Kokusui-kai

Kokusui-kai appears in the book both as a regional crime group and as an organization reshaped by a larger struggle for territory. In 1994, its confrontation with the expanding Yamaguchi-gumi spread across several prefectures and reached Saitama; later, Kokusui-kai merged with that rival, gaining a place in Tokyo while becoming part of an organization Sekiguchi regarded as increasingly dominated by money and expansion.

Regional Organization and Public Fronts

At the time of the 1994 conflict, Kokusui-kai was the third-largest crime group in Saitama Prefecture, behind the Sumiyoshi-kai and the Inagawa-kai. It had eighteen offices and approximately 230 known members. Those numbers make the organization more than a passing local presence in the account: its offices formed a visible network, and police were stationed outside each one after violence broke out.

Kokusui-kai also used private detective agencies as fronts. One such office occupied a seven-floor condominium building in Konosu, where its door bore the name of an Eastern and European private investigation agency. It was one of three agencies in the area that served as covers for Kokusui-kai offices, and the businesses advertised in the yellow pages. The legitimate appearance was not merely a sign on a door; it offered a working service through which the group could reach clients and profit from private information.

Sekiguchi explained that detective work was less common as a yakuza front than real estate or construction, but Kokusui-kai had made the arrangement profitable. The agency would take an infidelity case, charge the client, and, if it found evidence of an affair, threaten to reveal it to the unfaithful spouse’s partner. The investigation thus created leverage for blackmail: information gathered under the guise of a conventional service could be turned into a second source of income.

The 1994 Conflict

On November 16, 1994, hostilities between Kokusui-kai and the Yamaguchi-gumi broke into open violence. Kokusui-kai struck first, attacking two Yamaguchi-gumi members who had visited its Tokyo office. The following day, the Yamaguchi-gumi retaliated, and the conflict spread from Saga and Yamanashi to Shinjuku in Tokyo and finally to Saitama Prefecture. In the book’s account, a local confrontation became part of a wider contest over where the larger organization could operate.

Sekiguchi traced the immediate dispute to a visit to a Kokusui-kai office in Taito Ward. Two Yamaguchi-gumi members had come to settle a matter arising from a car accident involving one of their associates and a Kokusui-kai member. An argument during the visit escalated, and a Kokusui-kai member drew a gun. But Sekiguchi cautioned against treating the conflict as merely an argument over an accident. The Yamaguchi-gumi dominated Kansai and controlled a substantial share of the market; its effort to expand into Tokyo put it on territory where Kokusui-kai and other local groups resented its presence. The dispute in Saitama, where the Yamaguchi-gumi did not yet have an office, was therefore also a warning against further expansion.

The scale of the conflict became tangible at Kokusui-kai’s Konosu office. Police cordoned off the building’s first floor, while members moved in and out, speaking on their phones and disregarding the police presence. The scene brought the organization’s two faces together: an office concealed behind a commercial sign and a gang dispute now drawing a conspicuous police response. Investigators later received a call from someone claiming to be the gunman, adding a further development to the inquiry into the shooting.

Merger and Organizational Change

At a later point in the narrative, Sekiguchi says that Kokusui-kai had merged with his own organization the previous year. The merger meant that Kokusui-kai was now part of the Yamaguchi-gumi, and Sekiguchi described it as the route by which the group had established itself in Tokyo. The change reverses the relationship visible in the 1994 conflict: the organization once resisting the Yamaguchi-gumi’s advance had become incorporated into it.

Sekiguchi connected the merger to a broader change in organized crime. In his view, money had displaced older ideals such as loyalty to a superior, honor, endurance, and obligation. He acknowledged that he had once felt pride in belonging to his organization, but said it had changed, growing too large and losing restraints that should protect ordinary people. His assessment was not that Kokusui-kai alone had undergone this transformation; rather, its absorption into a rapidly expanding group illustrated the organizational consolidation he feared. He warned that continued expansion could put the Yamaguchi-gumi in control of the country and argued that such dominance would not be a good outcome.

Significance in the Narrative

Kokusui-kai’s role links two forms of organized-crime power. Its detective-agency fronts show how a group could make money through apparently ordinary commercial activity, turning investigations and private information into opportunities for coercion. The 1994 conflict, by contrast, exposes the territorial force behind the business facade: an encounter at an office could contribute to violence spreading across regions as a larger organization pressed toward Tokyo.

The subsequent merger gives that conflict a longer consequence. Kokusui-kai’s presence in Tokyo did not come through the independent expansion it had resisted in 1994, but through incorporation into the Yamaguchi-gumi. Through Sekiguchi’s account, the organization therefore marks both a particular episode of territorial struggle and a shift from competing local groups toward larger, more consolidated criminal structures.