Word: nagasaki
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...native son of Nagasaki, Fumio Kyuma really should have known better. On June 30, Japan's defense minister gave a speech on World War II at a university outside of Tokyo, where he told students that Japan could have easily ended up divided like its wartime ally Germany had the Soviet Union decided to invade Tokyo's defenseless northern island of Hokkaido in the closing weeks of the war. What stopped the Russians, Kyuma argued, was the American atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "I understand that the bombings brought the war to its end," said Kyuma. "I think...
...long and 1.5 m wide. The bump in dimensions gave manufacturers creative space to build better, roomier models-most now have four doors-and alleviated consumer concerns about safety and comfort. "I feel perfectly safe in a minicar," says Ayako Yamamoto, a 57-year-old housewife in Nagasaki prefecture whose family owns a kei and a minitruck. "The interior is very spacious, and it drives just as well [as a full-size...
Tetsuya Shiroo woke up that morning and got himself a gun. Before the day was over, he allegedly used it to murder Iccho Itoh, the mayor of the southwestern Japanese city of Nagasaki, outside his campaign office. While the April 17 shooting first appeared to be an assassination, it soon emerged that Shiroo, a 59-year-old yakuza (gangster) with ties to Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest criminal syndicate, seemed motivated less by politics than by a petty personal grievance. He blamed a minor car accident on city construction work and wanted $17,000 in damages from the Nagasaki government...
...past several years, the mobsters' traditional revenue sources have been drying up, largely due to vastly reduced government spending on graft-prone public-works projects. With easy money harder to get, gangsters may be more likely to resort to strong-arm tactics as they fight for scraps. "The Nagasaki shooting is a harbinger of what's to come," says Mitsuhiro Suganuma, a former high-ranking agent with Japan's Public Security Intelligence Agency. "Their activities will become a lot more violent, and a lot more dangerous...
...echelons of major organizations like Yamaguchi-gumi-which controls roughly half the estimated 80,000 gangsters in Japan-are thriving due to booming economies in Tokyo and Osaka. They can make billions from gambling, loan-sharking, drugs and the protection racket. Meanwhile, smaller gangs in moribund regional cities like Nagasaki-which are more dependent on government spending to fuel local growth-are being squeezed. Increasingly desperate, they are turning up the heat on local officials to extort more money from a shrinking pool. "There are a lot of hidden tragedies involving yakuza-related organizations and bid rigging that never come...