Every morning, senior members of Kudo-kai, arguably Japan's most violent yakuza gang, would scurry out of a security control room equipped with surveillance monitors and into the corridor.

There, they would sit on the floor in a receiving line in traditional seiza fashion, with their knees tucked stiffly under them.

Soon, the godfather, Satoru Nomura, who had just awaken, would come down from upstairs.

“Good morning!” they would greet him in unison.

The morning ritual at the residence of Nomura, 74, was one of the trappings enjoyed by the head of the nation’s only “special-designated dangerous gangster organization” under the law since 2011.

Enclosed behind stone walls and fences, Nomura’s ostentatious mansion sits in Kita-Kyushu’s Kokura-Kita Ward in Fukuoka Prefecture.

“It’s like a castle,” locals would say. 

But the notorious yakuza don will be trading his palatial home for a cell on Japan's death row. 

On the early morning of September 11, 2014, investigators of the Fukuoka prefectural police in riot gear stormed into the residence and arrested Nomura.

The Fukuoka District Court on Aug. 24 found Nomura responsible for four separate violent crimes and sentenced him to death.

Over the course of the trial, which began in October 2019 and comprised 62 hearings and testimonies of 91 people such as former gang members and police officers, Nomura’s mysterious persona and rise to power were revealed, bit by bit.

“He is a symbolic figure. Like God,” the head of one of the organizations under the umbrella of Kudo-kai said during court testimony.

A senior Kudo-kai member who was accused of violating the Income Tax Law along with Nomura painted him in a different light: “He is like an emperor.”

Nomura showed up at the court most often looking dapper in either a blackish or navy-blue suit. His hair was short, speckled with gray.

He appeared courteous when he would bow to the presiding judge and others.

An acquaintance of Nomura once said people might assume that the yakuza boss was an “elite salaryman,” if they did not know about his background.

WOODEN SWORD AND GAMBLING

Nomura was born in Kokura city, today’s Kokura-Kita Ward in Kita-Kyushu, in 1946. He came from a financially successful farming family that owned large plots of land.

Nomura was the youngest child, with three older brothers and two older sisters.

One of his sisters, three years older than Nomura, often took care of him when he was an infant. Nomura attached himself to her, calling her, “big sis.”

As he grew older, however, he fell into delinquency and spent time at a juvenile detention center.

Nomura, as a 164-cm-tall boy, was not good with his fists so he always carried a short wooden sword with him, which earned him the nickname, “Nomura the singlestick.”

In his 20s, Nomura got hooked on gambling.

Soon he started betting hundreds of millions of yen, even opening a gambling parlor.

He churned out huge profits by lending large sums to losing customers.

“I made about 20 million yen ($182,150) to 30 million yen on average per night. I had as much as 200 million yen,” Nomura boasted during one of the court hearings.

‘FOUGHT MY WAY TO POWER’

His “success” caught the attention of a senior member of a Kudo-kai affiliate gang group.

In his late 20s, Nomura formally joined the crime organization, pledging to work as a henchman to his boss.

The first don of Kudo-kai also had started his underworld career as a gambler. He favored Nomura and appointed him to head a powerful organization under the umbrella of Kudo-kai in 1986.

It was the beginning for Nomura to hold various key senior positions and climb the ladder in Kudo-kai.

Shaking down businesses such as restaurants and bars, construction companies and pachinko parlors for "protection money" was a major revenue source for Kudo-kai at the time.

The organization collected millions of yen through its protection racket.

In the 1990s, when the third don of Kudo-kai was in prison, Nomura was in charge of the gang’s working capital and increased its cash reserves.

That made him a potential successor to the don.

A person close to Kudo-kai said Nomura “was good at getting along with construction companies and had a money-making ability.”

But a male acquaintance said he remembers Nomura telling him that he “fought (his) way to power” by serving the previous don with patience and making enough capital.

Nomura became the fourth boss of Kudo-kai in 2000, and claimed the group’s foremost rank called “sosai” in 2011.

As of 2014, Nomura’s savings account totaled 1.4 billion yen.

ELITE SALARYMAN OR CUNNING SNAKE?

As the new don of Kudo-kai, Nomura would often play golf by day. At night, he would head to a nightlife district to play mah-jongg.

On the streets of Kokura, Nomura always stood out, surrounded by his henchmen dressed in black.

But he would only frequent a certain number of places, maintaining his air of mystery. 

A male acquaintance said Nomura was a light drinker, recalling his face turning red after consuming only half a glass of beer.

The don loved drinking wine, however. 

He built a professional wine cellar at his home to store the pricy wines that people gifted him in congratulations after taking the top position of Kudo-kai.

Nomura would bring his own bottle to an eatery, sipping a vintage wine that costs hundreds of thousands of yen.

A dozen or so women often shared a table with him at a tony establishment. He would take out a wad of cash and plunk it down on the table as a tip.

“Split the money among yourselves,” he would say.

Nomura married and divorced several times. After a divorce, he would pay child support and school expenses.

Sometimes he hired a professional photographer to take a family portrait.

One of his acquaintances recalled Nomura proudly saying he would never put his family through financial difficulties and was willing to pay for his wife’s shopping excursions and support his children if they wanted to study abroad.

Then Nomura would mutter, “Because I can only express my affection with money.”

Nomura has left various impressions among the people he crossed paths with. 

A woman who works in the restaurant industry said, “When we passed each other on the street, he would take off his hat and give me a bow.”

A man who had a drink with Nomura said he dressed nicely in a suit. “People who didn’t know who he really was might have guessed that he was an elite salaryman,” the man said.

But multiple people in the restaurant industry remembered him as causing them difficulties. They said they had to pay full attention to attending to Nomura and could not accept other customers. When Nomura and his compatriots would make a scene, they could not say anything.

An investigative source recalled about a meeting with Nomura about 15 years ago.

Nomura used polite language and showed off good manners.

“He is cunning. He is a man like a snake,” the investigative source said.

As Nomura rose up through the ranks in Kudo-kai and reached the top, the gang started committing a spate of violent attacks against ordinary citizens in and around Kita-Kyushu.

Members of the public and people working in the restaurant industry involved in the effort to drive the yakuza out of business, as well as law enforcement officers, became a target.

In September 2014, Fukuoka police arrested Nomura along with Fumio Tanoue, the No. 2 man of Kudo-kai, over four separate incidents, in one of which a person died.

Neither Nomura nor Tanoue personally carried out the attacks, and there was no clear evidence to link them to the crimes.

But prosecutors argued that the assaults were committed under a clear chain of command, as there was no chance that important decisions were made without Nomura’s blessing.

While the court handed Nomura the death penalty, it gave Tanoue a life sentence.

Both have denied their involvement and maintained their innocence throughout the trial.