Yamaguchi-gumi—Kokusui-kai

The relationship between the Yamaguchi-gumi and the Kokusui-kai was shaped first by a struggle over territory and later by consolidation. A 1994 clash exposed the tensions behind the Yamaguchi-gumi’s expansion eastward; the groups eventually merged, turning former opponents into members of a larger organization whose growing reach worried even some of its own participants.

Rivalry and Territorial Expansion

At the time of the conflict, the Yamaguchi-gumi was the dominant crime group in Kansai, where it controlled about 40 percent of the market, and had been trying for years to expand into Tokyo and the surrounding Kanto region. The Kokusui-kai regarded the arrival of Kansai members as an intrusion onto its turf. In Saitama Prefecture, the Yamaguchi-gumi did not yet have an office, and the violence there was understood as part of the wider contest over whether it would be allowed to establish itself in the area.

The Kokusui-kai was then the third-largest crime group in Saitama, after the Sumiyoshi-kai and the Inagawa-kai. It had eighteen offices and around 230 known members. The conflict therefore involved a substantial local organization facing a larger group seeking a presence in new territory, not merely a personal dispute between individual members.

The 1994 Clash

On November 16, 1994, hostilities escalated after two Yamaguchi-gumi members visited a Kokusui-kai office in Tokyo and were shot. The next day, the Yamaguchi-gumi retaliated. The conflict spread through Saga and Yamanashi, then reached Shinjuku in Tokyo and Saitama Prefecture. Police stationed officers outside the Kokusui-kai’s offices as the confrontation widened.

A later account supplied a more immediate spark: two Yamaguchi-gumi members had visited a Kokusui-kai office to settle matters arising from a car accident involving members of the two groups. An argument followed, and a Kokusui-kai member produced a gun. The episode could be described as beginning with a dispute over an accident, but the explanation given in the book places it within the larger struggle over the Yamaguchi-gumi’s attempted expansion. Once the shooting had begun, the conflict could no longer be contained as a local disagreement.

Merger and Incorporation

By the time of a later conversation recounted in the book, the Kokusui-kai had become part of the Yamaguchi-gumi. A member said the merger had taken place the previous year and pointed out that the Kokusui-kai members involved in the earlier conflict were now part of his own organization. The change reversed the groups’ former relationship: a rival whose presence had been resisted was absorbed into the expanding organization.

The merger also marked the Yamaguchi-gumi’s arrival in Tokyo in organizational terms. The speaker anticipated further expansion, even suggesting that the group might eventually control the entire country. The account presents that prospect not as an uncomplicated triumph but as a sign of the organization’s growing scale and power.

Changing Organization and Significance

The member reflecting on the merger contrasted the organization he had joined with what it had become. He said loyalty, honor, endurance, and obligation counted for less as money took precedence, and that the enlarged organization had become harder to control. He also worried that members no longer respected ordinary citizens or followed the rules he associated with the group’s earlier identity. His perspective makes the merger more than a change in territorial alignment: it exemplifies the transformation of a contested local order into a larger, more dominant organization whose expansion carried consequences for its own members as well as its opponents.