Jake Adelstein, author of
Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter On The
Police Beat in Japan, looks at the yakuza these days in his column in the Japan Times.
A number of theories have
been put forward on the reasons behind the 2015 split of the country’s largest
crime syndicate, the Yamaguchi-gumi.
Some say the factions that
left the organization and formed a group called the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi were
egged on by the police, who had deliberately encouraged suspicions to grow
among rival syndicates. It’s worth noting that police officers stood guard outside
the new group’s headquarters when it announced its existence to the public.
Others believe the split was
supported by several former Yamaguchi-gumi syndicate bosses who had been
expelled with Tadamasa Goto in 2008. Those involved in organized crime call the
cull the “Goto Shock,” a nod to the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the same
year. Indeed, Goto allegedly bankrolled the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi, allowing the
new organization to get up and running.
And then there’s Morimasa
Ohta, a syndicate leader who had been banished with Goto before eventually
joining the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi as a boss. Ohta’s tell-all memoir, “Ketsubetsu”
(“Blood Parting“) which was published in July 2015, weeks before the split, is
now believed to have been a call to revolt. The book sales have since become
problematic because Ohta had retired from organized crime when it was
published. Now that he’s joined the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi, however, Ohta’s
royalty payments could contradict legislation on organized crime. The law
prohibits payments to anyone involved in a crime syndicate.
Yet, none of these theories
completely explain why the veteran Yamaguchi-gumi members decided to leave the
powerful crime syndicate when they were nearing the end of their careers.
You can read the rest of the
column via the below link:
You can also read my Crime
Beat column about Jake Adelstein and Japanese organized crime via the below
link:
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