WITH their tattooed bodies and custom of lopping off their own fingers to atone for mistakes, the yakuza have been among the most feared men in Japan. But even these gangsters shake in their boots when they come up against their new rivals, gangs of thugs from China.
'The Japanese yakuza run away when they see the Chinese yakuza,' said Tsuyoshi Okamoto, a deputy director in Japan's National Police Agency. 'Because they fear them.' So do the Japanese police.
Over the last few years mainland Chinese gangs have started muscling in on territory traditionally controlled by the yakuza, and now constitute a threat to the authorities.
Last year mainlanders were responsible for nearly 4,500 criminal cases, or about 40 per cent of all crimes committed by foreigners in Japan. This is a dramatic rise from two years ago when Chinese accounted for about 2,000 crimes, just over a quarter of total crimes by non-Japanese. But it is more than the numbers which have the police worried. The Chinese gangs somehow slip away more easily than Japanese thugs. Because they speak different dialects, Chinese syndicates are harder to penetrate. They are also more violent. Last August, in a narrow back alley crammed with eateries, bars and pornography shops, half a dozen Chinese armed with knives forced their way into a Chinese restaurant and stabbed two compatriots to death.
Before anyone could call the police, the thugs had disappeared into the seedy streets of Kabukicho, Tokyo's most notorious 'entertainment' and red-light zone. Nearly a year later, police have yet to track down the murderers.
The killings at the Happiness Forest restaurant - which has been closed down and turned into a pornographic video store - were part of a series of murders of Chinese by Chinese which finally prompted police to launch a major crackdown in Kabukicho last September. Police strengthened their police patrols sixfold to more than 300 men.
