Yamaguchi-gumi Split and Yakuza Gang War
Japan's largest organised crime syndicate split in 2015 and the police published warnings about a gang war. The Yamaguchi-gumi was founded in Kobe in 1915 as a dockworkers' labour agency and grew into a federation of hundreds of affiliated groups with tens of thousands of members, running construction contracting, finance, entertainment, protection and drugs, with offices, name cards and a corporate structure. Yakuza organisations in Japan are not illegal. They are registered as designated criminal groups, their headquarters are known, and they have historically operated in a semi-public space that includes disaster relief — the syndicate ran soup kitchens after the Kobe earthquake of 1995 faster than the government did. The split in August 2015 followed years of pressure. Anti-exclusion ordinances passed by every prefecture from 2010 made it an offence for businesses to pay yakuza, which cut the traditional revenue; membership had fallen by more than half since the early 1990s. Thirteen affiliated groups left to form the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi, in a quarrel over the dominance of the Nagoya-based faction that had taken over the leadership and over the level of dues demanded from affiliates. A further split followed in 2017. The violence that resulted was real but limited — shootings, arson and vehicle attacks — and both organisations were designated as being in a state of grave conflict in 2020, which allows the police to close their offices. Total yakuza membership has continued to fall and is now under 20,000. The decline has an ageing problem behind it as well as the ordinances. More than half of remaining members are over fifty, recruitment has collapsed, and much of the fraud the police now investigate is run by unaffiliated groups with no name, no office and nothing to designate.
- Year: 2015 CE
- Category: Social
