The Kudō-kai: Japan’s Most Violent Yakuza

big thank you to magic spoon for sponsoring this episode of the casual criminalist podcast it's like an asmr experience for you right now an extremely unpleasant one where i eat some delicious magic spoon cereal now because i'm a normal person who enjoys normal things i'm a huge fan of breakfast cereal the problem with breakfast cereals is for a long time i just didn't eat breakfast cereals because you're like oh my god there's a lot of sugar in breakfast cereal and i don't need that in my life because if i eat all of that sugar every day and let's be honest i'm gonna have like three bowls i mean yeah you know pretty fat pretty quick the great thing about magic spoon is there's no sugar in here in fact they basically formulated something which uh tastes amazing it tastes super sweet and it's zero grams of sugar it sets it right on the box four net grams of carbs per serving and 13 grams of protein so basically it's high in the things that you want and it's low in the things that you don't know i don't know a lot about dietary stuff because i don't know i i was never one of these people who got super into you know i don't know it always feels like crossfit people they're always like super into this stuff but like i never really understood that all i know is like just don't eat too much sugar and then you don't you won't get too fat so magic spoon is perfect for me they've got a bunch of amazing amazing flavors peanut butter which i have here is absolutely my favorite closely followed by cinnamon which i don't have i've got choco here um or not choco coco that makes more sense all of these are delicious go over to magic spoon get yourself made up a variety box oh by the way all of that good stuff it says here keto friendly gluten free low carb gmo free so basically all the good stuff is like yeah i should definitely do that but you don't well magic spoon make it easy so all you need to do is go to magicspoon.com forward slash criminalist and you'll get five dollars off your order which is fantastic and what's that only 140 calories per serving it's all fantastic it's magic spoon there is a link below welcome back to a brand new episode of the casual criminals this one i'm already going to struggle with the kudo kai the downfall of japan's most violent yakuza and this is going to be full of japanese pronunciations and i know callum after it's probably going to be callum if you didn't know he's british like me but he also lives in a different country he lives in japan and so he's probably gonna be listening to this artist and be like simon your japanese pronunciation hurts my soul i'm sorry callum i'm sorry to every japanese person listening also i feel like we cover a few of these from japan i don't know if that's because callum just hears about all the serial killing living out in japan or i don't know maybe it's just more serial killing i don't even know what's going on uh if you're new to the show what happens here is callum who i've already mentioned the guy in japan he's british but he lives what am i talking about he's written me a script i'm going to read it and then jen the producer on this show is going to add some music and some images and some graphics and all that fantastic stuff and together we make up the casual criminalist trio which is something i just made up let's get into it today we're taking a break from all of the gore and misery of serial killers well forget everything i said in my introduction then callum and i apologize audience and veering off into the wild world of oriental organized crime few gangsters are more iconic than japan's tattoo covered yakuza japan's mafia clans have been popularized in everything from movies to video games and even have their own dedicated fan magazines oh god it's like magazines glorifying criminals despite their place in popular culture real-life yakuza culture is actually in decline government crackdowns and internal schisms have been turning the screw on the gangs and their ranks are dwindling fast as a result but against the backdrop of rapid decline there's one group that seems determined to go down all guns blazing and at this moment an operatic true crime saga is just about wrapping up in the japanese courts one of the nation's top mafia gangs by far the most ruthless of their time is being held to account for decades of violence we'll be looking into the story of their decades-long reign of terror and the pushback from the cops and ordinary citizens which eventually brought them down this is the story of the kudo kai the downfall of japan's most violent yakuza death of a fisherman late at night on the 18th of february 1998 kunihiro kajawara walked out of the bar in the southern city of kitakishu fukuoka prefecture the 70 year old was the head of a fisheries cooperative out for drinks with colleagues earlier in the week kajawara had voiced his opposition to the construction of a marine peer in the city which either meant he was hopelessly ignorant or extremely brave that's because the company which was proposing the construction project was backed by the local mafia the kudo kai and even among the rogues gallery of japanese yakuza gangs this lot were well known for pulling zero punches mr kajalwara was about to find out that the hard way as he stumbled out onto the street on that cold february night two