How has yakuza membership changed in Japan over the last decade?

1. Dramatic numerical decline: from tens of thousands to below 20,000

Official counts and compilations show a steep fall: long-term data published by the NPA and summarized by Statista and Wikipedia place organized-crime membership far lower than past peaks—members and quasi-members fell from around 78,600 in 2010 to roughly 25,900 in 2020 ^[6], and multiple 2023–2024 reports cite total yakuza members and associates at record lows around 18,800 ^{[1] [7] [8]}. Statista’s 2023 snapshot separates “proper” members (about 10.4 thousand) and associates (about 10 thousand), illustrating how definitions and categorization affect headline totals ^[9].

2. Ageing membership and recruitment shortfall

Police commentary and analysis point to a rapidly aging cohort and a collapse in recruitment: the NPA notes the average age of male adults has risen, with gang membership aging faster than the national average, and younger generations increasingly unwilling to join syndicates bound by rigid hierarchies ^[4]. Reporting in The Asahi Shimbun highlights this demographic trend as a structural explanation for persistent declines over nearly two decades ^[1].

3. Legal and financial pressure as drivers of shrinkage

A suite of laws and exclusionary measures has made traditional yakuza business models harder to sustain; scholars and reporting attribute declines to regulations banning business with known members, tightened audits, and municipal “exclusion ordinances” that curb revenue streams and social tolerance ^{[6] [3]}. Nippon.com and other outlets explicitly link crackdowns on financing and corporate ties to the difficulty gangs face retaining members and operating openly ^{[10] [2]}.

4. Fragmentation, splits and internal turbulence

Organizational fragmentation has reshaped the composition of the underworld: long-standing groups like Yamaguchi‑gumi have experienced splits (Kobe Yamaguchi‑gumi and subsequent breakaways) and internal conflicts that both reduce counted memberships and complicate police tallies, with several major groups still accounting for a large share of remaining members even as totals shrink ^{[6] [2]}.

5. The rise of “anonymous” groups and data blind spots

Policing and reporting now warn that declines in formal yakuza syndicates coexist with a rise in anonymous, ad hoc criminal collectives—sometimes called hangure—whose fluid memberships and informal structures make them harder to quantify and may mask a shift in criminal methods from syndicate control to decentralized violence and cyber-enabled crime ^{[5] [7]}. Several news outlets explicitly caution that falling yakuza counts do not equate to the disappearance of organized crime risk ^{[1] [8]}.

6. Conflicting counts and the politics of measurement

Different sources use different definitions—“members,” “associate members,” “quasi-members,” or designated bōryokudan—producing divergent totals ^{[9] [2]}. Media accounts and databases (Statista, Wikipedia, Nippon.com, Asahi, Kyodo) draw from NPA releases but interpret them through varying frames, and that framing can serve implicit agendas: police emphasize success in suppression, advocacy groups warn of underreported new threats, and international reporting sometimes highlights sensational historical links ^{[6] [3] [11]}.

7. Bottom line: shrinkage plus transformation, not elimination

Over the last decade the yakuza’s formal membership has declined markedly—driven by law, finance, demographics and internal schisms—while criminal activity has adapted, splintered and in some cases gone underground into less visible, more fluid groups ^{[1] [10] [5]}. Available public sources document the numerical collapse and sketch the reasons, but they also underline a major caveat: counts alone understate evolving risks from non‑traditional criminal actors that evade old metrics ^{[7] [8]}.