Yakuza Group Kudo-kai Has No Young Members, but Police Are Concerned Over Shift to Special Fraud

The Yomiuri Shimbun

20:00 JST, September 12, 2025

The Kudo-kai, a government-designated dangerous crime syndicate, no longer has any active members in their 20s or under, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.

Thursday marked the 11th anniversary of the so-called summit operation targeting the leadership of yakuza groups, which led to the arrest of Kudo-kai chief Satoru Nomura. While the syndicate headquartered in Kitakyushu has weakened due to its aging membership and intensified police crackdowns, authorities have confirmed that some of their younger members have been expanding their activities outside Fukuoka Prefecture.

Police are now working to assess the full extent of this move.

The Kudo-kai, labeled “the most brutal yakuza syndicate in Japan,” has long engaged in attacks against citizens, businesses and even police. In 2012, it became the only yakuza group in the country to be designated as an especially dangerous organized crime group. According to the Fukuoka prefectural police, the number of active members within the prefecture stood at 150 at the end of last year, down about 70% from 490 when the summit operation began in 2014.

In the decade through the end of 2024, the proportion of members in their 20s or under dropped from 4.7% to 0%, while those aged 70 and above rose sharply from 2.2% to 14.9%. The average age climbed 9.4 years to 55.3, with about 70% of members now in their 50s or above. The average age across all crime syndicates in the prefecture is 52.4.

A senior prefectural police official said, “Intensive crackdowns on Kudo-kai and the growing movement to eliminate organized crime have led to arrests and withdrawals, and younger generations no longer want to join.”

At the same time, authorities are growing increasingly wary of younger Kudo-kai members operating outside Fukuoka Prefecture and of crime groups categorized as “tokuryu” – anonymous and fluid criminal groups whose members are connected via social media and repeatedly come together and disperse.

According to investigative sources, authorities now consider Kudo-kai’s sphere of influence to include not only Fukuoka and Yamaguchi prefectures but also Chiba Prefecture. The existence of a Kudo-kai-affiliated office has been confirmed in Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture.

Chiba prefectural police in February arrested a man in his 20s, who was acting as a Kudo-kai affiliate in the Kanto region, on fraud charges over allegedly swindling ¥3 million from a woman in Tokyo. He is believed to have been a leader of a “receiver” team for a tokuryu group. An investigative source said, “In terms of how the Kudo-kai uses tokuryu groups and how it profits from special fraud schemes, it is overwhelmingly ahead of other crime syndicates.”

A senior Fukuoka prefectural police official said: “Traditionally, the Kudo-kai’s main sources of income have been extortion and protection money, but in recent years special fraud has become one of their core activities. The group is shifting from being a militant yakuza to an economic one.”