The Case Of The Yakking Yakuza

Jake Adelstein, the author of Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan, offers a piece at the Daily Beast on the arrest of a Japanese crime boss.

TOKYO, Japan — In southern Japan, where violent gang wars continue for years, everyone has a long memory and forgiveness is rarely given. But sometimes justice is served.

This week the Japanese National Police Agency used evidence from a cold case dating back 16 years to arrest the heads of Japan’s “most violent” yakuza group—the Kudo-kai—on charges of homicide. The cops have made dismantling the Kudo-kai a police priority and want to deliver a message to the remaining 300 full-time members that resistance would be futile. Japanese authorities also have won the support of the United States in this battle. In July, the U.S. Treasury Department designated the Kudo-kai a transnational criminal organization, noting it was Japan’s “most violent yakuza syndicate,” and froze the assets of the same top executives now under arrest for murder.

On September 11, the Fukuoka Prefectural Police Organized Crime Division and the riot squad stormed the headquarters of the Kudo-kai and the home of the group’s leader, Satoru Nomura, age 67, and arrested him for his role in conspiring to murder Kunihiro Kajiwara, a leader in the local fishing industry. The Kudo-kai’s second in command, Fumio Tanoue, 58, initially escaped arrest, but turned himself in to the police on September 13.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/16/the-case-of-the-yakking-yakuza.html

You can also read my Crime Beat column on Jake Adelstein's Tokyo Vice via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/03/tokyo-vice-american-reporter-on-police.html