Moves to weaken the power of the underworld have been spreading in Japanese society. More bar and restaurant owners are stopping protection payments to gangs, other firms are ending deals with gangs, and street vendors are expelling gangsters from their business.

In Hyogo Prefecture, printers' associations have adopted a resolution against printing name and greeting cards, and member expulsion notices for gangsters, etc. The police have asked the Hyogo Association of Shinto Shrines to turn down gangs' requests for mass worships at shrines. The headquarters of Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest underworld syndicate, is based in Kobe.

It is not an easy thing to fight gangs. In the first half of 2011, Fukuoka and Saga prefectures saw 12 cases in which guns, hand grenades or Molotov cocktails were fired or thrown at business buildings — compared with three cases a year before. Apparently gangs tried to dissuade some firms from severing ties with them.