HIMEJI: A decade after retiring from a life of crime, Satoru Takegaki now spends his days helping other ex-gangsters find regular jobs and adjust to life outside Japan’s notorious yakuza mob. The former mafia boss bodyguard hopes he will see a lot more disaffected yakuza on the doorstep of his anti-gang support group, as Japan’s underworld faces its biggest shakeup in years.

In September, the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s largest organised crime gang, was shaken by the high-profile defection of about a dozen top leaders who formed their own group.

The split prompted police warnings of a possible repeat of a 1980s gangland bloodbath, but also revealed the internal struggles and fading influence of the Japanese mafia, once infamous for a rigid honour system that called on them to chop off fingers for even minor transgressions.

“Looking back, there was nothing to earn by being yakuza, except for some temporary pleasure,” 64-year-old Takegaki said, his voice thick with an accent long associated with Japanese gangsters. “We no longer live in a world where yakuza can do business in the open. They’re no longer needed,” he said from his home in Himeji city, not far from Kobe where the Yamaguchi-gumi are based.

Observers said the turbulence highlights the fact all is not well in Japan’s quasi-legal organised crime groups, as a poor economy and steadily falling membership hurt the bottom line.

Published in Dawn, October 22nd, 2015

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