Yamaguchi-gumi: Meet Japan's most notorious yakuza group who vowed to end war with rival gang

In what is seen as an end to a decade-long war between yakuza gangs, the Yamaguchi-gumi crime syndicate, one of the most powerful, richest and largest organised crime group in the world, has informed police that it wants to "end all internal fighting" and stop causing trouble.

Three top members of the yakuza gang came to the Hyogo Prefectural police headquarters earlier this week and submitted a letter, expressing their intention to put an end to the feud with rivals.

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Yamaguchi-gumi has been classified as "a designated violent conflict group". The latest attempt by the group is seen as an effort to lift this designation so that they can continue operating without scrutiny from the authorities.

In 2015, some factions of the Yamaguchi-gumi gang left the syndicate to form the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi gang. The two rival sides have been fighting each other ever since. Police have reported several cases where the two gangs have been involved in shooting and stabbing incidents.

The Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi gang is yet to respond to the truce pledged by their rivals. In 2014, Yamaguchi-gumi has 10,300 members of who around 2,800 joined the newly created Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi. Another 400 joined the Kizuna-kai in April 2017 and 80 more broke away to set up Ikeda-gumi in 2020.

Yamaguchi-gumi gang has around 3,300 members as of 2024, while Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi has nearly 120 members.

According to Jake Adelstein, who wrote 'Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan', told This Week in Asia that the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi has been "decimated" due to infighting and defections. "This has been coming for some time as the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi lost ground and the fight became very one-sided. It got to the point where they had no power to push back," he said.

The strength of Japanese yakuza gangs have been steadily declining in recent years. The country's National Police Agency said yakuza groups have just 18,800 members in total as of 2024. This is the first time that the numbers have plunged below 20,000 since 1958 when the authorities started recording the figures. In the 1960s, there were over 1.8 lakh members across Japan.

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