Kitami, memories of bloodshed: The Ichiwakai and Inagawa-kai war of 1985-1986

Kitami, memories of bloodshed: The Ichiwakai and Inagawa-kai war of 1985-1986

Founded in 1956 by Shigemasa Kamota in Nagata-ku, Kobe, the Kamota-gumi started out as an influential secondary organization of the Yamaguchigumi III. In the 1960s, it was frequently involved in gang wars, such as the Meiyukai incident and clashes with the Nezu clan, and in 1973, Kamota himself was imprisoned. In 1977, he became an assistant to the Yamaguchigumi's young leader, and his position within the organization was raised. However, in 1984, when Masahisa Takenaka became the fourth Yamaguchigumi boss, he rebelled against this policy and formed the Ichiwakai. In 1988, Kamota announced his retirement and the Kamota-gumi was dissolved.

The Kamota group's activities in Hokkaido were led by Akira Hanada, who was based in Kitami City. As head of the Kamota clan, Akira Hanada became the central figure of the Ichi-wakai's Hokkaido operations and established roots in Kitami through local businesses and land development. On the other hand, the Hoshikawa clan, an affiliate of the Kishimoto clan of the Inagawa-kai Inagawa family, was the opposing force in the province. This organization, headed by Hoshikawa Horioki, secured local interests centered on Abashiri and Kitami, and supported the Inagawa-kai's northern Japan strategy.

In July 1984, a member of the Hoshikawa clan shot a shotgun into a facility affiliated with the Hanada clan. This was the opening salvo in a feud that quickly escalated tensions between the two groups. Then, on July 30, 1985, Akira Hanada and Horiaki Hoshikawa ran into each other by chance at a snack bar in Kitami City. Hanada said to Hoshikawa, "That's not what yakuza do," which directly triggered the incident.

On the morning of August 1, 1985, Akira Hanada was shot at close range by two Hoshikawa gang leaders while shopping at the Bears Koei supermarket in Kitami City, and died four days later. This incident turned the organizational conflict between the Ichiwakai and the Inagawa-kai into a real bloodshed, leading to an all-out war known as the Kitami War.

On November 19, 1985, about three months after Hanada's death, three Hanada gang leaders broke into the cabaret "Hokkaido" in Yamashita-cho, Kitami City, and shot and killed Horiaki Hoshikawa and his entourage. This was an extremely unusual murder of a gang leader in Hokkaido, and caused quite a stir. On December 11, a senior member of the Hanada-Gumi's Sato clan was shot and killed. The following day, on December 12, a member of the same gang was seriously wounded. Retaliation and reprisals continued, and Kitami City was temporarily placed in the middle of violence.

With the help of police control and the encouragement of the upper organizations, a handcuffing ceremony was held on January 15, 1986 at the Izumi Hotel in Shiraoi-cho Torazuhama by representatives of the Ichiwakai and the Inagawa-kai, bringing the conflict to an end. On the surface, it appeared that peace had been restored, but inside each organization, unrest and exhaustion continued.

After the war, the Hanada-gumi was reorganized as the Hanada-kai, and Isao Hashimoto, a former apprentice, became the first chairman. On April 11, 1988, he was shot and killed by a member of the Yamaguchigumi Kodokai in Sapporo. The Hanada-kai rapidly shrank in power due to the successive deaths of its top leaders.

The Hoshikawa Gumi likewise continued its activities, dragged down by the effects of the war, but gradually lost its presence, and in November 2017 it filed for dissolution and officially ended its activities as an organization.

The Kitami War was recorded as a large-scale conflict that was suddenly brought to the regional city of Hokkaido. It was an unusual case in which two major organizations, the Ichiwakai and the Inagawa-kai, from the East and the West, clashed head-on in a local city, and became a symbolic incident in the history of gangs in the late Showa period. The deaths of Akira Hanada, Katsuji Tamba, and Horiaki Hoshikawa, men who would go on to become household names, testify to the intensity of the conflict and the limitations of the organizations in their time. The memory of Kitami as a stage that once attracted the attention of the Japanese underworld has not disappeared.