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Japan’s gangsters may remember 2010 as a banner year.

That’s not how the vast majority of Japan’s 126 million people will see it. Deflation is accelerating, Japan Airlines went bankrupt and the hits at Toyota keep on coming. And the year is barely 2 1/2 months old.

Amid such gloom, it will soon be good to be a yakuza, a member of Japan’s organized-crime syndicates. We learned this week that almost 3,000 consumer-finance companies risk being shut out of the market by the end of June as stricter rules take effect. It will be a boon for extortionate lenders. It also helps explain why Japan’s central bank has virtually no chance of ending deflation.

Japan’s consumer-finance outfits deserve zero sympathy. Many have long charged interest of about 30 percent. They may not have full-body tattoos and missing fingers, but they, too, shake down households and small companies.

In 2006, the government cracked down on the industry, imposing ceilings on interest. Since then, almost 10,000 consumer-finance companies have closed. Come June, even more will shut down because of credit checks by regulators.

The problem is, there has been no corresponding effort to get mainstream banks to lend more. Zero interest rates aren’t doing it, and policy makers aren’t offering incentives to increase credit growth. The clear winner here will be gangsters waiting to fill the void with off-the-chart lending rates.

Talk about unintended consequences. It’s something Finance Minister Naoto Kan should ponder as he points fingers at the Bank of Japan to do more. What many see as stubbornness on the part of BOJ Governor Masaaki Shirakawa is really an acknowledgment that monetary policy isn’t the problem.

Rates in Japan have been at, near or even below zero for a decade and deflationary pressures abound. The problem is a financial system that has never fully recovered from the bursting of the 1980s bubble economy. The channels of credit creation are still blocked because of negligible confidence in the economy’s prospects and a lack of incentive to lend.

Households don’t want to borrow, banks don’t want to lend. To fill the void and support growth, Japan racked up the biggest public debt in the world. Now that credit-rating companies are warning of downgrades, policy makers are putting the onus on the BOJ to think fast and do something.

As this standoff unfolds, those in desperate need of credit may get their loans in dark alleys.

The yakuza’s role in the economy is the worst-kept secret in Japan and a source of constant fascination. Look no further than computer-services company Fujitsu, which is embroiled in a dispute with its former chief. What’s it about? Kuniaki Nozoe’s possible ties to a company of “unfavorable reputation.” That’s a euphemism for organized crime.

It’s healthy to ask such questions about transparency and disclosure practices. The true number of yakuza-related companies operating under the auspices of legitimacy in Japan is a matter of some debate. Estimates range from several hundred to as many as 1,000. Pundits don’t call this the “Four-Finger Economy” for nothing.

So, this is no small issue. With investors calling on a household name like Fujitsu to shed more light on Nozoe’s departure, even general newspapers are putting corporate governance concerns on their front page.

Nozoe was given the benefit of the doubt five months ago when he said he quit for health reasons. Now, questions are being raised fast. Mitsushige Akino, who oversees about $450 million at Ichiyoshi Investment Management, speaks for many when he says: “We need to get to the bottom of why this happened.”

Meanwhile, economists are grappling with where Japan’s credit-creation process has gone. Bureaucratic bungling deserves much of the blame.

Reining in consumer-finance companies is the right thing to do, yet it’s being done clumsily. At the same time, the government isn’t trying hard enough to prod banks to meet the needs of small borrowers.

Much has been written about the “Yakuza Recession.” Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s move to scrap massive public-works projects has hit organized-crime gangs hard. The stock market in 2010 hasn’t made money for those gangs focused on finance. All this raised hopes of reducing the yakuza’s role in the economy.

It’s a wonder, then, that bureaucrats would want to present the underworld with new business. It’s a sad state of affairs for an advanced economy. It’s also a window onto why optimism that growth is about to roar higher and deflation can be easily defeated is misplaced.

William Pesek is a Bloomburg News Columnist