A Flower Blooming Between Shadow and Honor: Jiro Yanagawa and the Kito Gumi War (Late 1950s-1969)

A Flower Blooming Between Shadow and Honor: Jiro Yanagawa and the Kito Gumi War (Late 1950s-1969)
Postwar Osaka was a city of rubble and a budding black market, a place where the sunlight of economic growth intersected with the shadows of poverty and discrimination. With the scars of defeat still fresh in the minds of the zainichi Korean community, those who were not protected by the state sought out the underworld to find work and housing. Jiro Yanagawa was one of those who rose to prominence amidst the chaos. The Yanagawa clan led by Jiro Yanagawa was not only a violent organization, but also an autonomous community that protected the zainichi community.
In the late 1950s, the Kito clan from Nagoya advanced into Osaka, and a fierce turf war erupted between them and the Yanagawa clan. Gun battles were repeated in the city center, and the war became a horrific conflict involving even the citizens of the city. The Osaka Prefectural Police deploy a large-scale crackdown, but the gang war is not easily contained. Yanagawa was a man of calm and collected judgment, who valued the spirit of "humanity and justice," and would not cross the line in the midst of conflict. The anecdote that he personally appeared at the scene of a certain gang war and stopped the shooting by blackmailing the members of both sides is still passed down as a legend in the underworld.
Eventually, in the 1960s, with the rapid economic growth of Japan, the Japanese government strengthened its security measures, and legislation to control gangs was established. The Yanagawa clan decided to voluntarily dissolve itself in 1969 in response to police pressure and growing public opinion. This was a landmark event in the history of gangs and a turning point in an era in which yakuza also questioned their raison d'etre as "part of society. Yanagawa's choice, along with the end of violence, symbolically brought the curtain down on the next phase of zainichi society.
The life of Jiro Yanagawa reflects the pride and pain of those who lived at the bottom of postwar Japan. What is the "humanity" that those living amidst discrimination and exclusion found between violence and order? This question goes beyond a mere tale of the underworld, and goes to the heart of the ethics of postwar Japan. The story of the Yanagawa clan, which he built, continues to be told today as an essential chapter in the social and urban history of zainichi.
Even today, there are many studies on the Yanagawa Gumi in the fields of sociology and history. In particular, sociologist Kenji Ino's book "Yakuza and Japan" and nonfiction writer Atsushi Mizoguchi's "Document Yanagawa-gumi" clearly show the relationship between gangs and zainichi society in postwar Osaka. In recent years, much material on Jiro Yanagawa has also been published online, and his influence has been reevaluated in articles such as Wikipedia's "Yanagawa Gumi" and "Zainichi Koreans and the Postwar Underworld.