was a yakuza, the fifth kumicho (chairman or Godfather) of the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest yakuza organization. He became kumicho in 1989. He was known for a more low-key approach than his predecessors, partly due to an anti-gang law passed in 1992. He retired in 2005. Yakuza career Yoshinori Watanabe joined the Yamaken Gumi, a subgroup of the Yamaguchi Gumi Yakuza, after moving to Kobe. In 1960, the Yamaguchi Gumi was involved in a deadly gang war in which Yoshinori Watanabe proved himself to be violent but effective mediator in resolving disputes. His hard work and talent helped propel him upward in the ranks of the Yakuza underworld. In 1961, Watanabe spent a year in prison for possession of weapons, and he was again arrested in Osaka in the mid-70s for weapons possession. He became leader of Yamaken-gumi in 1982, and became the head of Yamaguchi-gumi in July 1989, at a ceremony in Kobe attended by over 100 affiliated gang leaders. At the time of his succession, which happened after a four-year gang war between the Yamaguchi-gumi and the Ichiwa-kai, Watanabe was the fifth head of the Yamaguchi-gumi. During the first few years of being the 5th Generation Kumicho (Don, Chairman, or Godfather), Yoshinori Watanabe made very few changes to the Yamaguchi Gumi Yakuza organization. In the early 1990s, Yoshinori Watanabe started to make some radical changes in the Yamaguchi Gumi Yakuza organization. He successfully restructured the Yamaguchi Gumi in such a way that it increased the control the organization had over internal and external dilemmas; moreover, it made decreases to the police's ability to scrutinize all of the organization's activities. In order to make the Yamaguchi Gumi into a powerhouse of organized crime nationwide, Yoshinori Watanabe strengthened bonds with allies and formed new ones with rivals. By the year 2000, Yoshinori Watanabe had increased the size of the Yamaguchi Gumi by 5,000 gangsters and maintained offices in 43 of the 47 Japanese prefectures. His home and headquarters in Kobe occupied the area of a city block, and was known to neighbours as "the castle." It was unscathed by the 1995 earthquake, and under Watanabe's order the Yamaguchi-gumi claimed to have given away 1 billion yen of goods and 20,000 free lunches to survivors, although there were accusations that the motives were not wholly altruistic. Police estimated that he received US$1 million a month from his aides in honoraria, and the