General Japanese Culture Thread

According to Matsumoto, the way questions are phrased is key. The July 4 to 5 Asahi poll and the June 27 to 28 Mainichi poll asked respondents to choose from two options: whether they were for or against Abe’s decision to reinterpret the Constitution to allow Japan to exercise collective self-defense.

By contrast, the June 28 to 29 Sankei poll and the May 9 to 11 Yomiuri poll offered three options, asking whether Japan should be allowed to: 1) exercise the right fully; 2) to the minimum extent necessary; or 3) not at all.

In the Sankei poll, 11.1 percent chose option one, while 52.6 percent chose option two and 33.3 percent option three. Adding up those who chose options one and two, Sankei reported a total of 63.7 percent supported Abe’s plan.

“In Japan, no civilian is allowed to have a gun,” he stated simply. “In order to prevent atrocious crimes using firearms, possession of small arms was banned in 1965, with strict penalties for violations of the law. As time has gone on the penalties have increased and every year we try to drive down the number of people owning guns.”

Japan does allow the possession of hunting rifles and air guns (for sporting use), but the restrictions and checks are extremely strict.

“You have to bring your rifle in every year for inspection. You have to pass a drug test. You can’t have a criminal record. A doctor has to certify you’re mentally and physically healthy. You have to actually go to the firing range and show that you can use the weapon. If you have any sort of issue, we’re going to take away your firearms,” Detective X said.

“Sometimes, police officers even go to the neighborhoods where a gun owner lives and interview neighbors to make sure the owner isn’t causing problems or having issues with his spouse,” he added.

However, the focus is not only on ensuring gun owners don’t misuse their weapons, but also on getting rid of what the police call nemuri-ju (sleeping guns).

“There are not many hunters left now and many people get too old to use their weapons. If they can’t fire them properly, they get taken away. The fewer guns that are out there, the safer Japan is. That’s how we look at it,” Detective X explained.

The police checks are severe. In July 2008, a 45-year-old white-collar worker on the island of Shikoku who tried to renew his shotgun registration using a forged medical certificate was arrested following extensive checks on charges of forgery and violations of the firearms-control law.

The retired cop then noted that even the yakuza don’t like to use guns these days — because the penalties are too high.

A turning point was the Dec. 26, 1997, arrest of Kaneyoshi Kuwata, a boss of the powerful Yamaguchi-gumi gang, for illegal possession of firearms along with one of his henchmen. Acting on a tip, police blocked off all the roads in Tokyo’s glitzy Roppongi district and cornered Kuwata’s convoy of Mercedes. They then searched all the cars and, when they found a pistol in one of them, Kuwata was — in a precedent-setting legal move — arrested as an accomplice on gun-possession charges. After a long court battle, he was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Under current laws, if a low-level yakuza is caught with a gun and bullets that match, he’ll be charged with aggravated possession of firearms and will then face an average seven-year prison term. Simply firing a gun carries a penalty of three years to life. And for the “accomplice” reasons above, a yakuza boss may decide a death sentence is more appropriate if his thug miraculously gets released on bail before going to jail.

One mid-level yakuza boss told me, “Having a gun now is like having a time bomb. Do you think any sane person wants to keep one around the house?”

The police are not given a free hand in using guns either. Internal controls make it very difficult for a gun or even a single bullet to fall into the hands of criminals.

“When we go to the firing range, we get an allotted number of bullets, Detective X said. “When we’re done firing, we collect the shells and return the gun. If one shell is missing, the police station goes into a panic.”

However, Detective X said police sometimes misuse their weapons: “A few years ago, an officer on duty used his gun to kill himself — clearly non-designated usage, so that’s a crime.” He was charged posthumously to publicly show that even the dead can’t get away with breaking the firearms laws, and to shame his family. It may seem like overkill but it drives home the point.

“You can’t easily hold up a convenience store or shoot someone to death if you don’t have a gun,” Detective X put it in a nutshell. Unlike in the United States, that’s Crime Prevention 101 in Japan.

