starguard
Unluckiest Charm in the Box
Man.. and I thought our Black and Hispanic Gangs were tough :shock:
Former gangster details Yamaguchi-gumi By ERIC TALMADGE
TOKYO - Shinji Ishihara's story, as he tells it, starts with a murder.
It was the summer of 1970. Though the Yamaguchi-gumi was easily the biggest gangster syndicate in Japan, with tens of thousands of members, it was still trying to crack the huge Tokyo market for vice, which was tightly controlled by smaller but deeply entrenched gangs.
Ishihara was one of the first Yamaguchi-gumi bosses to try to break their monopoly. With several underlings, he rented a small apartment near a popular red-light district and started a series of scams aimed at cheating the competition out of its profits.
"We'd target other gangs," he recalled, "mainly because they had money and they weren't going to run off and complain to the police."
Often, he would deliberately arrange a violent confrontation with a local gang that would lead to a negotiated truce, and then an alliance. If that didn't work, he had an array of other options that usually had a common result — money in his pocket.
Those were simpler times, when the most fertile racket was gambling. Nowadays the code of Japanese organized crime is wilting under the onslaught of drug trafficking, cybercrime, tougher policing and inroads by gangsters from neighboring China. Japanese crime remains as organized as it gets, but today, Ishihara says, "It's more wild than it used to be."
Still, even back in the supposedly more orderly 1970s, it didn't take long for Ishihara's operation to get out of hand.
One August night, Ishihara drove up to a club where he heard a rival gang — the Kokusui-kai, or Japan Purity League — was running a high-stakes card game. He waited with two fellow gangsters until one of the rivals came outside. Ishihara signaled for him to get in their car, but he panicked and fled. Ishihara chased him down, they fought, and Ishihara slashed his thigh with a short samurai sword. With a major vein cut clean through, the gangster quickly bled to death.
"I hadn't intended to kill him, I just wanted to shake him down," said Ishihara. At 32, he was sentenced to eight years for the murder. It wasn't the first time — or the last — that he would go to jail.
And every time he got out, the Yamaguchi-gumi was there waiting for him. And each time, it had grown bigger, stronger and richer.
___
Japanese gangs — called yakuza, which refers to a bad hand in cards — generally have a simple, pyramid-style structure.
Atop the Yamaguchi-gumi is Kenichi Shinoda, aka Shinobu Tsukasa. He assumed the helm on July 29 last year, but started serving a six-year sentence for gun possession four months later.
Ishihara had met Shinoda in prison. Shinoda, too, had just killed a man with a sword.
"I never imagined he would rise so high," Ishihara said. "But there was something about him."
Below Shinoda are 100 or so bosses who control the "direct affiliates." Each of these, in turn, has its own network, often creating as many as six or seven layers. The lowliest gangs claim membership in just the dozens, if that.
Shinoda's post is largely ceremonial. Most day-to-day decisions are made by the gang's 15 or 20 strongest bosses, who have titles such as "supreme adviser" or "young leader."
The National Police Agency estimates the Yamaguchi-gumi has roughly 40,000 active members, plus thousands who are associated with it but have not taken formal vows. It's among the world's biggest criminal organizations, with annual revenues estimated at over a billion dollars.
Though still based in the western Japan city of Kobe, where it was founded by Harukichi Yamaguchi in 1915, the Yamaguchi-gumi (the "gumi" means gang, or group) is now a major force in Tokyo. Last year, it even swallowed up the rival gang Ishihara tried to shake down decades ago, which itself had been one of Japan's biggest.
Nearly half of all gangsters in Japan belong to the Yamaguchi-gumi, a trend police fear will continue.
Operating a small, independent gang is risky. The Yamaguchi-gumi offers protection and a nationwide network, crucial in running black-market and drug operations. Equally important, however, is the scare value of the gang's name. Just dropping the Yamaguchi-gumi name is enough to make an extortion victim pay up.
Ishihara said each gang must pay monthly dues to the next gang up — an estimated $85,000 for each of the top 100 gangs, translating into an estimated $100 million a year or more in dues alone.
