Worried police chiefs quickly instructed local forces to step up their monitoring of yakuza activities.
Shootings may be commonplace in yakuza (gangster) films, but in real life they are unusual.
His father was a low level yakuza gangster who committed suicide when Tooru was in elementary school.
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Every year, Japan's national policy agency publishes figures listing the precise number of yakuza gangs and gangsters.
ECONOMIST: Asia's criminal underworld: Love, money and revenge | The
But the harsher climate has toughened the survivors, most of whom are now affiliated to yakuza gangster groups.
But he said he was not aware of either individual's yakuza links at the time of the event, which took place 30 years ago.
As Mr Kaplan reports, it is only in the last few years that the Japanese government has started to get tough with the yakuza.
ECONOMIST: Asia's criminal underworld: Love, money and revenge | The
It is conceivable that some of the companies livedoor acquired were in the pocket of yakuza crime syndicates, for instance, which used them for money-laundering.
He has admitted he acted as a matchmaker - a ceremonial role - at a gangster's wedding and attended a party thrown by a "yakuza" crime group boss.
Mr Ito's murder hints at yakuza desperation more than strength.
Another album, 2001's Love and Theft, was claimed to have passages similar to lines from Confessions of a Yakuza, the memoir of a Japanese gangster by author Junichi Saga.
The Colombian cartels, Chinese tongs, Hong Kong triads, Japanese yakuza, and eventually after 1989 the Russian mafiya were all approached this way: first as criminal organizations, only later as traders.
It also established a non-profit group called the National Centre for the Elimination of Boryokudan (crime syndicates), to advise companies on avoiding the yakuza and rally citizens to complain, as in the recent suits.
It was Mr Abe's own grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, who as prime minister cemented ties between the government, the uyoku dantai and the mob back in 1960, when he enlisted yakuza help against left-wing opponents of Japan's alliance with America.
ECONOMIST: Asia's criminal underworld: Love, money and revenge | The
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