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Gangsters rapped

Japanese gangs, or yakuza, have a well-deserved reputation for unpredictability and violence that keeps most journalists away, but a vicious turf battle between two rival gangs in the southern island of Kyushu, has made them reluctant media fodder. Last month, in a remarkable act of collective courage that has electrified the fight against organised crime in Japan but divided Kurume city, residents took the gangsters to court.

'The yakuza are using weapons like the kind you see in the Iraq war: grenades, bombs and guns that can shoot people from 500 metres away,' says Osamu Kabashima, the lawyer representing the 1,500 plaintiffs.

'My clients have had enough. They want to live in safety and peace, and they're putting their lives on the line to achieve it, for the sake of their children and grandchildren.'

The latest chapter in Kurume's yakuza woes began in May 2006 when long-time boss of the 1,000-member Dojin-kai gang, Seijiro Matsuo, suddenly announced his resignation, sparking a war of succession with splinter group Kyushu Seido-kai.

The two-year war has led to six deaths and two dozen shootings and bombings. In the most notorious incident, a gangster high on amphetamines walked into a hospital and pumped two bullets into a man mistaken for a rival. In another brawl outside the head office of the Dojin-kai gang in a busy shopping area in Kurume, a machine-gun ambush sprayed bullets in all directions.

Those attacks finally snapped the patience of residents, who banded together to drive them out, using a civil law that allows them to challenge businesses that 'infringe on their right to live peacefully'.

However, not everyone is rooting for the plaintiffs.

'We're not against the people going to court but if they win, the yakuza might relocate close to us and that would cause problems for my business,' says Yuichiro Okamura, who owns a small restaurant beside Kurume railway station. 'We're not getting involved.'

The owner of a vegetable shop next to the Dojin-kai building says the plaintiffs should let sleeping dogs lie.

'The yakuza have never done anything to me. But I'll tell you what: the people in that building have much better manners than some youngsters around here.'

Win or lose, Japanese media reckon the legal challenge will go down in history. 'This is the first time that citizens are trying to expel the head office of a designated gangster organisation,' wrote the liberal Asahi newspaper, urging local businesses and government leaders to support the plaintiffs and 'drive the yakuza into extinction'.

That seems unlikely. The National Police Agency estimates that Japan's crime syndicates connect 86,000 gangsters, many times the strength of the US mafia at its violent peak. Fan magazines, comic books and movies glamorize the yakuza, who have metastasised quasi-business fronts and operate in plain view in a way unthinkable in the west.

Dojin-kai's headquarters is known to any Kurume taxi driver. Signs pasted on the doors of the six-storey building politely explain that the organisation has temporarily moved and provides its new address on the other side of the train station.

The new headquarters, immediately identifiable by its business nameplate, is a two-storey building in one of the city's better neighbourhoods. A request to meet the top man prompts a flint-eyed gangster sporting a crew-cut and a boiler suit to respond with a hostile 'Get lost', while his two colleagues glower from behind oversized sunglasses. Rippling tattoos snaking out of his rolled-up sleeves, Goon No1 growls at inquirers before slamming down the shutter of his office garage.

After a tense conversation, however, we're allowed inside to talk to the acting boss, who shows us into a conference room dominated by portraits of deceased chairman Yoshikazu Matsuo in ceremonial kimono, murdered last year, and his replacement Tetsuji Kobayashi, who is in prison.

'You can't publish my name,' says the 35-year-old acting boss, who chain-smokes through the interview and appears conflicted by the flattering attention of the foreign media and the prospect of severe punishment for talking to us. 'We have always had a strong relationship with local people, so this is a bad situation for us,' he says. 'It's obvious that they're being manipulated by the cops who want to crush us.'

The police, who declined to go on the record, deny this, as does lawyer Kabashima. 'No ordinary person wants to live beside these gangs,' he says. 'There's a school close to the site of the machine-gun attack. What if the bullets had hit children?'

Kabashima and his family have lived in fear since he was outed in the media last year, but he says his foes are 'not stupid enough' to attack him. 'They cannot move against me without severe consequences.'

The yakuza have long occupied an ambiguous position in Japan. They have deep if murky historical links with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. A reputation for keeping disputes between themselves and not harming the families of other mobsters or 'non-combatants' had long protected them from the ire of citizens and the police.

That ambiguity was supposed to have ended in 1992 when the government introduced the toughest anti-mob legislation in a generation, as punishment for yakuza excesses during the booming 1980s when they shifted into real estate and other legitimate businesses.

But the state has yet to make membership of a criminal organisation illegal or to give the police crucial tools such as provisions for wiretapping, plea bargaining and witness protection, says Joshua Adelstein, author of a new book on the yakuza.

'As the yakuza continue to evolve and get into more sophisticated crimes, the police have had a tough time keeping up,' Adelstein says.

A new police white paper warns that the yakuza have moved into securities trading and infected hundreds of listed companies, describing it as a 'disease that will shake the foundations of the economy'. Experts say the Yamaguchi-gumi, in particular, has become a behemoth with resources to rival Japan's larger corporations.

The lack of legal tools to fight the yakuza is painfully obvious in Kyushu, where the law only allows the plaintiffs to challenge gang operations within a 500-metre radius of their homes.

'It's not easy to kick them out of town,' laments one, who spoke on condition of anonymity. 'We're demanding that they stop using the building as a place of gathering. They own the building, it's their property and we can't make them give it up.'

Even if they move, the mob will simply pop up somewhere else in Kurume, concedes a senior official at the city office, which is backing the plaintiffs.

'I guess it's correct to say that Japanese people have learned to live with the yakuza,' he says.

The Dojin-kai are believed to operate protection rackets, transport firms, sex businesses and loan-sharking across the city, which is plastered with thousands of fliers and posters offering 'low-interest credit'. If unchallenged, the gang invests huge untaxed profits in real estate, eventually taking over whole city blocks. 'We have to hope that even if they relocate, the residents of the new area will challenge them again,' says the Kurume city official. 'The yakuza are strong on a one-to-one basis, but they're extremely weak in the face of collective action.'

As the legal battle takes off, the gangs appear to be winding down their war. Seido-kai recently announced the resignation of its chairman and the end of hostilities with Dojin-kai in a statement sent to the police. But plaintiffs still live in fear of intimidation or worse, and the authorities have given them beepers linked to police stations in case of attacks. 'Unless we take action against them, the group will keep growing bigger and stronger,' says one. 'We don't want them in this town.'

People living close to the Dojin-kai building are pessimistic that anything will change unless the government begins to seriously rein in the yakuza. 'When the gangs moved here we protested to the city and they did nothing,' says a housewife living on the same street.

'The government didn't even come to see us. At least the gangsters visited door to door to introduce themselves,' she says, recalling how they brought gifts of pink and white rice cakes, a traditional symbol of good luck and happiness. But she adds wryly: 'It was nothing to be happy about.'

Yakuza are strong on a one-to-one basis, but they're extremely weak in the face of collective action

Senior city official in Kurume

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