men in black approached him one of them drew a pistol and shot the old man four times from point blank range kajawara was left dying in a pool of his own blood there was little doubt as to who was to blame the old man wasn't the first victim of this kind of mob retaliation and he would be far from the last his murder was the first episode in a decades-long saga which ultimately ended with the downfall of the mafia boss who ordered the hit and the subsequent collapse of his vicious gang but unfortunately for the people of kyushu they still had a few more decades of bloodshed ahead of them yeah mafia's intense for some reason i had a dream the other day that i was being extorted by the mafia for uh protection money like some guy just came to my studio and demanded money and said i was gonna up my store like my office and i was like okay so i paid in the money i said he's just gonna come back for more money isn't he looks like the mafia sucks the kudo kai before we go any further a bit of background on exactly who these guys are the kudokai like many other japanese yakuza clans began back in the pre-war days as an illegal gambling outfit throughout the 20th century they grew in power to become the dominant criminal group in the post-industrial city of kitakushu down on japan's southernmost main island they generally hire new recruits from youth gangs in the prison population sending their employees to work in drug dealing prostitution racketeering and all of that fun stuff and it's a big money business 1x member reported making almost nineteen thousand dollars a month to collecting drug debts ten years of smashing kneecaps and you can already start thinking about retiring which is not a bad deal at all yeah i mean it's not a bad deal at all if you are totally okay with danger and smashing kneecaps i'll be like 19 grand a month is a lot of money but i don't really want to become a criminal thanks pass but it's not all about vice and violence what's especially surprising for an outsider is how public these mafias are each is a publicly registered organization really i mean that must just be like a front right like the criminal has like a fake business to like launder money like a car wash like from breaking bad whatever right and they conduct legal business aboveboard while ruling the underworld behind the scenes the clans even have their own publicly registered headquarters for our criminal kings of kitayushu that's kuda kai hall a whitewalled compound in the centre of the city protected with barbed wire and security cameras from here boss satoru nomura who took power around 12 years ago orchestrated the gang's activities he might not immediately appear threatening in fact with his tailored suit and slicked back hair he looks like any number of everyday salarymen however he's definitely not someone you'd want to mess with at the end of 2014 he had an estimated 870 members and affiliates under his command willing to slash his enemies to ribbons at the drop of a hat yeah i mean just because he's wearing a nice suit doesn't mean he's not super super scary and dangerous and also doesn't the yakuza am i just this might be just some movie thing or something i'm imagined or made up but didn't they just have the tattoos like they avoided the the neck part of the body because then if you had a shirt they couldn't see the tattoos but then if you took the shirt off your like whole body like under the cloak where where the clothes can hide would be covered in tattoos which i mean that's pretty smart and honestly like seems like good advice because i see a lot of people like walking around just like with neck tatties that kind of go up to their head and i'm like that might be cool now but it wasn't cool 10 years ago and i don't know if it will be cool 10 years from now when you're looking for a job and they're like uh we don't you know we work in a customer facing industry and we don't really want a giant serpent on the necks of the people who are serving our customers in our in our restaurant so pass i just feel like visible tattoos like no problem with tattoos go for it but like visible tattoos it's like that that that ain't coming off but that's just me i'm i don't know could be totally wrong yeah nomura's gang really seemed to have missed the memo about keeping a low profile while most yakuza follow a strict code of conduct which prohibits the murder of civilians these guys just kind of say well that noise so if you sign up with the kudukai you're pretty much guaranteed the full gta experience fast cars heavy weaponry and heaps of unnecessary violence all stuff that i love in gta immensely enjoy gta things i want from gta in real life nothing absolutely nothing maybe the nice weather i'm not exaggerating in 2012 the police even busted one member for possession of a rocket launcher that's a four-star wanted level right off the bat that's ah yeah maybe but you can get six stars on gta i play way too much gta 5. they're not shy about using their arsenal of assault weapons either for example when chinese triads tried to muscle in on their turf by opening a massage parlor without their blessing massage parlor air quotes get the feeling there might be some prostitution going on there uh the kudu kai responded by lobbing frag grenades at the chinese consulate and assaulting the building with shotguns wait what did the