Since then, there have been 114 attacks on civilians believed to have been committed by the Kudo-kai, some never solved. Nomura rose to the top of the organisation in 2000. Almost all these crimes were committed to force firms to pay protection money or punish them for not doing so. The Kudo-kai also bombed the home of the CEO of Kyushu Electric Power Company (he was unhurt). The group has been involved in a raft of high-profile crimes, including attacking a Toyota factory and firebombing the office and residence of Shinzo Abe (who later became Prime Minister of Japan – Abe’s flunkeys had allegedly failed to pay the organisation properly for its services in defaming a political rival). The most dangerous group is the Kudo-kai, located in Southern Japan’s Kitakyushu city. There are currently 24 recognised groups and roughly 26,000 active yakuza members in Japan right now. ‘ Yakuza’ is a blanket term for a large number of organised crime groups within Japan – the Japanese equivalent of the Mafia, if you like. While Left-wing pundits and legal scholars professed to be astounded at the first case of an active yakuza boss being sentenced to death on circumstantial evidence, those who had suffered at the hands of the Kudo-kai breathed a huge sigh of relief. Nor did it quite match the impact of a two-ton truck being rammed into the home of another person who hadn’t paid his dues. When Satoru Nomura, the 74-year-old leader of Japan’s most violent yakuza group, was sentenced to death this August, it sent a shock wave through the Japanese underworld.īut the shock probably didn’t come close to that caused by the blast of a hand grenade thrown into a nightclub by members of the Kudo-kai after the owner refused to pay protection money.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |