OSAKA: After decades of tacit acceptance, Japan's 22 yakuza gangs are facing their biggest challenge: not from the police, but from ordinary citizens who are under pressure to shun the mob or be named and shamed.

Tokyo recently became the last of Japan's 47 prefectures to introduce local laws aimed at depriving crime syndicates of income by targeting firms that knowingly do business with them. Under the nationwide ordinances, firms that help the yakuza earn money will be warned, and their names made public if they refuse to sever their ties. Repeat offenders face fines of up to 500,000 yen and company officials can face jail terms of up to a year.

The idea, say law enforcement officials, is to shame businesses into turning their backs on the mob. “It is going to be more difficult for the yakuza to collect funds,” said Akihiko Shiba, a former police superintendent who is now a lawyer specialising in corporate compliance. “Police once concentrated on the gangs themselves, but the new approach is clamping down on those who help the gangs make money.”

Although some lawful businesses may not know they are dealing with the gangsters for others the prospect of being shamed in public, as well as losing potential customers and bank loans, has prompted some legitimate businesses and groups to sever their yakuza ties.

Last year, Enryakuji, a prestigious Buddhist temple near Kyoto, said it would refuse to allow members of the Yamaguchi-gumi, the country's biggest crime group, to pay their respects there.

But Japan's most powerful yakuza don ridiculed the latest crackdown. Depriving large numbers of gang members of their livelihoods could damage public safety, Kenichi Shinoda, head of the Yamaguchi-gumi, said in a rare media interview. “If the Yamaguchi-gumi were to be disbanded, public order would deteriorate immediately,” he told the Sankei Shimbun.

The result, he warned, would be the creation of a population of dispossessed mobsters who could turn to violent crime to make a living.

“Yakuza gangs are amazingly gentlemanlike,” he said, citing the traditional respect for seniority that binds gangs together. “(We) adhere to those values more than ordinary people do.”

The gangs themselves have produced manuals showing members how to sidestep the new laws. Some of the measures border on the banal: faxing documents rather than using made-to-order stationary, and cancelling contracts with outside caterers. The Yamaguchi-gumi is reportedly considering a ban on sending traditional gifts to business associates, and holds weekly meetings to discuss its response to the new ordinances.

Other groups have distributed in-house guides to the legal changes, and even hold funerals for members on their own premises rather than risk entrapping privately run crematories.

But innocent citizens, too, risk having their livelihoods ruined by unwittingly providing services to the yakuza, said writer Atsushi Mizoguchi, Japan's foremost expert on organised crime. “Some companies have already been named and shamed,” he said.

“They can't get bank loans, or lenders have cancelled existing loans. In a few cases they have even gone bankrupt. Before, it used to be the police v the yakuza; now it's the people v the yakuza. The police have taken a step back and put more pressure on companies themselves to confront the yakuza.”

The police agency says total membership of crime syndicates fell from 88,600 in 1990 to 78,600 in 2010. Despite the dip, the yakuza remain a powerful force in Japanese society.

Incredibly, yakuza membership is not illegal, even if the new laws will make it more difficult for gangsters to earn a decent living. “In most other countries crime syndicates are banned, but Japan still recognises their right to exist,” Mizoguchi said.

Toleration of the mob dates back to the 1800s, when the forerunners of the yakuza were permitted to carry weapons, provided they helped to maintain order when the police were short of manpower.—Dawn/Guardian News Service