Fears of gangland war rises in Japan

Fears of gangland war rises in Japan

TOKYO (AFP): Fears of gangland warfare escalated across Japan yesterday after the number two man in the country's biggest organized crime syndicate was shot dead in a hotel cafeteria in the western city of Kobe.

With 3,400 police mobilized in Kobe and nearby Osaka after Thursday's shootout, some experts warned of reprisals and possible turf battles between rival gangs, although others said the shooting seemed to be an internal affair of the Yamaguchi- gumi.

"Right now, we have about 200 police officers deployed outside the Yamaguchi-gumi headquarters and their offices. We're investigating both possibilities," a spokesman for the Hyogo prefectural police department said.

Masaru Takumi, the 61-year-old deputy godfather of the Kobe- based syndicate, was gunned down by four men who burst into the cafeteria of the New Kobe Oriental Hotel on Thursday afternoon.

A 69-year-old dentist, said to be an innocent bystander, was seriously injured in the shootout, described as the most serious attack on a "yakuza" leader since 1985, when Masahisa Takenaka, the Yamaguchi-gumi godfather at the time, was gunned down by members of the rival Ichiwa-kai gang from Osaka.

The 1985 attack, in which Takenaka's deputy and another member were also killed, triggered a two-year war between the two groups, which left 25 people dead and 72 others injured, including innocent bystanders.

"This may develop into the biggest yakuza conflict since the war between Yamaguchi-gumi and Ichiwa-kai," said a police investigator quoted in yesterday's edition of Sports Nippon, an affiliate of Mainichi Shimbun.

Public shootouts are relatively rare in Japan, which maintains strict controls on the ownership of firearms. When rival gangs settle scores, they tend to do so in less crowded places and usually late at night.

The four gunmen in Thursday's attack were described as being young and casually dressed. Wearing baseball caps, they reportedly fired about 10 rounds before fleeing in a white sedan parked near the south entrance of the hotel.

Police have traced the car to the wife of the head of one of Yamaguchi-gumi's affiliated gangs, indicating the gangland killing was related to an internal struggle within the group, the Asahi Shimbun said.

Takumi headed his own gang within the syndicate, the Takumi- gumi, and had been criticized by militant Yamaguchi-gumi members for avoiding confrontations with gangs outside the umbrella of the syndicate, the newspaper said.

Atsushi Mizuguchi, a writer specializing in yakuza affairs, agreed the killing could be an internal affair but said further conflicts were certain.