Police target new ‘otakuza’ syndicate

With Japan’s yakuza gangs suffering severe shortfalls in revenues due to the ongoing recession, a group of brainy but dysfunctional otaku are fast moving in to supplant them in the nation’s rackets.

According to a source close to the organized crimes investigation division of the National Police Agency, the new group, Kuki City, Saitama Prefecture-based Gamagori-gumi — the “otakuza,” as they have been code-named in police internal communications — has been moving into the turf of the Tokyo-based Inagawa-kai and Sumiyoshi Rengo groups in Kanto and the Yamaguchi-gumi in Kansai and west Japan, collecting protection, blackmail and gambling, drugs and the sex industry.

Gamagori-gumi’s oyabun (godfather) was identified as Daigoro Tsuki, age 28, whereabouts currently unknown. No photograph of Tsuki is known to exist, except for one blurry .gif picture that appears to have been taken by a web cam.

“Tsuki’s a bad one,” says Magari Hesoda, editor of Jitsuwa Carples magazine, “He and his confederates got their start shaking down teenage kids for their bus fares, then moved on to sales of bootleg PlayStation games, pornographic manga, and “ura DVDs” shot by hidden cameras set up in women’s rest rooms and public baths.”

A confidential source in the Saitama prefectural police said the gang really started picking up momentum when Tsuki hired away a former college classmate who up to that time was a programmer from one of the nation’s top electronics firms.

“The Gamagori-gumi was then able to hack into mobile phone networks and send spam mails offering ‘delivery health’ and other sex services at prices that undercut the operations of rival gangs.”

The Tokyo Reporter has learned that Tsuki’s gang succeeded in taking over the rackets in Kuki City after it hacked into NTT DoCoMo and sent out a spurious message under the name of the local yakuza gang head ordering 23 of his soldiers to converge on a hot-springs hotel near Kuki where members of a rival gang were said to be holding a meeting. The “rival” gang turned out to be a two squads of riot policemen on paid holiday, who easily disarmed the attackers, snapped wet towels against their buttocks until they confessed and then arrested them on charges of violating the Firearms and Swords Control Law.

This coup, resulting in apprehension of virtually the entire gang, enabled Tsuki to take over the city unopposed and within six months he had branched out into southern and western Saitama, and from there into the Tokyo satellite towns of Hoya, Sagami and Okamoto, where they set up legitimate front operations, including the chain of “Hello Kiwifruit” hostess clubs which feature silicone mannequins. (A.T.)

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