Why Is Japan’s Tokuryu So Hard to Dismantle?

Traditional organized crime is relatively easy to imagine. Police arrest someone at the bottom, work their way upward, and eventually reach the people giving the orders. It is the familiar structure of countless crime dramas: foot soldiers, lieutenants, bosses.

But in Japan, police are increasingly dealing with something that does not fit that old diagram. The National Police Agency calls them “anonymous and fluid criminal groups” — commonly shortened in Japanese to Tokuryu. Their core members stay hidden, roles are fragmented, and new offenders can be recruited through social media when old ones disappear.

In other words, Japanese police are no longer dealing only with crimes that end when the person at the scene is caught. That is the strange part worth examining.

The old yakuza had something resembling an organization chart

To simplify things considerably, traditional Japanese organized crime groups such as the yakuza were hierarchical. There was usually a boss, senior members below him, and rank-and-file members further down. Groups had names, offices, affiliations and relatively stable chains of authority.

Tokuryu operates differently. According to Japan’s National Police Agency, the core figures who collect criminal proceeds are deliberately obscured, while loosely connected participants are assigned narrowly divided roles. Lower-level offenders may be recruited through social media, job sites and personal networks, then replaced as circumstances change.

Conceptual illustration of organizational structures. It does not depict any specific criminal group or individual.

If the old model resembled a crooked company with an employee directory, Tokuryu looks more like a criminal project assembled separately for each job. Real organizations are obviously more complicated than that analogy, but it explains why the police problem has changed.

6,679 persons cleared — but only about one in ten were masterminds or commanders

The numbers make the structure even more interesting. For 2025, the National Police Agency recorded 6,679 persons cleared in major profit-making crimes believed to have been committed by anonymous and fluid criminal groups.

Fraud accounted for 3,075 people, drug offenses for 1,887, theft for 1,020, violations related to regulated entertainment businesses for 393, and robbery for 304.

But only about 10% were classified as masterminds or persons giving instructions. Put another way, most of those identified by police were not in that top “mastermind or commander” category. Around 30% had become involved after encountering recruitment for criminal activity on social media, while people in their twenties or younger made up roughly 60% of the total.

The old image of arresting the bottom rung and simply climbing the ladder upward is no longer enough to explain what police are dealing with.

Conceptual illustration based on the organizational pattern discussed in the article, not a depiction of an actual case.

Crime itself has become a kind of outsourced business

National Police Agency material describes a wider ecosystem around these groups: people who recruit offenders, people who procure accounts or other tools used in crimes, and people who help move criminal proceeds.

The boundaries are not neat. Police have identified connections involving current and former members of traditional organized crime groups, nightlife and entertainment businesses, and overseas criminal organizations.

That also means the story is not simply “the yakuza disappeared and Tokuryu replaced them.” Police have documented cases in which organized crime figures were involved with Tokuryu groups, as well as cases in which Tokuryu participants made use of organized crime connections or influence.

So this is less like one generation of crime replacing another. It looks more like old organized-crime components being plugged into a newer, more flexible network model.

Police are changing the game as well

The criminal side is not the only side changing its structure.

In October 2025, the National Police Agency established a dedicated unit to centralize and analyze information on anonymous and fluid criminal groups. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department also created the Tokuryu Target Investigation Team, known as T3, drawing investigators from police forces around Japan to concentrate on core figures.

Another nationwide framework, the Telecom Scam Allied Investigation Team — TAIT — is designed to overcome prefectural boundaries in investigations involving telecom scams and related offenses. In 2025, police recorded 533 cleared cases involving the use of TAIT.

Police have also begun using undercover-identity investigations in which officers conceal their real identities while responding to online recruitment for criminal activity. The aim is not merely to catch someone after an offense, but to intervene earlier and work toward those organizing or directing the crimes.

Then came a more unusual development. On September 24, 2026, an expert panel convened by the National Police Agency issued a proposal calling for the early introduction of what it describes as remote analysis. Under strict conditions and judicial review, the proposed framework would allow investigators to obtain necessary information from devices used by suspects when trying to prevent imminent serious criminal harm.

As of September 2026, this remains a proposal for a future legal framework, not a routine investigative power already in general use.

Conceptual illustration. It does not reproduce an actual police operation or investigative system.

¥210.81 billion in seven months — this is no side hustle

There is another reason police are changing tactics: the sheer amount of money involved in the wider fraud problem.

By the end of July 2026, Japan recorded 26,051 cases of special fraud with losses totaling ¥210.81 billion. From 2026, the National Police Agency reorganized its statistics so that social-media investment scams and social-media romance scams are included within the broader “special fraud” category, meaning comparisons with earlier years need some care.

Still, dividing ¥210.81 billion by the first 212 days of the year gives an average loss of about ¥994 million per day — almost ¥1 billion every 24 hours.

That total should not be read as “Tokuryu stole all of this money.” It did not. The figure covers the wider official special-fraud category. But the National Police Agency has repeatedly pointed to the deep involvement of anonymous and fluid criminal groups in fraud and other profit-making crimes. The scale helps explain why simply counting how many street-level offenders have been caught is no longer enough.

The part criminals probably do not want emphasized

Current police strategy is not focused only on identifying individual masterminds. Authorities are also trying to seize criminal proceeds, cut off funding, identify connections across different offenses and ultimately dismantle the illegal business model itself.

That is a fairly important shift. Instead of treating one arrested offender as the end of a case, police increasingly try to put recruitment, money flows, intermediaries and connections between different groups on the same map.

Anyone imagining that using disposable foot soldiers automatically keeps the people above them safe may therefore be working from an outdated model. The structure designed to insulate the organizers is itself becoming the object of investigation.

Tokuryu is not the name of a new criminal offense. It is a label for a criminal model that has forced Japanese police to rethink the rules of the chase.

Editor’s Note

Old detective dramas made the logic wonderfully simple: grab the guy at the bottom, ask who hired him, and start climbing. What bothers me about Tokuryu is not really the technology. It is the fact that the person at the bottom may genuinely know very little about the people above him.

That is the part that feels particularly modern. The most unsettling innovation here may not be encrypted apps or social media at all. It may be that people themselves have become replaceable components. Once crime starts treating human beings like disposable parts in a temporary project team, it is not surprising that policing has to stop thinking only in terms of the individual standing at the crime scene.

References