A detective who specialized in organized crime once told me a dark joke: What type of crime occurs when a member of the yakuza kills another gangster? Answer: destruction of property.

The joke perhaps reflects an unwritten premise of law enforcement in Japan: as long as gangs confine their conflict to other gangs, it’s no big deal.

However, when the Yamaguchi-gumi — the country’s largest organized crime syndicate, with about 23,400 known members at the end of 2014 if quasi-members are included — split into two factions on Aug. 27, the police were understandably concerned.

Would a bloody gang war break out?

According to a report by the National Police Agency, when the Yamaguchi-gumi last broke up in 1984, a violent battle erupted that claimed the lives of at least 25 people and resulted in more than 70 injuries. The warfare took place on an epic scale: gun battles erupted on the street, assassinations were carried out and trucks were driven into the houses of rival members. In 1985, Yamaguchi-gumi members were arrested in Hawaii on suspicion of attempting to purchase 100 handguns, five machine-guns and at least one rocket launcher — ostensibly to knock off their rivals.

Seventy-three-year-old Yamaguchi-gumi leader Kenichi Shinoda, who is also known as Shinobu Tsukasa, began his criminal career in the Kodo-kai group, which is based in Nagoya.

According to the Asahi Shimbun, Shinoda had indicated he wanted to move Yamaguchi-gumi headquarters from Kobe to Nagoya.

The Yamaken-gumi, which is based in Kobe, opposed Shinoda’s plan, and 13 affiliate gang leaders in Kansai failed to attend a meeting on Aug. 27, the Asahi Shimbun said. As a result, the affiliated gang leaders who skipped the meeting were expelled Tuesday.

The rift appears to be partly historical.

In July 1989, Yoshinori Watanabe, who was head of the Yamaken-gumi syndicate, became the supreme leader of the Yamaguchi-gumi group at a ceremony in Kobe. Shinoda inherited the position in 2005 and is believed to have promoted members of his Kodo-kai syndicate to top positions in the Yamaguchi-gumi.

The Yamaken-gumi syndicate watched its power dwindle with discontent, and the Kodo-kai syndicate’s loyal treatment of kowtowing factions is believed to be another reason for the split, according to NHK.

A mid-level Yamaguchi-gumi member, who refused to be named, told this reporter that the Kodo-kai syndicate had also been singled out because of its belligerence to the police, which had led to tightening laws that restricted the group’s activities.

Atsushi Mizoguchi, Japan’s leading expert on the Yamaguchi-gumi group, told NHK he expected the odd skirmish between syndicates but ruled out a massive war.

Gang wars aren’t what they used to be, Mizoguchi says. For one thing, they’re expensive and a syndicate’s usual activities — extortion, blackmail, bid-rigging, etc. — is quickly disrupted.

These days, leaders of organized crime syndicates fear of being held accountable for their employees’ activities.

In November 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that organized crime syndicates were essentially corporations and, as such, their leaders were liable for any damages that occur as a result of one of their member’s actions. A Yamaguchi-gumi leader was ordered to pay ¥80 million to the family of a police officer who was killed in a gang war.

Tadamasa Goto, who led the last unsuccessful rebellion in the Yamaguchi-gumi in 2008 after he was expelled from the group, is perhaps a classic example of why gang leaders prefer not to engage in violent conflict.

According to the Asahi Shimbun, several of Goto’s men were convicted for the murder of a real-estate agent. The real-estate agent was killed in 2006 for blocking the sale of a building worth $20 million that Goto’s gang wanted to control and sell at a steep profit. Goto himself was never criminally prosecuted. The family of the deceased, seeking justice in civil court, sued Goto and Shinoda for damages in 2012.

Shinoda, who was locked up in solitary confinement in 2006, certainly couldn’t have ordered or condoned the hit.

Reaching an out-of-court settlement, Goto apologized to the family of the victim, paid them $1.2 million and then fled to Cambodia.

Crime, as the old adage goes, always pays, but sometimes it seems gangsters have to pay a little back for their crimes. At the time, however, it was a valuable lesson: Killing people can cost a lot of money.