The Great Japanese Gang Wars

The season for pineapples (yakuza slang for hand grenades) may finally be over. Jake Adelstein and Nathalie-Kyoko Stucky on the bloody, seven-year battle between the Dojin-kai and the Seido-kai.  

In Southern Japan, the brutal pineapple season may finally be over; pineapple is yakuza slang for “hand grenade”—one of the many weapons utilized in a seven-year gang war between the Dojin-kai (1,000 members) and the splinter group the Kyushu Seido-kei (500 members). It’s a gang war in which there have been over 45 violent incidents, including bombings, shots exchanged during high-speed car chases, and 14 deaths. At least seven deaths, including one civilian's, were from gunfire; a phenomenally high figure when you consider the number of gun deaths for all of Japan in 2011 was eight people. (Japan has some of the strictest gun-control laws in the world.) 

For the rest of the story: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/25/the-great-japanese-gang-wars.html