"When banks try to foreclose on collateral, the yakuza are the ones who prevent them from doing so. In most cases, they're asked by the building owner to move in rent-free, because nobody will try to buy it in an auction if yakuza are living in some of the rooms. If the auction is postponed, then the owner can continue to earn money from rent paid by the other tenants. Those who owe money are making use of the yakuza."
Confronting the gangsters can be dangerous.
In a 1994 case widely presumed to be tied to efforts at bad-loan collection, Kazufumi Hatanaka, manager of Sumitomo Bank's branch in the city of Nagoya, was murdered execution-style, shot in the head outside the door of his 10th-floor apartment.
The year before, Tomosaburo Koyama, vice president in charge of problem loans for Hanwa Bank, was killed in what police said was the work of a hit man.
Fear thus adds to the hesitation bankers would normally feel about foreclosing on nonperforming loans, since the value of real estate collateral is so much less than the value of the loans. For many bank executives, it is easier to pretend that someday the loans might be repaid rather than admit to huge losses.
Meanwhile, Sueno goes about his business, looking more like an ordinary businessman than someone associated with the yakuza, who are famed for elaborate tattoos and shortened fingers, chopped off at the tip in acts of attrition for mistakes made within gang society.
Sueno claims that his only link to the yakuza is as a victim of gangster tenants who will not move out.
"It is said that I'm a gangster," Sueno said last month. "But do I look like one?"
Chiaki Kitada and Megumi Shimizu of The Times' Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.
