The number of yakuza, Japan's organized crime group members, hit its lowest record since the country's first anti-organized crime laws passed in 1992, the National Police Agency announced this week. The number of yakuza had hovered around 80,000 for almost 18 years up to 2011 but the nationwide criminalization of paying the yakuza or doing business with them has dealt a blow to these quasi-legal organizations. However, like many things in Japan, the statistics and the reality are always slightly askew.
The NPA says about 4,600 members retired from regulated organized crime activities within a year, bringing the total numbers of registered members and associates to about 58,600 in 2013 down from 63,200 in 2012. Unlike most organized crime groups in the world, the Japanese mafia is recognized and regulated by the police under the organized crime control laws, but not outlawed. The groups still have offices and fort-like headquarters, business cards, corporate logos, badges and fan magazines. The Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest organized crime group even has their own internal newspaper and has a website in development, perhaps hoping to recruit younger members and shore up PR.
Their primary sources of revenue are extortion, racketeering, financial fraud, blackmail, stock market manipulation, drugs, the entertainment business, sports industry, film and television production, and providing labor and security to the nuclear industry. The yakuza were traditionally federations of gamblers (bakuto) and street merchants (tekiya). They acted as a second police force in the chaos after the Second World War, gaining some legitimacy. They are called boryokudan, 暴力団 (violent groups) by the police but they refer themselves "yakuza" "gokudo" and as ninkyodantai 仁侠団体 (humanitarian groups) and claim that they contribute to preserving peace in Japan, and emergency aid when natural catastrophes hit the country.
According to the Ministry of Justice over the last ten years, the numbers of yakuza arrested for traditionally frowned up crimes such as theft, robbery and fraud have continued to rise by year.
According to the NPA figures, the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest yakuza group lost 2,000 members in 2013 from 25,700 the previous year, and its rival gang, the Sumiyoshi-kai, lost 1,100 members in 2013 from 9,500. Tougher laws throughout the years increasingly made it difficult for Japanese mobsters to stay in business. Collecting protection money used to be a stable yakuza business until the boryokudan haijojorei (暴力団排除条例) or organized crime exclusionary laws that went into effect in 2011 criminalized sharing profits with the yakuza or paying them off. The increasing involvement of organized crime in Japan's financial system forced the police, and abroad, the U.S. Treasury Department to blacklist certain senior members within the largest Japanese criminal network.
Most of the modern yakuza have bakuto (gambler) roots. The exclusionary ordinances have most impacted the tekiya (street merchants), who contributed and still play an important cultural role in Japan's Shinto and Buddhist festivals. The exclusionary laws also target them. Officials in Buddhist temples & shrines increasingly refuse to admit the tekiya in doing business inside their temples' territory. Street food and toy stands are being replaced by professional entertainment companies' stands. Japanese street festivals and cherry blossom scenery may come closer to resembling Disney Land in the near future, rather than a quaint gathering of tattooed merchants and traditional Japanese food and wares.
The other factor that has contributed to a decline in membership and increasing departures are laws on "employer liability" which make the yakuza bosses responsible for any damages committed by lower members. Revisions made to Japan's Organized Crime Countermeasures Law, boryokudan taisakuho, (暴力団対策法) in 2008 now hold organized crime bosses responsible for the actions of their underlings in civil court.
In October of 2012, Tadamasa Goto, former boss of the Yamaguchi-gumi Goto-gumi crime group, agreed to pay ¥110 million, or $1.2 million, to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of Kazuoki Nozaki, who was murdered by members of Goto's organization in 2006 over a real estate dispute. Goto has never faced criminal charges for the killing.
While the yakuza fan magazines still exist, the numbers have dwindled from three monthly magazines to two and the yakuza comic books such "The Yamaguchi-Kodo-Kai Versus The National Police Agency: Never Ending Battle To The Death Without Victory" and manga biographies of living yakuza bosses are now rarely sold in convenience stores or even regular bookstores.
There is increasing dissatisfaction among lower ranking yakuza bosses who pay anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 dollars a month in tribute to the organization above, in the yakuza pyramid.
The yakuza numbers are going down but how much of it is real and how much of it is a failure to track them as they adapt is the great unknown. And they are not all going quietly. In Kyushu, where the yakuza are deeply rooted, they are not leaving with a whimper, they are leaving with a bang. Gang war there continues on a frightening scale. The yakuza are dwindling from public view: it will be a long time before they are really gone---if ever.