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Hirai Hiroshi was talking with a friend in the lobby coffee lounge of a luxury hotel in Kobe one August afternoon in 1997. Suddenly, four gunmen opened fire with about a dozen shots. Their target, Takumi Masaru, 61, took several bullets in the head and was dead when he hit the floor. Takumi was the No. 2 man in the Yamaguchi-gumi, the nation's largest and most powerful crime syndicate. The gunmen fled, leaving Hirai lying on the floor, bleeding heavily from a head wound caused by a stray bullet. The 69-year-old dentist died six days later, the 13th unintended victim of gangland gunfire in Japan since 1975. Police said Takumi was killed in a power struggle within the syndicate. A flurry of other shootings followed in the course of an apparent gangland vendetta. Shots were fired into gang offices and other properties in Tokyo and Osaka linked to Nakano Taro, Takumi's archrival in the Yamaguchi-gumi hierarchy. Police are concerned that the underworld strife could flare more widely. As one unnamed associate of Takumi explained, "the killers can't just get away with it; that's how the yakuza world works."
The Takumi assassination and the death of the hapless dentist underscore the danger to the general public posed by intensifying yakuza rivalry as contending groups struggle under a toughened police crackdown that is taking away their traditional sources of revenue. Police hope the incident will lead to a wider realization that the yakuza are not some kind of romantic Robin Hood-like figures out of old movies but a clear menace to public safety. Yakuza Still a Formidable Force
Police estimate that there were 46,000 members of 3,120 gangster groups active in Japan as of the end of 1996. In addition, there were an estimated 33,900 people the police regard as "associate members," who, although not formally listed as members, are affiliated with the gangs and behave accordingly. The police regard both groups-79,900 members in all-as constituting the underworld they wish to eliminate.
Of this total, the police have designated 23 gangs with bases in more than one prefecture-seven in eastern Japan and 16 in western Japan-as organized crime syndicates, to be tightly controlled under the Law on the Prevention of Irregularities by Gangsters, the official name for...