Tadamasa Goto

Tadamasa Goto (後藤 忠政, Gotō Tadamasa^?, born September 16, 1942) was a retired yakuza. The US Treasury department put him on a watch-list in December 2015; he is still engaged in criminal activity . He is also considered to be bankrolling the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi which split from the 100 year old Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest crime group, on August 27, 2015. He was the founding head of the Goto-gumi, a Fujinomiya-based affiliate of Japan's largest yakuza syndicate, the Yamaguchi-gumi.

Goto, who has been convicted nine times at least, was a prominent yakuza, who had even been dubbed the "John Gotti of Japan". At one point he was the most powerful crime boss in Tokyo and also the largest shareholder in Japan Airlines, though the latter piece of information reported by FT magazine on June 12, 2010 is questionable and could not be confirmed by stock exchange filings.

He had been barred from entering the United States until 2001 when he got a special visa deal from the FBI.

According to his autobiography, Goto was born in Ebara, Tokyo, as the youngest of four brothers. After beginning of the Pacific War, of World War II, he moved to his father's hometown Fujinomiya, Shizuoka at age two when his mother died. He was raised by his grandmother and grew up in poverty. After a period as a street thug in Fujinomiya, his yakuza career officially began in 1972, at age 30, when he joined a tertiary Yamaguchi-affiliate based in Fujinomiya. Goto was rapidly promoted, and in 1985 he formed his own yakuza group, the Goto-gumi, in Fujinomiya as a secondary affiliate of the Yamaguchi-gumi. He entered the Kobe headquarters of the Yamaguchi-gumi in its 4th era (1984–1985), and had been in the headquarters until 2008 when he was expelled.

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