The Nakano-kai (中野会) was a notorious

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2. ...

-based

yakuza , also known as , are members of transnational organized crime syndicates originating in Japan. The Japanese police and media, by request of the police, call them , while the ''yakuza'' call themselves . The English equivalent for the term ...

gang, founded by Taro Nakano (born October 30, 1936 in Oita) in the years after

World War 2 World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. The Nakano-kai was known for its fierce bellicosity and thus sometimes dubbed the "

Dojin-kai The is a yakuza organization headquartered in Kurume, Fukuoka, on the Kyushu island of Japan,

in the Yamaguchi-gumi". Before 1997, the Nakano-kai had been an affiliate of the

Kobe Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, whic ...

-based

Yamaguchi-gumi is Japan's largest ''yakuza'' organization. It is named after its founder Harukichi Yamaguchi. Its origins can be traced back to a loose labor union for dockworkers in Kobe before World War II. It is one of the largest criminal organizations i ...

, Japan's largest yakuza group. But in July of that year, the Nakano-kai broke spectacularly from its parent in a violent attack that led to the group's disbanding. In August 1997, four Nakano-kai gunmen walked into the Oriental Hotel in Kobe and assassinated

Masaru Takumi Masaru Takumi (宅見勝 ''Takumi Masaru''; June 22, 1936 – August 28, 1997) was a powerful Japanese organized crime figure assassinated in 1997. Until his death, he was the second-in-command (''wakagashira'') and financial overseer of Japan's ...

, number 2 in the Yamaguchi-gumi and the expected successor to

Yoshinori Watanabe was a yakuza, the fifth ''kumicho'' (chairman or Godfather) of the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest yakuza organization. He became kumicho in 1989. He was known for a more low-key approach than his predecessors, partly due to an anti-gang law pas ...

. The Japan Times - Tokyo police continue gang sweeps
/ref> The Nakano-kai was reportedly angry at Takumi for ordering them to cease hostilities in a local Osaka gang war. The attack also killed an innocent bystander, dentist Hiroshi Hirai. Public outrage over the shooting led to a police crackdown and the arrest of many of the gang's members (however, two of the hotel gunmen are still at large as of 2005). The gang was disbanded shortly thereafter.

References

Yakuza groups Yamaguchi-gumi {{crime-stub