chinese council have to do it was just chinese gangs they're so weird even xpm shinzo abe fell victim to the gang back in 2000 his home was pelted with molotov cocktails by the kudukai because one of his aides refused to pay a bribe when you're too mental even for your fellow yakuza nobody is off limits but alas twas the indiscriminate mentalness of the kudukai that would eventually lead to their downfall yeah i mean if you're like throwing molotov cocktails at the prime minister's house like he's gonna be like yo yo yo japanese fbi how about we start some sort of anti-yakuza gang task force i'm the prime minister right is anyone going to object to this probably not probably not campaign of terror [Music] so now you're aware of who we're dealing with the kudo kai are more like full-blown domestic terrorists than standard mafiosos throughout the past 50 years they regularly employed these shock and awe tactics to gain a stranglehold over the construction world in their territory with boss nomura ordering an ever-escalating string of attacks against anyone who disagreed yeah these guys are not like i don't know i've made a bunch of videos i've got another channel called biographics and we often cover like american mafia figures in there sort of like the italian mob etc and it's like that always seems really violent to me and intense and it's like yeah the japanese guys no no no we're attacking console while the chinese were tagging consoles the jab we're attacking the prime minister's house we've got rocket launchers you can have a bad day it's like where the american mafia were like yeah yeah we killed another mafia but we didn't like big deal american mafia you're not so big now please don't kill me hence the murder of the aforementioned fishing co-op head in 1998. these intimidation tactics allowed boss nomura to change to charge anything from one to three percent of all contracting work in the city oh my god everything that's gonna be a huge amount of money overall two low level thongs went down for the murder not long after but everyone knew the orders had come from way up high still so long as the top bosses kept their own hands clean the law was powerless to stop them well don't they generally offer the guys lower down immunity to grass on the guys above them and then they get those guys in and they're like hey grass on the guys above you and we'll cut you a deal and eventually they get to the top but maybe they have some sort of like japanese murder or whatever where they can't talk about it i learned so much about uh mafia from those videos we made because i'm not one i've i think i've seen goodfellas but i've not really seen a lot of mafia movies i learned so much about the mafia making those biographic videos i'm like mafia pro now not really but i mean i learned i learned some however things started to really heat up around 2011 when the city and the nation as a whole started pushing back against organized crime one year prior the government passed a law making it mandatory to report extortion attempts from then on if ordinary citizens were caught associating with the gangs they could find themselves jailed or fined laws like this signaled the death of the golden era of gangsters that seems like a super sensible law because corruption is bad for everyone except the people you know getting the bribes but it's bad for society while many of the biggest yakuza organizations took the hint and started expanding their legal operations the kunu kai took a different approach have you seen the last act of scarface it was a little bit like that never seen scarface know so i don't know don't get the reference but hopefully you do what follows is basically a greatest hits from the past 10 years showcasing the mental stuff boss nomura and his merry men got up to 2011 in february 2011 a middle-aged security guard showed up for work in the shimizu corporation construction site he was an ex-cop who landed the gig after retirement usually the job would mean just stopping teenagers from hobbing the fence but unfortunately the guy's employer had recently pissed off the city's top crime gang what have you got yourself into shimuzu corp was among several companies who had banded together against the kudukai's racketeering attempts and refused to pay but if the kudukai weren't paid in cash they collected their debts in blood oh it sounds like a movie line over the past five years they had been launching regular attacks against the company's officers so the employees basically knew what to expect after the 17th time a frag grenade knocked your coffee mug over you barely bat an eyelid i love how they're just it's not guns it's not like quietly killing people on the street it's like no no bombs literal grenades into offices nonetheless the guard was taken by surprise that night when a black car showed up at his post around 7 pm as the car crews passed the entrance to the construction site the passenger rolled down his window the guard shouted out and the reply was a gunshot which caught him in the stomach as he crumpled to the ground the driver sped off for a gang famous for their hatred of the police this attack meant killing two birds with one stone thankfully they didn't actually kill the guy who was rushed to hospital and made a full recovery his near-death experience served as a warning for any other companies considering