Kakuji Inagawa (稲川角二 ''Inagawa Kakuji''), also known as Seijō Inagawa (稲川聖城 ''Inagawa Seijō''; November 1914 – December 22, 2007) was a Japanese

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 ...

boss best known for founding the

Inagawa-kai The is the third largest of Japan's yakuza groups, with approximately 3,100 members. It is based in the Kantō region, and was one of the first yakuza organizations to begin operating overseas. History The Inagawa-kai was founded in Atami, Shiz ...

, Japan's third-largest yakuza syndicate. Inagawa, son of a

Meiji University , abbreviated as Meiji (明治) or Meidai (明大'')'', is a private research university located in Chiyoda City, the heart of Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1881 as Meiji Law School (明治法律学校, ''Meiji Hōritsu Gakkō'') by three Meiji-er ...

graduate who fell on hard times, never attended school. He was recruited into the yakuza as an enforcer when he was a teenage

judo is an unarmed gendai budō, modern Japanese martial art, Olympic sport (since 1964), and the most prominent form of jacket wrestling competed internationally.『日本大百科全書』電子版【柔道】(CD-ROM version of Encyclopedia Nipponi ...

student. After serving in

World War II 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 opposin ...

, Inagawa formed the Inagawa-gumi, the predecessor to the current Inagawa-kai, in

Atami, Shizuoka is a city located in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 36,865 in 21,593 households and a population density of 600 persons per km2. The total area of the city is . Geography Atami is located in the far ea ...

in 1949. Inagawa was regarded as an "elder statesman" of the yakuza, and a peacemaker skilled in settling disputes between rival gangs. In the early 1960s, he headed the short-lived Kanto-kai, a federation of

Kantō region The is a geographical area of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. In a common definition, the region includes the Greater Tokyo Area and encompasses seven prefectures: Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Saitama, Tokyo, Chiba and Kanagawa. Slight ...

gangs organized by

Yoshio Kodama was a Japanese right-wing ultranationalist and a prominent figure in the rise of organized crime in Japan. The most famous '' kuromaku'', or behind-the-scenes power broker, of the 20th century, he was active in Japan's political arena and crimi ...

. That organization's rightist philosophy was summed up by Inagawa: "We

bakuto ''Bakuto'' (博徒) were itinerant gamblers active in Japan from the 18th century to the mid-20th century. They were one of two forerunners (the other being ''tekiya'', or peddlers) to modern Japanese organized crime syndicates called ''yakuza''. ...

cannot walk in broad daylight," he said. "But if we unite and form a wall to stop

Communism Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

, we can be of service to our nation."

References

Yakuza members People from Yokohama Japanese crime bosses 1914 births 2007 deaths {{Japan-crime-stub