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That is a task the police have been trying vainly to accomplish for years. Last year the cops jailed no fewer than 2,000 of Taoka's men for brief periods. "But," admits Masaru Sawada, the policeman who commanded the operation, "kicking them endlessly in the seat of the pants didn't work." The sudden turn-around in public opinion just may. The citizens of Kobe have already held three mass demonstrations, chanting "Down with the yakuza!" Taoka's men, according to police, were stunned by such a massive outburst of hostility after years of public passivity. Some of them have even given up their lives of crime under the rising social pressure. To tempt the yakuza toward rehabilitation, Sawada is asking businessmen to hire repentant mobsters. So far he has found jobs for 80.
In Osaka, the police and public are cooperating in the same strategy of calculated humiliation. Local activists have picketed known gang headquarters. Landlords have tried to evict mobster tenants. For their part, the police have been summoning gang leaders to appear at the police station for tongue-lashings in an effort to shame them into giving up crime. "We are trying to change the waters the gangsters swim in," said a police officer. Perhaps the most devastating weapon the communities wield against the yakuza is social ostracism. Parents tell their children not to play with those of the gangsters; shop owners and wives snub the families of the yakuza.
For their part, the gangsters still seek to defend themselves as a traditional part of society. Speaking last week in the outskirts of Kobe under the eyes of police guards, one local gang boss out on bail defiantly described the yakuza as "lotus flowers on a sea of mud." Said he: "We're flotsam of society, but we're dedicated to our own code of honor at the cost of our own lives. If I as a boss didn't control my boys, the city would be worse off—call us a necessary social evil." Increasingly, it appears, the Japanese consider them evil —but no longer necessary.