stepping out of line it's like that is an intense warning he's like yeah yeah you just want to chill security guard job no not here not here don't mess with the gangs but apparently the message didn't really stick just nine months after that ex-cop took a nine millimeter round to the gut the gang came up against another problematic firm the hakushin kensetsu company was chaired by 72 year old toshihiro uchino and it was he had the final say of choosing a subcontractor for a big job in the winter of 2011. just like the fishery cot manager before him he refused to bend to kudokai pressure and rejected their chosen firm's bid i don't know it's like yeah i know corruption's wrong but if i'm in this dude's position it's like i know i'm gonna be killed if i don't accept it so i'm gonna be like yeah yeah risk getting in some trouble or accept it and not get killed it's like trouble is better than death so what are you gonna do like yeah yeah report it they're gonna kill you they're definitely gonna kill you the gang exacted their revenge while the elderly man was returning home after watching a sumo tournament in the next city over with his wife as he stepped out of his car two men on a motorbike rode up on the street the one on the back fired two shots from a handgun one of them hitsuccino in the neck the elderly executive bled out on his own front doorstep as his wife and friends desperately tried to treat the wounds yeah you see you stand up to them someone's going to ride up to you on a motorbike and shoot you in the goddamn neck so yeah don't do that always bend to the will of the mob is what i'm trying to say now gunning down pensioners doesn't exactly sit well with the chivalrous gangster image that many associate with the yakuza so these killings didn't quite have the effect that boss namura hoped for if anything it seems like their ruthlessness was actually starting to work against them what a surprise their opponents in the industry banded together with fed up citizens of kitiushu to lead public demonstrations against the gang's influence as nationwide anti-yakuza laws rammed up the public felt ever more confident in openly opposing them even the mayor of kitty yashu spoke out so the kudikai responded the only way they knew how slashing attacks against civilians and arsenal tanks against anti-yakuza businesses spiked the mayor started receiving death threats to his office and he had to ramp up his own security yeah like you get those death threats from these like crazy yakuza it's like oh they really mean it though it's not like a regular politician death row where it's some crazy dude in the woods it's like no no they're here and they've got bombs it seems like the kudukai would happily put blade or bullet in every single person in the city if that's what it took to bring them to heal 2012 wasn't just industry magnates and politicians on their kill list either even the police were considered fair game around this time investigators were close to building a convincing tax evasion case against boss nomura so his gang decided to send a signal directly to the top ranks of the force on april 19 2012 former detective yasso hiroshi was walking to work through a residential part of kitakyushi at about 7am onlookers watched in horror as a man on a motorbike rode up beside the 61 year old pulled out a gun and the rider shot yet cop in the hip before speeding off no prizes for guessing who's behind the attack no no it's the gangs hiroshi was one of the city's top detectives in his day and took a firm stance against the kudo kai throughout his entire career the renegade carpet stepped down the previous year citing fears for he and his family's safety good call all things considered he got off relatively lightly with just a hospital visit considering that he had been a thorn in the gang side since 1978. an office lady managed to prop him up against a wall and called an ambulance hiroshi was back on his feet after a month of recovery the kudo kai however would never quite recover from this because seeing as one of their own had been attacked the police response was massive that's what it took the the grenades at the prime minister's house didn't encourage a massive enough police response i feel like they'd be like get on it guys that was the prime minister we should do something about these gangs over 120 officers converged on kudukai hall while 20 special weapons officers and tactical gear kept watch outside the rest ransacked the gang hq for evidence later that day as a middle finger directed straight at bosnia himself prosecutors indicted him for tax evasion a huge chunk of the racketeering profits which had trickled up to the chief through his underlings had been uncovered revealing that nomura had successfully avoided a modest uh 319 million yen in income tax about 2.9 million dollars don't ever let anyone tell you that crime doesn't pay i have to say i kind of expected that he'd have more money he's the head of some sort of crazy dangerous japanese crime gang that's the biggest in the country and he avoided that little i mean did they just not catch the rest of it or did he just like launder that in normal way or something i don't know either way got an al capone his ass 2013. as we move into 2013 the noose is starting to take a knot tighten on boss nomura and his crew the cops made a habit of frequently