The Kyodo-kai ( 侠道会 , Kyōdō-kai ) is a yakuza group based in Hiroshima , Japan . The Kyodo-kai is a designated yakuza group with an estimated 80 active members. and is the second largest yakuza group in the Chugoku region after the Kyosei-kai .
7-742: The Kyodo-kai was formed immediately after the World War II as a bakuto organization named the Takahashi-gumi ( 高橋組 ) in Onomichi, Hiroshima by Tokujiro Takahashi. Kokichi Morita, then the highest-ranked senior member of the Takahashi-gumi, formed the Kyodo-kai in January 1969 following the Takahashi-gumi's disbanding. Kokichi Morita's younger brother Kazuo Morita succeeded as president in November 1989. The Kyodo-kai
14-814: The Asano-gumi , the Goda-ikka , and the Shikoku -based Shinwa-kai . The founder Tokujiro Takahashi was also a politician. He was elected to Onomichi City Council in April 1951 and allegedly later became Onomichi 's most influential figure. He was eventually elected to Hiroshima Prefectural Council in December 1955, and had been a member of the council until December 1967 when he was arrested for illegal baseball-gambling. Bakuto Bakuto (博徒) were itinerant gamblers active in Japan from
21-609: The Honda-kai was a Kobe -based bakuto gang which formed an alliance after World War II with the Yamaguchi-gumi , but were soon overtaken by the larger gang. Fictional examples can be seen in the Zatoichi and iron fist film series, about a blind masseur who would often participate in bakuto -run gambling. From 1964 to 1971, Toei Studios produced the ten-part Gambler ( Bakuto ) series of films starring Kōji Tsuruta (except for
28-487: The 18th century to the mid-20th century. They were one of two forerunners (the other being tekiya , or peddlers) to modern Japanese organized crime syndicates called yakuza . Beginning around the 17th century, bakuto plied their trade in towns and highways in feudal Japan , playing traditional games such as hanafuda and dice . During the Tokugawa shogunate , violent bakuto ikka (families) rose to power with
35-519: The gambling spaces they ran, occasionally hired by local governments to gamble with laborers, winning back worker's earnings in exchange for a percentage. They had varying qualities of relationships with the villages in which they lived, often as well with the government, despite their connection. In the 18th century, the tradition of elaborate tattooing was introduced into bakuto culture. Dealers of card or dice games often displayed these full-body tattoos shirtless while playing. This eventually led to
42-449: The modern yakuza tradition of full-body tattooing. Bakuto were also responsible for introducing the tradition of yubitsume , or self-mutilation as a form of apology, to yakuza culture. Up until the mid-20th century, some yakuza organizations that dealt mostly in gambling described themselves as bakuto groups. But this was seen as outdated, and most were eventually absorbed into larger, more diverse syndicates. For example,
49-587: Was registered as a designated yakuza group under the Organized Crime Countermeasures Law in 1993. Based in Onomichi, Hiroshima , the Kyodo-kai has its known offices in five other prefectures including Okayama and Kagawa . Since 1996, the Kyodo-kai has been a member of an anti- Yamaguchi federation named the Gosha-kai, along with three other Chugoku -based organizations, the Kyosei-kai ,
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