Country's brutal gangsters 'fading away'

A decade after retiring from a life of crime, Satoru Takegaki now spends his days helping other ex-gangsters find regular jobs and adjust to life outside Japan's notorious yakuza mob.

The former mafia boss bodyguard hopes he will see a lot more disaffected yakuza on the doorstep of his support group, as Japan's underworld faces its biggest shake-up in years.

In September, the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest organized crime syndicate, was shaken by the defection of about a dozen top leaders.

The split prompted police warnings of a possible repeat of a 1980s gangland bloodbath. But it also revealed the internal struggles and fading influence of the Japanese mafia, once infamous for a rigid honor system that called on them to chop off fingers for even minor transgressions.

"Looking back, there was nothing to earn by being yakuza, except for some temporary pleasure. We no longer live in a world where yakuza can do business in the open. They're no longer needed," Takegaki, 64, said from his home in Himeji.

The turbulence highlights the fact that all is not well in crime groups, as a poor economy and steadily falling membership hurt the bottom line.

Less organized rivals are also muscling in on traditional yakuza territory, while at the same time public tolerance for their actions is disappearing.

"It means both sides get weaker - you cannot deny that Japan's mafia is fading away," said Atsushi Mizoguchi, an expert on organized crime.

The yakuza blossomed from the chaos of post-Word War II Japan into a multi-billion-dollar criminal organization involved in everything from gambling, drugs and prostitution to loan sharking, protection rackets and white-collar crime.

But yakuza numbers have been falling steadily and last year there was estimated to be 53,000 members - down from 180,000 at peak in the 1960s.

(China Daily 10/23/2015 page11)