The Wind of Dismantling in the Garden Place: The Rise and Fall of the Saikai Family and the Shinko Doshikai (1973-1989)

The Wind of Dismantling in the Garden Place: The Rise and Fall of the Saikai Family and the Shinko Doshikai (1973-1989)

The Nishikaike, a tachiya organization based in Sendai, was founded by Suekichi Yokota in the Taisho era (1912-1926). The Nishiumi family, named after its founder, Tomijiro Nishiumi, expanded its rights to operate stalls called "niwaba" (garden stalls) throughout the Tohoku region. The venerable lineage of the Saikai family, which has ties to the Kanto area, was passed down through three generations after the war, and in 1973 Katsuji Fujikawa became the fourth president of the association.

Fujikawa's era began amidst the pressure for target dealers to be swallowed up by the broad-based gangs (Hakodan), and in the 1980s, as Hakodan-affiliated forces such as the Yamaguchigumi, Inagawa-kai, and Sumiyoshi-kai began to expand into the Tohoku region, Fujikawa resisted this trend by forming the "Tohoku Shinno Doshikai" in 1986 in collaboration with 17 other target dealers from six Tohoku prefectures. This coalition was a bulwark against foreign powers, and the Nishikaike was a central player in this movement.

The comrades' association established a constitution to protect the traditional garden place. Of particular note was Article 27. The article stipulated that if a branch family transferred to a different business, i.e., an expatriate organization, the garden space would be returned to the head family, and if the head family itself transferred, the garden space would be entrusted to the Doshikai. This article was also a line of defense for organizations of the head family's status, such as the Saikai family, to protect the garden place.

However, this line of defense began to break down after only a little over a year, when in 1987, a bloody incident known as the "Asamushi Onsen War" took place at Asamushi Onsen Hot Springs in Aomori Prefecture. Two people were killed and another seriously wounded by gunfire, and the incident was the eruption of a latent conflict within the Doshikai. In particular, disagreements over the interpretation of the constitution and the right to control the garden became the spark of the conflict.

After this incident, the unity of the comrades' association rapidly collapsed. In 1989, the Umeya clan transferred to the Inagawa-kai and the Yoriiya clan to the Sumiyoshi-kai, and the Doshikai was dissolved in both name and reality.

Katsuji Fujikawa also retired from the position of president that year. Unable to maintain the organization on their own, the Saikai family made the decision to join the Sumiyoshikai. Thus, the Nishikaike was reborn as the "Ninth Nishikaike of Sumiyoshikai" and began a new path as a local branch under the leadership of Kotaro Sugawara, the fifth generation of the family.

Fujikawa's era was one in which the traditions and pride of the Matoya and the ideals of solidarity shone for a brief moment, only to be swallowed up by the strife and dissolution of reality. The Tohoku Matoya federation that he had tried to build ended with its internal collapse, and disappeared before the era of the Violence Against Women Law came into effect.

The name of the Saikai family remained, but it was a different kind of "survivor," one that had already lost its luster as the face of the region and was positioned at the end of a broad-based organization.

--This is the story of the final resistance of the "takaraya" at the end of the Showa period, when the winds of dismantlement were blowing.