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Japan arrests key boss from largest yakuza group
AFP - Friday, November 19
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TOKYO (AFP) - – The number-two crime boss in Japan's biggest yakuza group was arrested Thursday for alleged extortion as police intensify a crackdown on organised crime, police and media reports said.
Some 140 police officers took part in the arrest of Kiyoshi Takayama, 63, of the Yamaguchi-gumi, in a pre-dawn raid on his residence in Kobe, western Japan, on suspicion of extortion, Jiji Press reported.
Takayama is the highest-ranking gangster of the syndicate, which is now thought to control more than 50,000 gangsters, after his boss Kenichi Shinoda, who is in prison for illegal weapons possession.
Police suspect Takayama extorted 40 million yen (480,000 dollars) in protection money, jointly with other Yamaguchi-gumi members, between 2005 and 2006 from a 65-year-old man engaged in the construction business.
Takayama denied the allegations, but he did not resist arrest, Jiji said.
His arrest came as police have stepped up measures since last year to crack down on underground syndicates, mainly the Yamaguchi-gumi, which controls more than half of the nation's gangsters.
Japan's yakuza groups, unlike the Italian mafia or Chinese triads, are not illegal, and their members, many of whom sport full-body tattoos, operate out of corporate headquarters that are listed in phone books.
Like crime groups elsewhere, they have engaged in activities from gambling, drugs and prostitution to loan sharking, protection rackets, white collar crime and business conducted through front companies.
The yakuza have been valorised in manga cartoons, fanzines, movies and video games, and police and governments have long tolerated them, in part for keeping down street crime, as long as ordinary civilians do not get hurt.
However, Japan's National Police last September openly declared war on the Yamaguchi-gumi's Kodokai faction, which Takayama most recently led.
Police considers the Kodokai, with about 4,000 members, the largest and most violent faction within the Yamaguchi-gumi, said Jake Adelstein, an expert on Japanese organised crime and author of the book "Tokyo Vice".
Police have moved against the Kodokai since its members have threatened and harassed its officers, and because they also have a reputation for targeting civilians, said Adelstein in emailed comments to AFP.
"That's a violation of the unwritten rules of how the police and the yakuza are supposed to get along," he said.
Adelstein said of the arrest that "this is a huge part of the war on the yakuza, but more specifically the Yamaguchi-gumi," whose membership had risen to about 50,000 after it brought a Tokyo gang under its control.
"They have become too powerful. The balance is gone, and the days when the police could play the three key players off each other are over as well," he said, referring to the smaller Sumiyoshikai and Inagawakai groups.
"Since the Kodokai faction rules the Yamaguchi-gumi, taking out their top executives does great damage to the organisation," he said.
"And the police would probably like to encourage a factional split within the Yamaguchi-gumi, or have the more compliant Yamaken-gumi faction return to controlling the group."
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