Exclusion Ordinances and the Age of Removal

The Anti-Boryokudan Act we saw in the previous episode was a mechanism for squeezing organized crime through the hands of the police and the administration. It stopped demands backed by a group’s intimidating power with administrative orders and thinned out funding sources. That certainly had its effect, but it had limits too. The groups changed their labels, disguised and concealed their members, and slipped through the net of regulation. Punishing the side that made demands could not fully cut off the flow of money so long as there were those who answered the demands and those who made use of these groups.

So the thinking shifted by one further stage. Beyond the premise that policing organized crime was the work of the police, society itself would sever its very ties with these groups. The institution that turned this idea into reality was the boryokudan exclusion ordinance, commonly called the exclusion ordinance. In this episode we calmly trace the structure of this ‘age of removal,’ in which the leading role in punishment shifted from the police to society itself.

A nationwide spread that began in Fukuoka

Fukuoka Prefecture fired the opening shot. On April 1, 2010, the nation’s first boryokudan exclusion ordinance took effect.

What was new about this ordinance was that it did not merely punish boryokudan members themselves, but also held responsible the ‘side of citizens and businesses’ that provided benefits to these groups. Handing over benefits for the purpose of cooperating in a group’s activities or operations; letting a member use one’s own name; providing real estate while knowing it would be used as a group’s office — such acts were prohibited, and in malicious cases made subject to penalties.

The Fukuoka move rippled out nationwide. Each prefecture enacted similar ordinances one after another, and in 2011 they took effect in places such as Tokyo and Okinawa, until exclusion ordinances were in place across all of Japan’s prefectures. In little more than a year, a framework for shutting organized crime out of society blanketed the entire country.

Shut out of bank accounts and contracts

Removal reached down even into the fine details of everyday economic activity.

Its symbol was the ‘boryokudan exclusion clause,’ the so-called exclusion clause, written into contracts. This is a clause stipulating that the parties mutually affirm that the other is not a boryokudan or other antisocial force, and that if it later turns out otherwise, the contract may be canceled without bearing liability for damages.

In the background was the ‘Guideline for Preventing Companies from Suffering Harm by Antisocial Forces,’ which the government released a little earlier, in June 2007. In response, banks and other financial institutions moved. The Japanese Bankers Association presented its member banks with a reference example of an exclusion clause to be incorporated into banking transaction agreements, encouraging the removal of antisocial forces from transactions as a whole.

As a result, once a person was found to be a boryokudan member, it became progressively harder for them to open a bank account, take out a home loan, buy insurance, or sign a mobile phone contract. An invisible checkpoint was set up at each piece of the infrastructure that supports ordinary life.

Corporate exclusion — defense by cutting off transactions

For businesses, exclusion was not merely a matter of legal compliance.

If a company ended up transacting with antisocial forces, then when that fact came to light it would lose its credibility, and the business itself would be shaken. For precisely that reason, companies began building ‘antisocial checks’ into their operations — confirming in advance whether a trading partner or contracting counterparty had ties to organized crime. New transactions, opening stores, hiring — at every point of contact, the procedure of verifying that the other party was not an antisocial force became a matter of course.

In this way, part of the cost and responsibility of excluding organized crime shifted from the police to private companies. A filter for keeping these groups out was set up at every window of society. This can also be described as a mechanism dispersing the enforcement that the state had borne single-handedly among the individual members of society.

This dispersal had a rational aim. Police personnel are limited, and they cannot monitor every single transaction one by one. But if banks sever ties at the window for opening accounts, and companies at the entrance to contracts, then countless small checkpoints arise everywhere in society at once. Rather than one great wall in a single place, the idea is to stretch a thin net across society as a whole. As a result, even if organized crime found a single way through somewhere, it would be rejected again at the next window. Removal came to function not as points, but as a surface.

What removal brought, and the question it left behind

As the exclusion ordinances spread, organized crime was steadily cornered. The path to raising funds out in the open narrowed, points of contact with society were closed off one after another, and the disadvantages of being a member grew year by year. As statistics would later show, the number of members entered a long decline from around this period.

That said, the thoroughness of removal carried another question with it. Former members trying to leave a group and go straight could also find themselves shut out of accounts and contracts. If the road back into society is narrow, then people may be created who, on the contrary, have no choice but to remain in the underworld. How to design this ‘exit’ remained as a question that a strong policy of removal always carries (this point is considered again in the final episode).

The leading role in punishment shifted from the police to society itself. The Anti-Boryokudan Act squeezed the organizations, and the exclusion ordinances severed their points of contact with society. The two mechanisms meshed together, and the underworld was eroded from its economic foundation. The place these collectives had occupied for nearly a century rapidly narrowed.

Yet when one place is closed off, people and money search out another gap. Belonging to an organization, declaring one’s name, holding a turf — in those old forms, survival was no longer possible. Yet into the void left by removal, a new kind of figure appears — one belonging to no organization.