"Failing to pay isn't taken lightly," he said.
___
The Ishihara gang was typical of the Yamaguchi-gumi. Its few dozen members concentrated on the gambling and the sex industries. When prostitution didn't pay enough, Ishihara would lure male customers into compromising situations and blackmail them. At his peak, Ishihara said, he made about $85,000 a month.
Almost as important as the money, however, was the feeling of belonging.
Yakuza gangs are notoriously tight-knit, bound together by elaborate rituals in which sips of rice wine and vows of loyalty are exchanged, turning underlings into "sons" or "brothers" and bosses into "fathers."
Old-school gangsters show their lifetime commitment with full-body tattoos featuring flaming dragons, leaping tigers or Buddhist gods.
A gangster who, for instance, disobeys an order or misses a payment to his boss may have to cut off his own fingertip. Members who are expelled — a punishment reserved for the most severe disobedience — become total outcasts, shunned by other gangs and legitimate employers.
Ishihara said the gangs will always have a ready pool of recruits because they offer an option for young people with nowhere else to go — runaways, minorities, dropouts, anyone who doesn't fall into the acceptable social pattern.
For Ishihara, it was a perfect fit.
He ran away from home at age 12, just five years after the end of World War II. A bar hostess took him in and taught him to read. Three years later, he was back on the streets and in a gang. At 22 he formally became a member of the Yamaguchi-gumi.
That was also the year he was first convicted and sent to prison, for armed robbery.
He would spend 20 of the next 43 years behind bars.
___
Five years ago, after his latest prison stint ended, Ishihara "washed his feet" — gang parlance for retiring.
"It's relatively easy to get out, as long as you have the permission of your superiors," he said. "In fact, once you reach a certain level, it is important that you retire so younger people can rise up to take your place."
He's a stout, healthy 68, shaves his head and wears pinstripes. He retains the flair of his gangster days, is a popular commentator in the tabloid press and has even written a couple of books in which, improbable though it may seem, he offers advice on love and relationships based on his experiences in dealing with women as a gang boss.
"There is nothing more important to a yakuza than women," he said. "You never know when you are going to get sent up, or killed, so you learn not to take them for granted."
Ishihara met his current wife, Yoko, while he was in prison — they corresponded with each other for nine months and were wed without ever actually seeing each other in person. He said he chose to quit the Yamaguchi-gumi because she gave him a new reason to live. He also said he knew he would otherwise end up back in prison — he claims that out of spite he exposed a corrupt police officer and was being targeted by police seeking revenge.
But he also said that he felt the underworld had changed while he was locked away.
"When I joined, there was a kind of mystique to the yakuza," he said. "Now, it's different. People look at us differently."
Japanese police call it the "mafia-ization" of the yakuza.
When Ishihara first went to prison, he left behind a gang that swaggered. Since Yamaguchi-gumi membership, per se, wasn't a crime, gangsters made no secret of it. They wore lapel pins with their gang logo, put up signs outside their headquarters and printed up business cards stating gang and rank.
In return for the long leash, gangsters were expected to observe certain rules. Violence was generally kept low, and between gangsters or their customers. Gangsters would sometimes exchange information with police, or even turn themselves in.
But Ishihara said the business has evolved dramatically, and police reports back that up.
Drugs — especially methamphetamines — now take up a bigger share of the underworld's business, along with stock market manipulation, cybercrime and other new areas. The gambling market has all but vanished. An influx of gangsters from China has broken down old barriers and traditions, raising tensions and violence.
The relationship between gangsters and police has also changed.
Escalating gang wars led to crackdowns and eventually new laws in 1995 strictly limiting gangster activities in public, creating a gangster registry, toughening punishments and making it easier to prosecute organized crime.
But results are mixed. According to the National Police Agency's most recent estimates, annual arrest numbers are around 30,000 and declining, while the number of gang members has risen.
Ishihara said the new laws effectively cut off the cooperation between police and gangsters, sending organized crime deeper underground but doing little to actually dismantle the big syndicates.
