The right mind

Less than 24 hours after new Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe named his first cabinet, at least one commentator was wondering aloud how long it might last. The 17-strong cabinet is heavy with social and foreign policy conservatives, which comes as little surprise, but the whispers have already started in Tokyo.

'I have heard the rumour that Fumio Kyuma, Mr Abe's new defence agency chief, has links with the yakuza, while incoming agriculture minister, Toshikatsu Matsuoka, is also reported to have close links with an ultra-rightist group,' said Manabu Miyazaki, himself a former member of an underworld group who has turned to writing on the subject. 'I don't think that Mr Abe's cabinet will fall because of the policies it follows; I believe it will collapse under the weight of scandals when these things become public knowledge,' said Miyazaki, author of the tell-all gangster book Toppamano.

Such links - if the suggestions are true - are worrying in an administration that is expected to continue a drift to the right that started under Junichiro Koizumi, although Miyazaki said the influence of the underworld groups on top-level decision-making was minimal.

'Yakuza gangs own small businesses around the country and definitely influence the election of politicians by drumming up support for their preferred candidate,' he said. 'And even though they may not have the power to sway elected officials in their decisions, these are men who have the same sentiments for Japan and the same opinions of other countries.'

Links between organised crime and the nation's leaders have been an established fact of political life in Japan since the end of the second world war, even though polite society tends to gloss over much of the conniving that has got the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to the unrivalled position it enjoys today.

Seen by the US as a bulwark against communism, the fledgling party was funded in large part by Yoshio Kodama, a shady character who criss-crossed the political and criminal worlds as a power broker in the immediate post-war years, according to author Robert Whiting. 'There has always been a role for the underworld for as long as the LDP has existed and it was also hard to tell the difference between the two in the past,' said Whiting, who wrote the foreword to Toppamano.