2aguy
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- Jul 19, 2014
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This is how it actually works in Japan...more reading...more links...
Gangs buying up guns and hitmen.....2015
Yakuza rivals buying up guns, recruiting assassins - AJW by The Asahi Shimbun
By proposing high pay, the recruiters are trying to encourage the gang warfare by hinting that those who carry out the first hits will be paid more,” the source said.
A former high-ranking gang member living in the Kanto region said he began receiving calls asking about the availability of loaded guns from around late August, when the Yamaguchi-gumi split came to light.
The calls, eight in total, to the former gangster’s mobile phone continued into September.
Without saying who made the calls, the former gangster said the requests likely came from both sides involved in the Yamaguchi-gumi breakup.
The large number of intermediaries involved in supplying guns made it difficult to pinpoint who was actually going on the shopping spree, the former mobster said.
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By Benjamin David Baker
November 20, 2015
Japan Faces a Possible Mob War After Yakuza Gang Fractures
However, few things are more dangerous than when mob families go to war.
This fear seems to have been vindicated. According to the Asahi Shimbun, both the Yamaguchi-gumi and the thirteen splinter groups have been busy buying up weapons and lining up hitmen. The first shots in this mob war might have already been fired outside a hot spring facility in Iida, Nagano Prefecture. The 43-year-old man who was shot and killed outside a bathhouse on October 6 wanted to leave a Yamaguchi-gumi affiliate and join the newly formed rival organization consisting of the rebel gangs.
In what might be retaliation for this murder, a boss in the original Yamaguchi-gumi was killed on Sunday. Tatsuyuki Hishida was found tied up in his apartment after being bludgeoned to death. Police report that the killing was most likely in response to the Yamaguchi-gumi’s split.
The Japanese government has good reason to fear a gang war. Between 1985 and 1987, 25 Yakuza members were killedand around 70 were injured in a feud involving affiliated rival gangs. That bloodshed was triggered in part over disagreement over who should become the head of the Yamaguchi-gumi. A few years ago, another war broke out between two rival gangs on the southern island of Kyushu, in which mobsters attacked each other with machine guns and grenades.
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The Great Japanese Gang Wars
The season for pineapples (yakuza slang for hand grenades) may finally be over. Jake Adelstein and Nathalie-Kyoko Stucky on the bloody, seven-year battle between the Dojin-kai and the Seido-kai.
In Southern Japan, the brutal pineapple season may finally be over; pineapple is yakuza slang for “hand grenade”—one of the many weapons utilized in a seven-year gang war between the Dojin-kai (1,000 members) and the splinter group the Kyushu Seido-kei (500 members).
It’s a gang war in which there have been over 45 violent incidents, including bombings, shots exchanged during high-speed car chases, and 14 deaths. At least seven deaths, including one civilian's, were from gunfire; a phenomenally high figure when you consider the number of gun deaths for all of Japan in 2011 was eight people. (Japan has some of the strictest gun-control laws in the world.)
On June 11, senior members of the Dojin-kai and the Kyushu Seido-kai (a.k.a. Seido-kai) visited the Fukuoka Police Kurume Police Station with an official announcement that they were ending the conflict. TheSeido-kai brought a virtual white flag, a notification of their dissolution (解散届け), in which they wrote, “For a long time we have made everyone ill at ease, disturbed people, and been a nuisance to society. We have decided our breakup is the only way to restore peace.” The Dojin-kai in turn proclaimed, “Since the Seido-kai is dissolved, this situation is over and we apologize to people and the authorities for the anxiety we have caused.”
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Handouts for Hand Grenades: Yakuza Gang War Leads to an Explosive Bounty
TOKYO -- Japan’s Fukuoka Prefecture Police have become the first in Japan to offer cash rewards to anyone who reports finding a hand grenade (or "pineapples" in yakuza slang) starting today, April 2. A long-running gang war in the prefecture has raised public fear in the area, and the handy hand-grenade has increasingly become the weapon of choice amongst rival gang members. As Japan has put into place increasingly harsher laws regulating the actions of the Japanese mafia, aka the yakuza, forcing many out of business--the remaining thugs are fighting viciously over what's left of the pie
When gang members aren't lobbing grenades or shooting at each other, they are shooting at the offices of companies trying to cut organized crime Last year, on Nov. 26, Toshihiro Uchino, the 72-year-old president of Hakushin Construction --which was trying to cut ties to local gangs---was shot to death outside his home in Kitakyushu.
The most violent of the groups and considered the primary user of hand grenades is the Kyushu Seidokai. The Kyushu Seidokai has expanded into Tokyo, setting up several front companies, and joined forces with Tadamasa Goto, a former Yamaguchi-gumi boss turned Buddhist priest, who has now re-emerged as a powerful player in Japan's underworld. Tokyo Police are also worried that "pineapples" may be thrown around the metropolis in the near future. "A coalition between Goto and the Kyushu Seido-kai doesn't bode well for the public safety," said a detective who works organized crime. "We’re not excited about the possibility of yakuza lobbing grenades into Tokyo offices and homes."
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Japan braces for violence among 'yakuza' crime gangs
TOKYO — Japan is bracing for war.
Not with other countries, but with the nation's notorious gangsters.
A 43-year-old man was gunned down in the parking lot of a hot springs resort in western Japan earlier this month in what authorities say they fear could be the start of a deadly war among the nation's largest organized crime gangs, known collectively as the yakuza.
The powerful Yamaguchi-gumi crime syndicate, which marked its 100th anniversary this year, split into two rival groups in September. Police arrested a member of the Yamaguchi-gumi in the hot springs shooting and identified the victim as a member of the breakaway group.
Analysts said the rupture was due to long-running disputes over succession plans and high fees that member groups were required to pay Yamaguchi-gumi leaders.
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A dispute over the gang’s leadership in the early 1980s led to a two-year war that left an estimated 30 gangsters dead, 70 others wounded and more than 500 in police custody. However, there are no statistics on the number of civilians killed or injured in the violence.