"There will always be a Yamaguchi-gumi," he said.
Former gangster details Yamaguchi-gumi By ERIC TALMADGE
TOKYO - Shinji Ishihara's story, as he tells it, starts with a murder.
It was the summer of 1970. Though the Yamaguchi-gumi was easily the biggest gangster syndicate in Japan, with tens of thousands of members, it was still trying to crack the huge Tokyo market for vice, which was tightly controlled by smaller but deeply entrenched gangs.
Ishihara was one of the first Yamaguchi-gumi bosses to try to break their monopoly. With several underlings, he rented a small apartment near a popular red-light district and started a series of scams aimed at cheating the competition out of its profits.
"We'd target other gangs," he recalled, "mainly because they had money and they weren't going to run off and complain to the police."
Often, he would deliberately arrange a violent confrontation with a local gang that would lead to a negotiated truce, and then an alliance. If that didn't work, he had an array of other options that usually had a common result — money in his pocket.
Those were simpler times, when the most fertile racket was gambling. Nowadays the code of Japanese organized crime is wilting under the onslaught of drug trafficking, cybercrime, tougher policing and inroads by gangsters from neighboring China. Japanese crime remains as organized as it gets, but today, Ishihara says, "It's more wild than it used to be."
Still, even back in the supposedly more orderly 1970s, it didn't take long for Ishihara's operation to get out of hand.
One August night, Ishihara drove up to a club where he heard a rival gang — the Kokusui-kai, or Japan Purity League — was running a high-stakes card game. He waited with two fellow gangsters until one of the rivals came outside. Ishihara signaled for him to get in their car, but he panicked and fled. Ishihara chased him down, they fought, and Ishihara slashed his thigh with a short samurai sword. With a major vein cut clean through, the gangster quickly bled to death.
"I hadn't intended to kill him, I just wanted to shake him down," said Ishihara. At 32, he was sentenced to eight years for the murder. It wasn't the first time — or the last — that he would go to jail.
And every time he got out, the Yamaguchi-gumi was there waiting for him. And each time, it had grown bigger, stronger and richer.
___
Japanese gangs — called yakuza, which refers to a bad hand in cards — generally have a simple, pyramid-style structure.
Atop the Yamaguchi-gumi is Kenichi Shinoda, aka Shinobu Tsukasa. He assumed the helm on July 29 last year, but started serving a six-year sentence for gun possession four months later.
Ishihara had met Shinoda in prison. Shinoda, too, had just killed a man with a sword.
"I never imagined he would rise so high," Ishihara said. "But there was something about him."
Below Shinoda are 100 or so bosses who control the "direct affiliates." Each of these, in turn, has its own network, often creating as many as six or seven layers. The lowliest gangs claim membership in just the dozens, if that.
Shinoda's post is largely ceremonial. Most day-to-day decisions are made by the gang's 15 or 20 strongest bosses, who have titles such as "supreme adviser" or "young leader."
The National Police Agency estimates the Yamaguchi-gumi has roughly 40,000 active members, plus thousands who are associated with it but have not taken formal vows. It's among the world's biggest criminal organizations, with annual revenues estimated at over a billion dollars.
Though still based in the western Japan city of Kobe, where it was founded by Harukichi Yamaguchi in 1915, the Yamaguchi-gumi (the "gumi" means gang, or group) is now a major force in Tokyo. Last year, it even swallowed up the rival gang Ishihara tried to shake down decades ago, which itself had been one of Japan's biggest.
Nearly half of all gangsters in Japan belong to the Yamaguchi-gumi, a trend police fear will continue.
Operating a small, independent gang is risky. The Yamaguchi-gumi offers protection and a nationwide network, crucial in running black-market and drug operations. Equally important, however, is the scare value of the gang's name. Just dropping the Yamaguchi-gumi name is enough to make an extortion victim pay up.
Ishihara said each gang must pay monthly dues to the next gang up — an estimated $85,000 for each of the top 100 gangs, translating into an estimated $100 million a year or more in dues alone.
