Source: Global People Author: Ershui
"What judgment is this? It's not fair at all, you'll regret it for the rest of your life! When Japanese gang leader Goku Nomura learned that he had been sentenced to death, he shouted at the judge in court.
On August 24, Japan's Fukuoka District Court ruled that Goku Nomura, the supreme leader of the KudoKai, known as "Japan's most violent and dangerous gang," was sentenced to death for directing four attacks on citizens, committing murder and attempted organized homicide.
Japanese gangs have committed many evils, but this is the first time that the number one person in the group has been sentenced to death.
In fact, since its inception, Kudo Kai has been infamous. Its members are particularly belligerent, equipped with weapons such as rocket launchers, and have repeatedly attacked local police stations and innocent citizens. Not only that, the group has also attacked the Chinese consulate in Fukuoka and the private residence of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Shimonoseki City, a gang group that the Japanese government has identified as "particularly dangerous."
The son of a landlord joins the gang
When it comes to Japanese gangsters, the most famous is the Yamaguchi Group, and the KudoKai is one of the few organizations that dares to confront the Yamaguchi Group.
Kudokai was founded before World War II. At first, a gambler named Kudo Genji opened a casino in Ogura City (now Kitakyushu City) in Fukuoka Prefecture, and the casino gradually developed into an organization that engaged in gambling and loan sharking, as well as illegal activities such as drug trafficking and extortion.
Kudokai association flag.
Although Kudokai is not as large and numerous as the Yamaguchi group, most of its members are strictly selected "militants" who have a great advantage in victory when a fight occurs. They repeatedly fought with the Yamaguchi group for land grabs, and the result was that the Yamaguchi group lost one after another, and more important leaders were killed by Kudo Kai. Since then, the KudoKai has gradually grown and formed alliances with many gangs such as the Michihitokai and kumamotokai.
Goku Nomura, 75, is the fourth-generation group leader and president of KudoKai.
In people's minds, some people in Japan joined the gang because they were forced by life. But Nomura is not. He is from Fukuoka, has a house and a land and an industry in his hometown, and is considered to be a rich second generation.
In the early years, his father worked hard to earn money, bought many local fields, and became a famous large landowner. Later, the government engaged in economic construction and expropriated land from landlords, and Nomura's father made a lot of money from it.
Goku Nomura's home.
Goku Nomura is the youngest child in the family, growing up in a wealthy family, and the love of his family spoils him into a rebellious child, getting acquainted with street teenagers, skipping school, stealing, and being sent to a juvenile detention center many times. In the end, he chose to drop out of school and join the Tanaka Group, the largest branch of the Kudo Association, and said that "there is no need for a reason to do bad things."
Kiyojun Kimura, the leader of the Tanaka group, felt that the young Nomura Goku dared to fight and was a little clever, so he took special care of him. Unlike other gang members, Kiyojun Kimura graduated from a university in Tokyo and is more like an intellectual in terms of dress and manners.
Kiyojun Kimura, who is good at gambling, pulls Nomura Goku to teach gambling skills every day, and how to recognize the old man in the gambling game. Not long after, Goku Nomura, who was "out of school", entered the casino opened by tanaka group, and he often bet on it himself. It is rumored that Nomura lost a lot of money in the casino and secretly sold his family's land to pay off gambling debts.
Open a casino to make friends with the powerful
In 1980, Tanaka Group Chairman Shintaro Tanaka was killed by Kudo Kai's rivals, and Nomura wanted to take the opportunity to ascend to the throne. He first spent a lot of money to buy people's hearts and minds to get members to support him, and then he found an excuse to get rid of other candidates who had the opportunity to become president.
After some maneuvering, Goku Nomura was successfully elected as the chairman of the Tanaka Group. Since then, he has become more and more bold, not only opening a number of casinos in the city, but also changing his home into a private casino, specializing in receiving financiers, real estate developers, local politicians and other gamblers who are inconvenient to enter ordinary casinos.
Satoru Nomura.
At the gambling table, Nomura established his own network of connections and also packed his own pockets. According to sources, by 2000, Nomura had made a cumulative profit of 1 billion yen (1 yen or about 0.06 yuan) by operating casinos. After his parents' death, he also inherited a large amount of land and an inheritance of up to 700 million yen.
In 2000, Hideo Kashita, the third-generation leader of the KudoKai, selected Goku Nomura as his successor. Eight years later, Hideo Kushita died, and Goku Nomura became the fourth generation leader of the Kudokai.
Goku Nomura attends Hideo's funeral.
Under The leadership of Goku Nomura, the violent character of Kudokai gradually emerged. They purchase light weapons and are equipped with rocket launchers. According to Japanese media reports, the police have seized highly lethal automatic weapons, including Uzi submachine guns and M4 carbines, in the Kudokai underground arsenal.
