Gang hits prompts fears of mob war in Tokyo
Pastor Dale Morgan
Gang hits prompts fears of mob war in Tokyo*
· Murder of senior yakuza spawns series of shootings
· Japan's biggest syndicates in feud over territory
Justin McCurry in Tokyo
Thursday February 8, 2007
The Guardian
The fatal shooting of a top gangster in Tokyo has prompted fears of an
all-out turf war between two of Japan's fiercest underworld organisations.
Police have arrested two members of a gang affiliated to the
Sumiyoshi-kai, Japan's second-biggest crime syndicate. Both men are
being held on suspicion of shooting at a rival gang's offices.
Officers quoted one suspect as saying that he and his accomplice had
targeted a group linked to the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's most powerful
crime syndicate, in apparent retaliation for the killing this week of
Ryoichi Sugiura, a senior member of a Sumiyoshi affiliate, the Mainichi
newspaper reported.
Sugiura, 43, was shot in the head and chest as he sat in his car in
central Tokyo on Monday morning. About an hour later, shots were fired
into the Yamaguchi-gumi offices.
Two further shootings at properties also linked to the Yamaguchi-gumi
were reported on Tuesday as police struggled to prevent open warfare.
Sugiura was believed to have been negotiating a settlement to a
territorial dispute in Tokyo's seedy Roppongi district with the
Kokusui-kai, a smaller Tokyo-based gang that joined the Yamaguchi-gumi
in 2005, just as the latter began extending its influence in the capital
and other parts of eastern Japan.
The Yamaguchi-gumi is based in the west of Japan, where the economy is
still struggling to emerge from the recession. The gang's expansion
plans were hatched when Kenichi Shinoda replaced Yoshinori Watanabe as
the gang's godfather in a peaceful handover of power in July 2005,
making him Japan's top yakuza don. He is now directing operations from
prison, where he has been serving a six-year sentence for firearms
possession since December 2005.
Shinoda, who was jailed for 13 years in the 1970s for killing a rival
with a sword, immediately joined forces with the Kokusui-kai, which had
leased territory to the Yamaguchi-gumi's fiercest enemies, including the
Sumiyoshi-kai. There are fears that this week's shootings could be the
result of the Yamaguchi-gumi's attempts to seize back the leases.
Yakuza watchers said that if negotiations continued to falter, there
could be more bloodletting.
"It could get a lot worse before it gets better," Benjamin Fulford,
author of several books on Japan's crime syndicates, told the Guardian.
"It's hard to say. Generally speaking, the yakuza don't like wars
because they end up dead or in prison. My guess is that it could be
full-on war, which could be spectacular as they're both pretty
aggressive gangs."
Despite increasing police crackdowns, yakuza membership is rising amid
richer pickings from extortion, prostitution, drug smuggling, property
deals and even stock market transactions as the Japanese economy emerges
from the doldrums.
There were about 87,000 gangsters active in Japan at the end of 2005,
according to the National Police Agency.
Nearly 40,000 belong to the Yamaguchi-gumi, which has had much more
success at attracting members from smaller gangs which are increasingly
under pressure from police investigations.