In the demimonde of Kabukicho, a warren of striptease bars, cabaret clubs and brothel fronts that makes up Tokyo's main red-light district, the night manager of the Parisienne Café frets about the yakuza. Japan's biggest organized-crime group, the Yamaguchi-gumi, with 23,400 members, split last month.
On Sept. 5, more than a dozen of its factions gelled into a new, rival outfit. A yakuza shootout with Chinese mobsters in the Parisienne killed one gang member and injured more. The café's manager now fears the risk of renewed warfare.
The police are bracing themselves for violence up and down Japan. At the time of the last yakuza split, in 1984, two dozen gang members died in territorial battles.
In the past few years, firebombings, death threats and murders by gangs have eroded the public's tolerance of the gangs.
For all that, the yakuza remain largely legal. Membership is no crime. Mobsters commute to official headquarters, proffer business cards and have pension plans. Its boss, Shinobu Tsukasa, portrays the group as a refuge for the marginalized.
The split has partly to do with the economy. Two decades of Japan's flirting with deflation has made it harder to extort money from businesses.
Criticism over Tsukasa's leadership was a factor too. Other factions have long resented the dominant position of his Kodo-kai, the most ambitious yakuza group that has tried to expand beyond its base in Nagoya. Mobsters in the port cities of Kobe and Osaka were left with slimmer pickings as industry declined.
Kodo-kai also fell out with the police. Rather than cooperating with the cops, as other factions do, it started intimidating them. The police appear even to be helping the breakaway group, which will call itself the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi.
