Historica Wiki
Advertisement
Masakichi Makihara

Masakichi Makihara was a Japanese yakuza gangster and an underboss of the Yamamori-gumi family of Hiroshima Prefecture.

Biography[]

Masakichi Makihara was born in Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan, and he served in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II and befriended fellow soldiers Shozo Hirono, Tetsuya Sakai, Seiichi Kanbara, Uichi Shinkai, Shuji Yano, and Shinichi Yamagata. Makihara and the others followed Hirono into joining the Yamamori-gumi family in 1946, and he and the others would go on to become underbosses within three years. Makihara was initially perceived as a useless lieutenant, as he excused himself from the planned hit on Kiyoshi Doi in 1949 because his wife was pregnant. However, his supposed harmlessness ensured that he survived the Doi-Yamamori war of 1949, the Sakai-Shinkai war of 1954, and the cold war between Sakai and Yamamori from 1954 to 1956. Makihara nominally supported Sakai, but he was secretly loyal to Yamamori, and, in 1956, he (unsuccessfully) attempted to recruit Hirono back into the Yamamori family. While Hirono refused, he agreed to kill Sakai. Hirono's attempt to kill Sakai failed, but Makihara had already dispatched more hitmen to kill Sakai, having considered the possibility that Hirono might defect to Sakai's faction. Sakai was gunned down in a discount store on 19 February 1956, and Yamamori returned to being the family's boss, with Makihara as his right-hand man.

Advertisement