raiding his home and other kudukai properties trying to shake out the gang all of this added stress did nothing to cool bosnia's famously volatile temperament which brings us to the most outstanding and most absurd chart on his rap sheet towards the end of 2012 the then 66 year old yakuza boss went to a clinic in the city of fukuoka for what newspapers intriguingly refer to as cosmetic surgery on his genitals okay as you know on this show we'd like to ask the difficult questions that others are just too damn afraid to ask so are we talking about mole removal or something or a facelift kind of deal i think we'll just chalk this one up to an unsold mystery and move on penis enlargement you didn't tune in for these mental images anyway certainly did not anyway whatever he was in for boston murrah was apparently extremely unhappy with the results of his nether region's nip and tuck how is this public knowledge if i was some like mafia boss and i was having some like weird operation on my junk i'd be like i'm going in for dentistry too or um anything else or literally anything else just lie and if anyone questions you i don't know chop off the head you're a you're a mafia boss just do it city prosecutors said that he unjustifiably resented the failed surgery and conspired to exact his revenge against the clinic this meant targeting a female nurse who was part of the surgical team that day apparently boss wonky nob found her especially disrespectful during his little medical ordeal so in january 2013 he allegedly had one of his kudo kailakis track her down while the innocent woman was walking home from work the gangster jumped her and stabbed her in the chest and neck imagine ordering a woman stabbed in the neck because she didn't treat your elderly genitals with enough respect it doesn't exactly scream mental stability i don't think we you know if you're like the head of some sort of crime syndicate i don't think you're like super mentally stable it's like you've got to be like happy to kill people there's going to be people backstabbing you all the time it's got to be pretty intense right i've seen enough mafia stuff to know that is pretty intense it's going to be a high stress lifestyle once again though the victims survived just but these guys are kind of stabbing people to be honest and shooting people it's like you just shoot them in the wrong places or you stab them and you just you're just not very good at it are you please don't kill me despite being understandably traumatized her ordeal would eventually prove essential to bringing the old yakuza boss to justice nomura's reign of terror was fast coming to an end and he must have been able to sense it towards the end of 2013 raids on his properties were becoming increasingly frequent and something big was cooking over at the fukuoka prefecture police headquarters unbeknownst to the kudukai investigators had reopened the murder case from 1998 not content with pinning the crime on some low-level enforcers who carried out the hit they were looking to trace the culpability right up the chain of command and as the police's attention returned to that case the kudukai once again targeted the family of the deceased here's where the story comes full circle in december 2013 the kudikai once again targeted the head of that same fishing cooperative now is a man called tada yoshi ueno who several sources report was the younger brother of the murdered chairman from 1998 if that was if that was me i'd be like wait wait they murdered my predecessor because he made this decision that they didn't like i wonder what decision i'm gonna make i'd just be so easy to be like i don't know i'm not a hero it's just a fishing port i know it's bad and corruption's wrong but i'd be like they literally murdered the last dude yeah i'm sorry but i'm going with the dodgy mafia people and i don't care because otherwise i'll be dead the family and organization continued to stand up against the mafia even after that murder and this once again put them at the top of the gang's hit list what are you doing you're just going to get yourself killed at about 8am on the 20th of december the new chief executive was taking out the trash at his kareyushu home a car was parked some way down the street and as the old man stepped out of his front door the driver fired up the engine and rolled past the driveway teddy yoshi uno was shot down and found some minutes later by a passer-by unfortunately paramedics were unable to save him and he died at the scene what a shocking turn of events he was 70 years old the same age his brother had been when he was gunned down 15 years prior if there's one thing namura is known for besides his love of violence and apathy towards taxes it's his superhuman ability to hold a grudge as if any more proof of that is needed five months later a kudukai member stabbed a 29 year old dentist as he got out of his car in a parking lot the guy's only crime had been being the grandson of ueno and the great nephew of the first murdered chairman if at first they do not heed stab shoot and stab again they probably have another motto but i think this one fits better yeah i agree it's super intense you're just killing that dude because his granddad was someone you didn't like it's like what did he do to you he's just someone if my granddad did something someone didn't like and they