Akasaka Residents Go to Court to Oust Yakuza Gang
By wchung | 06 May, 2025

Having one Japanese gang headquartered in their neighborhood was bad enough. When a rival mob tried to move in, the neighbors did something that was once almost unthinkable.

They organized, called the cops, went to court to evict the newcomers, and won.

Japanese gangsters, known as yakuza, once operated from well-marked offices, often with signs out front and symbols of their trade such as lanterns and samurai swords visible through the windows. Yakuza — the word means good-for-nothing — were even romanticized as noble outlaws with a code of honor.

That mystique is evaporating, however.

“Civil action is growing across the country,” said Yasushi Murakami, a lawyer for 160 residents of Tokyo’s Akasaka district who, after a months-long battle, won a court-mediated settlement in April to keep out the 4,800-member Inagawa-kai syndicate. “People are refusing to tolerate gangsters.”

The battle in Akasaka, an upscale business and entertainment district, underscores a sea change in the way Japanese regard the underworld. For decades, gangs were allowed a certain amount of swagger in exchange for cooperating with police to keep turf wars in check and away from the public.

One reason for the public’s change of attitude is a spate of gang violence, underscored by the shooting of Iccho Ito, 61-year-old mayor of Nagasaki, as he campaigned for re-election outside a train station in April 2007. The killer, a Yamaguchi-gumi gunman with a grievance against the city, is now under sentence of death.

The murder was seen by many as an attack on Japanese democracy. A month later a policeman was killed in a shooting rampage in central Japan, and last July came the fatal shooting of a loan company official outside his house in Fukuoka.

“What we worry about most is our children,” said Akasaka resident Takako Takemura. “We just do not want gangsters in our neighborhood.”

In response to the violence, the government has tightened its gun and racketeering laws, and last year, police held anti-gang seminars and provided protection to residents as part of their assistance in more than 50 lawsuits by neighborhoods seeking to keep out gangs.

The Akasaka settlement effectively bars the Inagawa-kai, Japan’s third largest crime syndicate, from owning and moving into a three-story building a few blocks from the headquarters of the rival Sumiyoshi-kai, the second largest group.

But the larger gang may also be on the way out, because Minato ward’s assembly, which oversees Akasaka, has resolved to rid the neighborhood of all gangs, and has disqualified gang members from renting public housing there.

Another sign of ebbing tolerance for gangs comes from Japanese companies, some of which have adopted rules against paying protection money.

In Sendai, northern Japan, nearly 500 residents are seeking a court injunction against an affiliate of the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s largest gang.

In the south, a court upheld demands by 100 residents to ban the yakuza from using an apartment building, and hundreds of people in the town of Chikushino helped run a gang out of a two-story house that is now a police station.

“It was possible because we stood up together against gangsters,” said Masanori Hoashi, a Chikushino official. “Many people feel more strongly about guarding their community against organized crime.”

The yakuza’s typical rackets are extortion, gambling, prostitution, gunrunning, drug-trafficking and construction kickback schemes.

Police identify 22 groups nationwide as crime syndicates and estimate membership at 80,000. Their activities are restricted but not banned, because forming a group isn’t illegal.

The lawsuits may be getting the gangsters out of the neighborhoods, but apparently not out of crime. The gangster population has remained largely unchanged and arrests have fallen — 26,061 last year, down from 1,108 a year earlier, according to Hideaki Aihara of the nonprofit Japan Crime Prevention Association.

“If gangsters move out of one building, it’s not the end of the story,” Aihara said. “They’re still around, making trouble somewhere else.”

6/24/2009 3:15 AM MARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press Writer TOKYO