Yamaguchi-gumi

The largest criminal organisation in the world, which for most of its history operated in the open with an office sign on the door. The Yamaguchi-gumi was founded in Kobe in 1915 as a dockworkers' labour gang and grew into the dominant yakuza syndicate in Japan, with member groups across almost every prefecture. Japanese organised crime occupies an unusual legal position: membership itself was not illegal, syndicates maintained public headquarters, published newsletters, issued business cards and were tracked by the police as recognised entities, an arrangement that traded visibility for a degree of restraint. Its income came from protection, construction and dock labour contracting, gambling, loan-sharking, entertainment districts and, increasingly, financial and property fraud. The organisation distributed relief after the Kobe earthquake of 1995 faster than the government did, which attracted comment at the time about what that said of the state. Members are identified with full-body tattooing and with yubitsume, the amputation of a fingertip as apology. Exclusion ordinances from 2011 made it an offence for businesses to pay or deal with syndicates, which cut the revenue base sharply. The organisation split in 2015 when several member groups broke away, and the feud that followed produced shootings and a police designation restricting both factions. Membership has fallen by roughly three quarters since the early 1990s. Its ageing membership is now a documented problem. Estimated numbers have dropped to a few thousand. The syndicate was founded in 1915 and is based in Kobe. Japanese police counted around 184 thousand yakuza nationwide in 1963 and a small fraction of that today. Yakuza groups are designated and monitored under a law of 1991. Kobe is a port city of around 1.5 million people.

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