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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waN5aTu5DSA
Justin McCurry in Tokyo
Tue 7 Apr 2009 14.07 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/apr/07/japan-yakuza-boss-buddhist
Tadamasa Goto, one of Japan’s most notorious underworld bosses, is to enter the Buddhist priesthood less than a year after his volatile behaviour caused a rift in the country’s biggest crime syndicate.
As leader of a yakuza – or Japanese mafia – gang, Goto amassed a fortune from prostitution, protection rackets and white-collar crime, while cultivating a reputation for extreme violence.
Tomorrow, his life will take a decidedly austere turn when he begins training at a temple in Kanagawa prefecture south of Tokyo, the Sankei Shimbun newspaper said today, citing police sources.
The 66-year-old, whose eponymous gang belonged to the powerful Yamaguchi-gumi crime syndicate, was expelled from the yakuza fraternity last October after a furious row with his bosses over his conduct.
Known as Japan’s answer to John Gotti, the infamous mafia don, Goto reportedly upset his seniors amid media reports that he had invited several celebrities to join his lavish birthday celebrations last September.
Several months earlier he had attracted more unwanted publicity following revelations that he had offered information to the FBI in return for permission to enter the US for a life-saving liver transplant in 2001.
At an emergency meeting last October the Yamaguchi-gumi’s bosses – minus their leader, Shinobu Tsukasa, who is serving a six-year prison term for illegal arms possession – expelled Goto, splitting his gang into rival factions.
According to the Sankei, Goto will formally join the priesthood on 8 April – considered to be Buddha’s birthday in Japan – in a private ceremony.
The former gangster was quoted as describing the occasion as “solemn and meaningful, in which Buddha will make me his disciple and enable me to start a new life”.
In his deal with the FBI, Goto reportedly gave up vital information about yakuza front companies, as well as the names of senior crime figures and the mob’s links to North Korea.
Underworld experts have pointed out, however, that the bureau could have gleaned the same information from yakuza fanzines.
Goto’s transplant was performed at UCLA medical centre in Los Angeles In the spring of 2001 by the respected surgeon Dr Ronald W Busuttil, using the liver of a 16-year-old boy who had died in a traffic accident.
The grateful don, who was suffering from liver disease, later donated $100,000 (£68,000) to the hospital, his generosity commemorated in a plaque that reads: “In grateful recognition of the Goto Research Fund established through the generosity of Mr Tadamasa Goto.”
Jake Adelstein, a former crime reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, received death threats before he went public with the transplant story last spring, and has been living under police protection ever since.
When it was assigned to cultivate the Tokyo area in the late 1980s, the Goto-gumi stuck to what it knew best: drugs, human trafficking and extortion, before new anti-gang laws forced it to move in to more lucrative areas such as real estate and the stockmarket.
At the height of their powers, Goto’s henchmen were capable of unspeakable acts of violence, including bulldozing businesses that refused to pay protection money and administering beatings to victims in front of their families, reports said.
A 1999 leaked police file noted that “in order to achieve his goals, [Goto] uses any and all means necessary or possible. He also uses a carrot-and-stick approach to keep his soldiers in line. His group is capable of extremely violent and aggressive acts”.
Japanese temple bans yakuza crime family
https://www.ft.com/content/7d4b9616-11cd-11e1-9d4d-00144feabdc0
Mure Dickie in Tokyo
NOVEMBER 18, 2011
One of Japan’s most celebrated temples has told the feared Yamaguchi-gumi yakuza crime syndicate that its members are no longer welcome to pay their respects to late godfathers in its vermillion-walled Amida hall.
The move by Enryakuji, a 1,200-year-old centre of Buddhist faith on Mount Hiei near Kyoto, followed pressure from the police and highlights growing efforts to isolate the yakuza groups that dominate the Japanese criminal underworld.
The yakuza for decades operated far more openly in Japan than counterparts in other developed countries, but citizens’ groups, news organisations and the police have become increasingly intolerant of their activities.
News of the temple’s decision comes amid heated speculation about possible yakuza involvement in an unfolding scandal at Japanese optical equipment maker Olympus.
Olympus has admitted using a series of acquisitions to cover up huge losses, and the New York Times reported on Thursday that investigators suspect that large sums went to crime groups including the Yamaguchi-gumi.
The Yamaguchi-gumi, which has its headquarters in a quiet residential neighbourhood of the western port city of Kobe, is Japan’s most powerful crime group – accounting for about 45 per cent of the 78,000 yakuza members and associates counted by police.
Memorial tablets for deceased leaders of the group, which is organised around pseudo-familial relationships, are kept in Enryakuji’s Hall of the Amida Buddha, and members have long visited to pay their respects.
The temple, the centre of the esoteric Tendai Buddhist sect, allowed such visits even after a 2006 memorial event attended by scores of Yamaguchi-gumi members sparked harsh criticism from anti-crime groups and Buddhist associations, forcing the resignation of Enryakuji’s chief priest.
A temple official told the Financial Times that Enryakuji had been recognising Yamaguchi-gumi members as “family members” of group’s dead leaders, but decided this year to stop this practice because of “social trends” including the introduction of new prefectural rules banning commercial exchanges with yakuza groups.
Prefectural governments around Japan have over the past two years introduced regulations that ban companies and other institutions from commercial exchanges with yakuza organisations, even when these do not involve illegal activities.
“Because of the situation in society, we informed the Yamaguchi-gumi that venerating the mortuary tablets would no longer be permitted,” the official said.
The crime group had responded through a lawyer that it “understands”, he said.
Many Buddhists are likely to be pleased by the decision to bar mobsters from a centre of a religion often associated benevolence and non-violence.
However, Enryakuji’s own history is hardly all peaceful. For centuries the temple maintained armies of warrior monks, known as sohei, which waged war on rival factions and were notorious for repeatedly pillaging Kyoto, then Japan’s capital.
Enryakuji’s military power ended when warlord Nobunaga Oda burned the temple and slaughtered its monks in 1571.
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