killed me i'd be like what are you talking about he's my granddad he's not me downfall [Music] by mid-2014 the case against kudukai top brass was looking increasingly strong it was always suspected that their underlings would go to prison silently staying loyal to the boss even if it meant losing decades of their lives it made it extremely difficult to nab the top dogs ok there you go they do have some sort of a murder code like the code of silence or whatever but after undisclosed new evidence emerged in the 1998 murder case kitakyushu city prosecutors were able to conclusively prove that the hitmen were not acting on their own behalf the orders came from on high this sets a dangerous precedent for the kudikai leaders for the first time since that botched genital surgery boss nomura was well and truly sweating it all came to a head in the second week of september 2014 when over 530 riot police officers were secretly transported down to kitak yushi from around japan clearly something big was about to go down on the 11th these officers were deployed to key kudokai locations around the city while local officers surrounded the house of boss satoru nomura if this story ever gets turned into a film this bit would be the final showdown at 7 20 am that morning the mafia head's house was raided and he was served in an indictment a murder charge for the 1998 killing he thought he was immune from prosecution so long as it let his soldiers do the killing but the times they were a changing yeah be a bit weird if you were immune because you pay you ordered someone to kill someone else they killed someone else's like no oh i didn't do it did i it's like yeah i didn't kill them the gun killed them that i fired it doesn't work like that does it they both both people go to prison for murder and that's definitely how it should be obviously as namura was carried off on the back of a police car his kudokai bodyguard stood by the side of the road and bowed they probably thought the arrest was all a bit of theater for the news cameras a legal pantomime to humiliate the kudokai boss for daring to mess with the cops directly after all bosnia had been virtually untouchable for years but namura's underlings grew nervous as the charges started to pile up the fukuoka city prosecutors were very much for real this time after all once a precedent was set by slapping the mura with the 1998 case why not try pinning the rest of the gang's crimes on him too the argument was that since the kudo kai emphasized absolute loyalty and absolute obedience there was only one man at the source of all that terror as his subordinates were scooped up and convicted for many crimes we've covered today nomura's odds of dying a free man started rapidly dwindling yeah he was in his 70s or something wasn't he it's like you're going to prison for murder you're going to be there for a while also in japan they still have the death penalty they could hang you which is pretty intense the month after his arrest the nurse's stabbing was added to the mix the next year further charges were tacked on for stabbing of the dentist and another non-fatal shooting of a contractor then in 2017 he landed his fifth arrest for the shooting of the ex-detective thanks to wiretap evidence taken separately all of the incidents just represented a pattern of gang violence but prosecutors managed to weave together weave them together in a complete narrative of a crime boss wielding his tyrannical power over a city this kind of case is unprecedented in japanese legal history making bosnia something of a poster boy but the government's crackdown on organized crime i mean it took them bloody long enough when these these guys were around like running gambling houses or whatever from before the first world war or second world war and the government's finally like yeah we may should do something about these gangs it's like it took you bloody long enough didn't it and as things stand things are looking pretty bleak for the old boy what's happening now the kudukai's top dog was convicted on tax fraud in 2018 is still serving a three-year sentence that a verdict is expected on the murder assault conspiracy trial sometime after this summer so we've got that to look forward to after the euros and the olympics wrap up yeah they got to get him on that murder right or like i mean he's the top of an organization they got to have found something or like he's he's killed many people it seems allegedly let's get it let's get him to stay in prison forever maybe hopefully and the stake's going to be higher prosecutors have taken the surprising approach of asking for the death penalty for the old mafia boss that might seem excessive i don't know it doesn't seem that excessive he's like the head of an organization which murdered people since only one person actually died in the four attacks he's on trial for but the point is that all of the people were innocent civilians the yakuza were able to court the establishment for a better part of the century by presenting themselves as a force of order in the underworld okay so this is why they got to stick around for so long predictable reasonable gentlemanly criminals nomura on the other hand was outfitting his boys with rpgs and telling them to gun down granddads for fun you ruined the fun for everyone namura not only did he and his goons break many many many laws