The Mob Muscles In

One afternoon last December, three men armed with steel bars burst into the Osaka city room of the Yomiuri Shimbun, one of Japan's largest newspapers. "Howling like mad dogs," as one eyewitness recalled later, the thugs knocked over desks, broke windows and beat up several reporters. By the time police arrived, the city room was a shambles, and eleven editorial staffers lay injured. Next day, Yomiuri reported that the daylight raid on its offices had been staged by organized gangsters in retaliation against the newspaper's describing them in a story as "a pack of bandits." The thugs have since been captured, and last week police also nailed the leader of the gang, a notorious hoodlum named Michio Sasaki, on charges of engaging in another current underworld practice: shaking down corporations. Sasaki, police contend, used his knowledge of an irregular loan to blackmail one of Tokyo's top banks for $16,000. According to the cops, Sasaki's shakedown of another corporation netted him nearly $100,000.

Thugs. Both incidents point to a relatively new phenomenon in law-abiding Japan that has police seriously worried: the rapid growth and increasing boldness of Mafia-like crime syndicates. Japan boasts the lowest crime rate of any industrial nation (Tokyo's homicide rate is about one-tenth that of New York's, for instance, and robbery is almost nonexistent). But police estimate that the country now has 124,000 yakuza (good-for-nothings, as mobsters are commonly called), divided into some 2,900 gangs. A crackdown on these boryokudan (violence organizations) has become the top priority of Japan's 200,000-man national police force.

As police have put pressure on such traditional gangland rackets as gambling, drug trafficking and prostitution, the mobsters have increasingly turned to corporation blackmail for new revenues. The shakedowns are made possible by the common corporate practice of hiring yakuza thugs, instead of less effective private guards, to police general stockholders' meetings. Such men even have a name, sokaiya, meaning general-meeting experts.

Protected by gangster muscle power, management has often been saved from probing or embarrassing inquiries by dissident stockholders. But as soon as the gangsters learn the inside dealings of a company, often with the aid of hired detectives, they turn the information into lucrative blackmail. Some sokaiya are known to maintain complete dossiers on corporate misdeeds, including the names of mistresses kept by executives. All too often, the companies are willing to pay the price of silence lest their public images be tarnished.

One Kyoto bank, which had used yakuza to threaten and intimidate workers into going along with management in a labor dispute, almost went broke from mob shakedowns before it recently called on police for help. At a general stockholders' meeting of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries two years ago, a tough-looking platoon of men beat up a group of peace advocates who had bought shares in the company so that they could protest Mitsubishi's arms production. The men were known to be sokaiya, but no company official ever admitted inviting them. Indeed, it is possible that they had simply muscled their way into the meeting.

Gangsterism is not new to Japan (it actually dates back to the 16th century when unemployed samurai turned to banditry, organizing into small gangs in the process). But the mob's bravado is a novelty. Until fairly recently, in fact, gangsters were obliged by a chivalric code to give to the poor and avoid harming innocent people. Like members of the Mafia, they took a blood oath that was not broken with impunity. For failing to live up to the yakuza code, an offender had to show penitence by cutting off his little finger and presenting it to his oyabun (boss)--a rite that still prevails in the Japanese underworld.

As the yakuza branched out from gambling into other rackets, the gangs grew in number and power. Today the largest, Yamaguchi-gumi,* is a veritable army of 10,000 men. Under the command of Japan's top mobster, Kazuo Taoka, 60, police say that Yamaguchi-gumi has become a criminal conglomerate that controls more than 50 corporations, ranging from restaurants and bars to trucking companies and talent agencies. The gang's take from gambling alone is estimated to be as high as $100 million a year.

Taoka, who is currently on trial for income tax evasion, extortion and labor-law violation, last week granted a rare interview to TIME Correspondent S. Chang at his sumptuous Western-style house on the fringes of Kobe, which neighbors have dubbed the "Taoka Palace." "Throughout the interview," Chang cabled, "there was a distinct element of opera bouffe. The house compound is patrolled by a handful of crop-haired, heavy-set henchmen, who in greeting bow gawkily, like giant pandas trying to crouch. Inside, Taoka's great drawing room is deeply carpeted and adorned with many trophies presented to him from his followers as emblems of their allegiance.

"Tastefully dressed in a pale green turtleneck, matching jacket and slacks, Taoka, who is recuperating from a heart ailment, played the solicitous host to perfection. He offered his caller a delectable piece of green melon and then launched into a professorial discourse on social ills. Many of his followers, he said, were low-caste buraku-min (TIME. Jan. 8), social misfits who had suffered from discrimination. Since the government offered no help for them. Taoka had taken on the responsibility. 'What I need now,' he declared, 'is the services of some scholars in finding ways and means of securing mental and spiritual relief for my membership. So many of them were born emotionally insecure.'

"It is an affliction from which Taoka obviously does not suffer. Asked about the Yamaguchi-gumi, he replied softly: 'It's simply a shimboku dantai [friendship and mutual-assistance society]. And incidentally, the number isn't 10,000--it's 100,000.' How does he earn the money to pay for his high living? 'Why,' he answered with a smile, 'it comes from my wife's hesokuri [secret savings on her household allowance].'

"Clearly, Taoka has come a long way since that day in 1937, when, as a small-time hoodlum on the Kobe docks, he finished off a rival gang member with one downswing of his samurai sword --the first step in his rise to the position of Japan's No. 1 oyabun."

*Meaning "Yamaguchi's team." after its original boss. Harukichi Yamaguchi.

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