January 1, 1928 - Tokutaro Takayama

Tokutaro Takayama (高山 登久太郎, Takayama Tokutarō; 1928 – June 15, 2003) was a yakuza, the president of the Fourth Aizukotetsu-kai. An ethnic Korean, he rose to power as the head of the Kyoto-based gang until his retirement in the 1990s.

When he was a young man, his parents returned to Korea, leaving him to earn a living alone in Japan: "At that time," Takayama said in 1998, "I had no choice but to join the Japanese gangster world. This is because segregated people at that time had no way to survive in Japan."

For a yakuza boss, he was a remarkably public figure, often granting interviews to Japanese and foreign reporters for articles in which he always came off as a gentleman. He even filed a lawsuit against the Shiga Prefectural Police for infringing on his rights to free expression. (See court testimony). He viewed himself as an honorable outlaw, championing the weak and upholding the yakuza code of ninkyo (chivalry): "We did not regard ninkyo as a bad thing," he said. "Thus, we never killed anyone without reason.

Content sourced from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokutaro Takayama under CC BY-SA 4.0.