Yakuza Shootings See Increase in Japan

An increasing number of gun battles are raging all over Japan between Yakuza mob families.

At around 3 p.m. on Monday, a 73-year old and a 28-year old gangster from a Japanese Mafia family were found shot dead in an office in Tochiki Prefecture. The police confirmed that the two were members of the second largest Yakuza mob family in Japan.

Ever since April 18, according to police, several shootings tied to Yakuza mobs have taken place in the Prefecture.

At around 6 a.m. on Monday, a young male member of the Yamakuchi family was shot five times, while sitting in the driver seat of a car parked in a garage in Nagoya. He was seriously wounded, but is recovering in the hospital.

The office of one Yakuza family was near the scene of the shooting.

On Sunday night, residents on a small island found a 38-year old man lying on the beach with gunshot wounds. Eyewitnesses said that "two men were fighting with each other, and we heard `Bang, Bang, Bang.` Then, a man, who looked like a mobster, fled in a white car. He was about 170 cm high."

Prefectures around Tokyo are seeing an increasing number of gun battles between Yakuza families. The Japanese Police Department has been put on alert, and is increasing its presence on the streets.

The police estimate that, as of early 2001, 83,600 people work for organized crime syndicates in Japan. The biggest gang, the Yamakuchi family, commands 35,400 members, or 42.3% of the total.

When the unsolved crime rate regarding felonies like murder shot up to more than 50%, the Japanese government enacted a law in 2000 to crack down on organized crime syndicates. Some civil rights groups however, voiced their opposition to a possible infringement on human rights laws. Nonetheless, the police have not seen any substantive decrease in the number of shooting deaths. Yakuza families run legal businesses like construction companies, and their members prey on companies that have legal problems, making it difficult to root them out.

The Japanese government currently plans to add ten thousand more police officers to the current 264,000-strong police force by the year 2005.

Hun-Joo Cho hanscho@donga.com