Osaka activist's arrest lays bare yakuza ties with 'burakumin': Osaka activist's arrest lays bare yakuza ties with 'burakumin'.

Publication: Japan Times (Tokyo, Japan)

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COPYRIGHT 2006 Japan Times

Byline: Eric Johnston

Jul. 13--OSAKA -- On the night of Jan. 26, 1985, four hit men from the Ichiwa-kai crime syndicate drove up to an apartment complex in Suita, Osaka Prefecture.

Their target was a man known as Kunihiko Konishi, but who was in fact Masahisa Takenaka, don of Yamaguchi-gumi, the nation's largest underworld syndicate.

Takenaka, accompanied by two bodyguards, soon arrived to visit his mistress, who lived in an apartment rented under the name of Konishi. Shots rang out, killing Takenaka and his henchmen.

A war between the two gangs erupted that would leave 20 dead and Yamaguchi-gumi without a leader until Yoshinori Watanabe became the syndicate's fifth don in 1989.

In the aftermath of the killings, local media pursued many questions. But who the real Konishi was, and why the don of Japan's largest criminal gang had been using his name to disguise his movements, were not among those publicly addressed. The answer touched on one of the most taboo subjects in Japan, the connections between organized crime, local government and the "burakumin" (hamlet people), descendants of the feudal-era outcast class, also known as "eta."

On May 8, Osaka police arrested...

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