EDITORIAL: Drive out yakuza groups

What exactly are yakuza organized crime groups? For one thing, they cannot coexist peacefully with everyday citizens.

In Fukuoka Prefecture recently, yakuza gang members have been shooting off guns in one incident after another. It has gotten so bad that Takaharu Ando, the commissioner general of the National Police Agency, went to the prefecture to instruct police there to take strong measures to wipe out organized crime groups.

Last month in Kita-Kyushu, someone fired a shot into the home of a neighborhood association leader whose citizen group was campaigning to banish Kudokai, which is a designated yakuza organization in the region. The mayor, who was determined to drive out yakuza from the city, received a threatening letter.

And just this month, shots were fired at a building related to Saibu Gas Co. in Fukuoka and at the home of a relative of its executive director. In February, Saibu Gas had received a threatening letter containing a bullet demanding the company drop a major construction company from its project to build a liquefied natural gas plant in Kita-Kyushu.

These incidents bring the total to eight of shooting incidents related to this construction company, which has refused to make payoffs to Kudokai. Incidents that targeted citizens, such as the neighborhood association leader and company executives, are plainly challenges directed against society. They must not be tolerated.

This month, an ordinance was enacted in Fukuoka Prefecture that aims to eliminate yakuza groups. It is the first in Japan that includes punishment for corporations that make payoffs to yakuza groups.

The National Police Agency is urging other prefectures to enact similar ordinances based on Fukuoka's model in its efforts "to shift from a situation in which it is 'police versus yakuza' to one where it is 'all of society versus yakuza.'"

We urge police nationwide to act together to do all in their power to protect citizens and quickly arrest yakuza suspected of crimes, eventually forcing such gangs to disband. Otherwise, society will never be able to stand against organized crime.

For five straight years since 2008, Fukuoka Prefecture has had the nation's largest number of shooting incidents. Already this year, it has had eight. It is no coincidence that the prefecture is also home to five designated yakuza groups, the largest number in Japan.

Other factors unique to Fukuoka play a part. "(The prefecture) has a climate that supports yakuza," said a top prefectural police official.

The fact that a construction company is treated as an enemy by a yakuza group implies that the local construction industry has long tolerated pressure to buckle to gang demands as a way to ensure business runs smoothly.

The only way to eradicate yakuza is to cut off the gang's source of income and weaken its organization. The ordinance is aimed at exposing and publicizing companies that abet such crimes so that they can no longer fund crime organizations.

There must be no cracks in the wall set up to hem in yakuza groups. The practice of using gang members to settle troubles must be eliminated. We also urge companies that have been paying off yakuza because they are afraid of retaliation or harassment to have the courage to deny such blackmail demands.

Apparently, Fukuoka is not the only place with a climate that sees yakuza groups as a necessary evil.

Like the determined people standing up against organized crime groups in Fukuoka, the rest of the nation must also be firm. For that, the police must strengthen cooperation with citizens, local governments and industries and use every possible legal means to crack down on illegal activities and drive yakuza groups to extinction.

--The Asahi Shimbun, April 16