"Failing to pay isn't taken lightly," he said.
___
The Ishihara gang was typical of the Yamaguchi-gumi. Its few dozen members concentrated on the gambling and the sex industries. When prostitution didn't pay enough, Ishihara would lure male customers into compromising situations and blackmail them. At his peak, Ishihara said, he made about $85,000 a month.
Almost as important as the money, however, was the feeling of belonging.
Yakuza gangs are notoriously tight-knit, bound together by elaborate rituals in which sips of rice wine and vows of loyalty are exchanged, turning underlings into "sons" or "brothers" and bosses into "fathers."
Old-school gangsters show their lifetime commitment with full-body tattoos featuring flaming dragons, leaping tigers or Buddhist gods.
A gangster who, for instance, disobeys an order or misses a payment to his boss may have to cut off his own fingertip. Members who are expelled — a punishment reserved for the most severe disobedience — become total outcasts, shunned by other gangs and legitimate employers.
Ishihara said the gangs will always have a ready pool of recruits because they offer an option for young people with nowhere else to go — runaways, minorities, dropouts, anyone who doesn't fall into the acceptable social pattern.
For Ishihara, it was a perfect fit.
He ran away from home at age 12, just five years after the end of World War II. A bar hostess took him in and taught him to read. Three years later, he was back on the streets and in a gang. At 22 he formally became a member of the Yamaguchi-gumi.
That was also the year he was first convicted and sent to prison, for armed robbery.
He would spend 20 of the next 43 years behind bars.
___
Five years ago, after his latest prison stint ended, Ishihara "washed his feet" — gang parlance for retiring.
"It's relatively easy to get out, as long as you have the permission of your superiors," he said. "In fact, once you reach a certain level, it is important that you retire so younger people can rise up to take your place."
He's a stout, healthy 68, shaves his head and wears pinstripes. He retains the flair of his gangster days, is a popular commentator in the tabloid press and has even written a couple of books in which, improbable though it may seem, he offers advice on love and relationships based on his experiences in dealing with women as a gang boss.
"There is nothing more important to a yakuza than women," he said. "You never know when you are going to get sent up, or killed, so you learn not to take them for granted."
Ishihara met his current wife, Yoko, while he was in prison — they corresponded with each other for nine months and were wed without ever actually seeing each other in person. He said he chose to quit the Yamaguchi-gumi because she gave him a new reason to live. He also said he knew he would otherwise end up back in prison — he claims that out of spite he exposed a corrupt police officer and was being targeted by police seeking revenge.
But he also said that he felt the underworld had changed while he was locked away.
"When I joined, there was a kind of mystique to the yakuza," he said. "Now, it's different. People look at us differently."
Japanese police call it the "mafia-ization" of the yakuza.
When Ishihara first went to prison, he left behind a gang that swaggered. Since Yamaguchi-gumi membership, per se, wasn't a crime, gangsters made no secret of it. They wore lapel pins with their gang logo, put up signs outside their headquarters and printed up business cards stating gang and rank.
In return for the long leash, gangsters were expected to observe certain rules. Violence was generally kept low, and between gangsters or their customers. Gangsters would sometimes exchange information with police, or even turn themselves in.
But Ishihara said the business has evolved dramatically, and police reports back that up.
Drugs — especially methamphetamines — now take up a bigger share of the underworld's business, along with stock market manipulation, cybercrime and other new areas. The gambling market has all but vanished. An influx of gangsters from China has broken down old barriers and traditions, raising tensions and violence.
The relationship between gangsters and police has also changed.
Escalating gang wars led to crackdowns and eventually new laws in 1995 strictly limiting gangster activities in public, creating a gangster registry, toughening punishments and making it easier to prosecute organized crime.
But results are mixed. According to the National Police Agency's most recent estimates, annual arrest numbers are around 30,000 and declining, while the number of gang members has risen.
Ishihara said the new laws effectively cut off the cooperation between police and gangsters, sending organized crime deeper underground but doing little to actually dismantle the big syndicates.
"There will always be a Yamaguchi-gumi," he said.