When encountering merchants who refuse to pay protection fees, Kudo will use extreme violence to force merchants to submit; when encountering enterprises that are under construction, Kudo will ask the construction company to pay 1%-5% of the order amount for protection, otherwise it will make a big fuss at the construction site and hinder the construction of workers.
While smashing up shops and demanding protection fees, Kudo-kai members are also willing to hurt ordinary citizens. In August 2003, a member of the KudoKai threw a grenade into a nightclub that was in business because of a personal grudge, and it exploded on the spot, killing 12 people. The incident caused a sensation at the time.
The Japanese police also launched an arrest operation against the kudokai members, but in the end they were not successful. According to the Japanese media weekly Bunchun, Nomura Goku's wife is the sister of the wife of Japanese politician Matsumoto Ryu. Matsumoto Ryu served as Minister of the Environment and Minister of Reconstruction Countermeasures in the cabinet of former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, and is one of the influential figures in the Democratic Party of Japan.
In this way, the members of the Kudo Association are even more unscrupulous.
They repeatedly attacked local police stations and courts, and used incendiary bombs to attack the residence and campaign headquarters of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Not only that, kudokai also attacked Chinese in Japan, forcing Chinese businessmen to close their doors. According to Xinhua News, Kudokai once created a vicious incident of shooting china's consulate general in Fukuoka.
3,800 police officers handled the case
In fact, the Japanese government has long realized that allowing gang organizations to continue to do evil will bring many evil consequences. Coupled with the fact that Japan was preparing for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the governance of the gangs became a top priority. To this end, the Japanese police began to crack down on gangsters in 2011, and Kudo Kaiki made a big fuss, becoming the first to be "cut" and identified by the police as a "designated violent group for specific dangers".
The police first put many members of the Kudokai on the "blacklist" of rectification, and members could not open bank accounts, rent houses in their own names, could not handle credit card transactions, and could only pay cash. Even if gang members leave Kudokai, these bans remain in effect for 5 years after their separation.
After that, the police started from the source of funds and strictly banned protection fees and payment fees for various names. When ordinary people encounter such a thing as collecting protection fees, they can directly complain to the police. General enterprises do not dare to do business with enterprises and individuals with gangster backgrounds.
In 2014, the Japanese police formally encircled and suppressed kudokai, weakening the gang from the leadership. On September 11, police arrested Goku Nomura and more than a dozen Kudokai leaders on suspicion of killing Former Kitakyushu City Fisheries Association chief Kunihiro Kajihara in 1998. According to Japanese media reports at the time, the police gathered nearly 100 police forces to raid Nomura Goku's mansion on the same day and confronted kudokai members at the gate. Eventually, a silver car carries Goku Nomura out of the mansion and escorts him to the police station.
Surrounded by police, Goku Nomura, dressed in white, walks out of the house.
In order to prevent the kudokai members from retaliating, the police also dispatched 3,800 police officers from all over Japan to set up an "investigation headquarters" to deal with it with all their strength, determined to completely destroy this criminal and evil force. At the same time, the U.S. Treasury Department also announced economic sanctions against Nomura and another leader of the Kudo Association, freezing their assets in the United States and prohibiting Americans from trading with them.
Since then, kudo-kai's power has been in a slump. In 2019, the Kudokai headquarters was officially dissolved, and the old headquarters site was subsequently bought by a company.
Although Nomura is the highest-ranking leader of the KudoKai, his name rarely appears in many cases, which makes it very difficult to handle the case. In the end, Japanese prosecutors prosecuted him in four cases: the killing of Kunihiro Kajihara, the former head of the Kitakyushu City Fishing Cooperative, in 1998, the shooting of a police officer in Fukuoka Prefecture with a gun in 2012, the stabbing of a female nurse in 2013, and the serious injury to a dentist in 2014.
The prosecution argued that in the 1998 case, the existence of the fishing cooperative had an impact on the port construction project owned by the KudoKai, and for this reason, Nomura instructed the gang members to kill the head of the fishing cooperative, and it was Nomura who caused the death of the victim. In the other three cases, the causes of the injuries of the three victims were also related to Nomura.
Schematic diagram of Goku Nomura (middle) on trial.
Earlier, while waiting for the verdict of the case, Nomura said in an interview in prison, "I am not a rogue, I just want to become the supreme leader." But behind his ambitions is the uneasiness and fear of ordinary Japanese people. Now that he has been sentenced to death, it is a well-deserved and gratifying thing for the Japanese.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Zhang Wu Text Editor: Li Linwei Caption Source: Shangguan Tu Editor Photo Editor: Zi Xi
Source: Author: Global People