their indiscriminate violence went against everything the yakuza was supposed to stand for thanks to that there aren't many cops judges or citizens left who even give the slightest bit of a symbol of sympathy to little old his top lieutenant fumio tanya is getting off comparatively lightly it's just a life sentence and a 20 million yen fine on the cards for him several other top ranking members are facing similar prospects and if all of them end up getting the maximum sentences it's likely the end of an era for kudo kai and the yakuza culture in general wrap up the end of an era whatever happens to the septuagenarian mob boss it looks like his gang will never quite recover from the judicial onslaught they faced over the past 10 years his membership has dwindled to around 280 as many old-timers move on with new lives and those who remain struggle to draw in new recruits to a life of crime something that chinese gangs will muscle in in their place and it's difficult to convince local youngsters to join when they're the ones who likely be getting their kneecaps smashed even the gang's iconic headquarters has been demolished after being purchased by an association of retired cops that's pretty cool they just buy it to burn it down excellent you'll now find ex-kudo-kai members occupying many walks of life in kitakushu and beyond last year japanese paper the main chi interviewed one of their old debt collectors now going straight to the delivery man and in 2018 the guardian spoke to an enforcer now running his own udon noodle shop some also went into construction work thanks to partnerships between police and private companies to give the gangsters a legitimate way to re-enter society must have been an awkward first day when your colleagues recognize you as the guy who once took pot shots at them with a 12-gauge after all it's tough not to identify an ex-yakuza even if they cover the tattoos you can generally spot them by the permanent identifying mark on their hands a severed left pinky self-mutilated to atone for offences against the gang despite the stigma of living a normal life with such a dark past these guys probably picked a good time to leave their life behind as the courts continue to stamp out yakuza influence around the country on the plus side though if you've always wanted to live in japan but don't fancy teaching english i know one company that's desperate for staff if you're handy with hand grenades and have experience in extortion send in your cv and i'll hook you up just to be absolutely 100 clear that's not a real offer we're definitely not using the casual criminals to help recruit for the japanese mob just in case that wasn't blindingly obvious it was dismember dependencies number one if you enjoyed this far eastern spin on good fellas there are plenty more interesting stories to dive into from the history of this mental mafia they have some long-hailed animosity against japan's biggest yakuza organization the yamaguchi gumi and even head up a coalition of anti-yamaguchi crime syndicates their bloody feud is a good place to start as any number two bosnimura is sentenced to the death penalty then a pretty awful experience awaits him i mean of course being executed is never ideal but especially so in japan death row inmates are never told when they're scheduled to die so they can spend years or even decades living in a kafka s nightmare every day they wake up wondering if they'll get the surprise announcement when it eventually comes they're hanged just a few hours later oh my god that's so intense that is so intense like why would you do that that is just cruel number three the practice of finger chopping is called yubutsume literally finger shortening if a yakuza fails the gang they're expected to self-amputate a segment of fingers starting with the end of the left pinky and presented to their boss interestingly enough the practice isn't only restricted to yakuza each time i present a script with typo simon makes me chop off a bit of a digit to regain my honor excellent callum i mean there's been zero typos in today's episode i think i saw one uh is it an apostrophe i think the word's an apostrophe there was a colon instead of an apostrophe or a semicolon instead of a posture callum i'm looking forward to seeing part of your finger later cyan makes you chop off a bit of a digit to remain regain my honor which makes it more difficult to type kind of a vicious circle really this has been an episode of the casual criminalist i really hope you did enjoy it if you did and you're watching this show on youtube please do drop a like below subscribe if you're listening to this show in his audio version hello there i'd appreciate a review that would be fantastic if you're on apple podcasts you can leave a review i think there's like a thousand of them now which is incredible and awesome thank you so much to everyone who's left reviews so far i look at them i read them that seem to be overwhelmingly positive which is always so nice to read so thank you everyone who's left to review uh it makes a big difference to me it's nice to see those reviews so please do that and as always thank you for watching or listening [Music] you

Channel: The Casual Criminalist

Views: 384,383

Keywords: true crime

Id: TpIVcKBp0bE

Length: 34min 14sec (2054 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 28 2021