With Risk, Japanese City Takes On Once Accepted Fact of Life Kosuke Okahara for The New York Times Hiroshi Kimura, a member of the Kudokai gang in Kitakyushu, said authorities were trying to drive a wedge between the yakuza and the community. KITAKYUSHU, Japan - Two years ago, the authorities in this gritty rust-belt region declared war on the yakuza, Japan's entrenched organized crime syndicates. And that is exactly what they got. Since this city and other local governments beefed up regulations to take on the yakuza - making it a criminal offense for companies and individuals to do business with them - there has been a death threat against Kitakyushu's mayor and his family, hand grenades tossed at the homes of corporate executives and a construction company chairman gunned down in front of his wife. The police say the attacks, and many other lesser threats and intimidation tactics, are the doing of the Kudokai, a gang with more than 650 members that officials call one of the most dangerous of Japan's yakuza. The attacks have prompted the National Police Agency to propose giving law enforcement more powers to search and arrest gang members. The yakuza remain a remarkably visible presence in Japan, as they have been for centuries. But law enforcement officials say the violence in Kitakyushu may prove a turning point, by shocking a public that has become increasingly fed up. Any romantic aura that may have enveloped the gangsters in the past is falling away, the authorities say. They added that the Japanese increasingly see the yakuza simply as mobsters much like their counterparts in other countries, making money from drugs, gambling and extortion, particularly from their favorite target, Japan's bloated construction industry. "People are now seeing the reality that the yakuza are not chivalrous, but just an antisocial force," said Kitakyushu's mayor, Kenji Kitahashi, who said he was not intimidated by the death threat. He said the violence had turned many residents against the yakuza for hurting this former steel-making city's efforts to lure new investment and jobs. Japan has tried four times since the early 1990s to rein in the yakuza and has failed to make more than a dent in their numbers, currently about 80,000 (compared with estimates of 5,000 members of the American mafia at its height in the early 1960s). Like many Japanese gangs, the Kudokai even maintains its own public headquarters, the Kudokai Hall - a four-story, fortresslike white building surrounded by tall walls, barbed wire and security cameras - that sits in the center of Kitakyushu, a city of one million residents. Until recently, the gangs were a quietly accepted fact of life. The yakuza were tolerated because they helped Japan keep its streets safe by imposing the same rigid rules and hierarchy on the criminal world that are seen in the rest of Japanese society. But as Japan has developed into a modern, middle-class nation, it has also refashioned itself into a society that relies on courts and lawyers to keep order, not medieval outlaws. The growing intolerance of the underworld has been evident in recent scandals in which a top television comedian and the national sport of sumo were forced to cut ties with gangsters. Still, many admit, it has proven tough to completely cut ties. "Society has used the yakuza for so long that it is hard to just get rid of them," said Chikashi Nakamura, 75, head of a residents" association in Kitakyushu that has campaigned to drive out the Kudokai. Indeed, lawyers and antimob activists say the nation remains reluctant to take the final step of outlawing the gangs outright, a step many here have called for. There are fears that a ban could lead to what many here call a mafia-ization of the gangs, driving them underground and removing their last restraints on violence against regular civilians. "It has taken 30 years to get this far, and Japan still hesitates to crush these violent groups once and for all," said Naoyuki Fukasawa, a lawyer who specializes in defending citizens against organized crime. The police are like archers who intentionally avoid the bull's-eye, and instead aim at the target's outer rings. The National Police Agency, which sets national crime policy, says outright criminalization is difficult because of constitutional protections on the right to assembly. But Shigeyuki Tani, director of the office of organized crime intelligence at the agency, said the office was drawing up a new law that would designate gangs like the Kudokai as "particularly dangerous," and make it easier for the police to search their buildings and arrest members for requesting payoffs. The current law bans only the actual payment. However, officials in Kitakyushu say they need even stronger powers to battle organized crime, which is deeply rooted in this city's blue-collar neighborhoods. Of the 44 mob-linked shootings in Japan last year, 18 took place in Fukuoka Prefecture, the district on Japan's southernmost main island, Kyushu, where Kitakyushu is located.