mart of the Japanese mafia and they are driving all the little mom and pop yakuza out of business, efficiently and ruthlessly,” Adelstein says. “They don’t feel a need to get along with the police any more. Last year, allegedly, when a group of Aichi prefectural cops raided a Yamaguchi-gumi office, they found photos of themselves and their families tacked on the walls. The former taboos about attacking journalists are gone as well. Anyone is fair game.”

 Adelstein’s book took about 2½ years to write and was completed after he left the Yomiuri in 2005. Adelstein says he loved his job, built up good working relationships with police officers and was fascinated by Japan’s underworld. That fascination means his life – and those of his family – are now on the line.

 According to police statistics, there are 80,000 gang members in Japan and the Yamaguchi-gumi is without question the largest and most powerful. In Tokyo alone it has more than 800 front companies ranging from construction businesses to auditing firms to cake shops. It’s all a far cry from the traditional businesses of drugs, protection and prostitution on which underworld empires were previously built.

 His trawls though the underbelly of Japanese society also revealed links between organised crime and the political world, with lawmakers appearing in police organisational charts of the Yamaguchi-gumi and others accepting political donations from gang bosses.

 But the story that changed Adelstein’s life most came about on May 18, 2001, when the FBI arranged for Tadamasa Goto – the “John Gotti of Japan” – to travel to the US for a liver transplant. Goto is the head of the Goto-gumi, an offshoot of the Yamaguchi-gumi that was used by the Yamaguchigumi to expand its business interests into Tokyo. In return, Goto provided the US with information on yakuza moneylaundering operations and front businesses in the US, although it fell far short of what he had promised before the operation.

 The information led to a series of busts, as well as friction between law-enforcement authorities on the two sides of the Pacific Ocean about the sharing of information.

 In 2005 Goto discovered Adelstein had learned of the transplant and was planning to write a scoop. One of his associates unleashed an oblique threat, which was followed by a formal meeting with Goto’s representatives. The offer was clear, Adelstein recalls. He was told to “erase the story or be erased”. The same went for his wife and children.

 Adelstein took advice from a senior Japanese police officer, dropped the story and resigned from the newspaper. But instead of killing the story he planned to incorporate it into a book that, given Goto’s poor health, would be published after his death. Goto defied the odds, however, and is still alive. Unfortunately for Adelstein, the contents of the book were leaked and became common knowledge among Japan’s criminal fraternity.

 “I am very concerned,” he says. “Goto’s group does things like smash dump trucks into stores that won’t pay protection money, uses bombs, invades homes, beats people in front of their families … I’m certainly an enemy.”

 The FBI are keeping a close watch on Adelstein’s family in the US while local police are monitoring his well-being in Japan.

 “My wife is very angry with me; my kids are confused,” Adelstein says. “I’ve had to learn to shoot a rifle and I’m in constant touch with the police on both sides of the ocean. I’ve blown thousands of dollars to install security systems and to make sure I got my best source out of Japan and safe.

 “If the psycho would only have the decency to leave my family and friends out of it, that would be great. But he has no honour and no morals. He’s capable of doublecrossing the Yamaguchi-gumi and the FBI and he has lots of money.”

 Adelstein’s only glimmer of hope, he says, is if the Yamaguchigumi excommunicate Goto for betraying their business interests in the US. Even so, Goto has hundreds of loyal henchmen. “I have no idea what the hell to do,” Adelstein says. “I miss my family, but until things are settled every time I’m with them I put them in firing range.

 “I’m hoping that Shinobu Tsukasa, the honourable head of the Yamaguchi-gumi, sends me a thank you letter: ‘Mr Adelstein, we appreciate you pointing out this traitor in our midst. Go live in peace and continue to write. We will not kill you for the time being.’ That would be nice. You see, I still have a sense of humour.”

  ………………………………………………

 Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan

(to be published by Kodansha International in November)

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Antony Funnell: An eclectic mix of stories today: Japanese criminals; long-dead politicians; and the Russian judiciary. Not all at once, of course.

So, where to start?

Well let’s begin with the Japanese mafia, the Yakuza, and the desire of one mob boss to terminate (with extreme prejudice) the career of an American-born journalist.

Of course that would be bad enough except for the fact that the mobster involved just happens to head up a faction of the yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s biggest crime syndicate.

Now the journalist in question is Jake Adelstein, the first American ever hired as a regular staff writer for a major Japanese newspaper.

For much of his time in Japan, Adelstein worked the police round, reporting on crime and its consequences.

He left that job when he found out his life was under threat. And he’s now living outside of Japan and rather bravely, or perhaps rashly, preparing to publish a book later this year on the Yakuza and the man who wants him dead.

His story not only reads like a crime novel, it’s also a good insight into the way the media operates in Japan.