Japanese gang leader’s house on sale for US$330,000 or more – will anyone bite?

A walled mansion in one of Kobe’s most desirable suburbs is heading for a court-ordered auction, but its murky past as a target of gang attacks may put off buyers. The two-storey house, long the home of Kunio Inoue, head of the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi – a breakaway faction of Japan’s largest yakuza syndicate – is being forcibly sold after judges held him responsible for the crimes involving one of his subordinates, in a rare test of Japan’s anti-organised crime laws. The ruling came from the Osak...

By Julian Ryall