Hisayuki machii biography of michael

In the years following World War II, yakuza membership increased dramatically to 184,000 members divided into 5,200 gangs throughout the country, making it larger than the Japanese army at the time.  Inevitably these gangs encroached on one another's territories, which resulted in  bitter and bloody gang wars.  The man who brought peace to the warring factions and unified the yakuza was the group's first 20th-century godfather, Yoshio Kodama.

Kodama's gift was his ability to balance his affiliations to both right-wing political groups and criminal gangs, using each to keep the other in check.  He was a political fixer who served his government through corruption, espionage and other dirty dealings, which the Japanese simply call kuroi kiri (black mist).  In the 1930s and 1940s, he maintained an extensive network of spies in China, feeding information back to the Japanese government.  He procured large shipments of materials, such as nicke