Its name comes from the combination tokumeiwhich can be translated as “anonymous” and ryūdo“fluid”, which gives a pretty good idea of ​​how tokuryuThe new type of crime is troubling the Japanese authorities, and many people are already considering replacing the yakuza. Their activities represent a formidable challenge for the police, who have been fighting traditional Japanese criminal organizations for years. And there’s a very simple reason for this: in the face of the Yakuza’s hierarchy and codes, tokuryu They escape rigid structures that agents can follow. As the name suggests, they are based on anonymity and flexibility.

Police in Japan say thousands of people have been arrested in a year and a half. In fact, he devotes significant resources to his research.

cards on the table. The name is pretty self-explanatory. And it tells us what it is and, above all, how it works. TokuryuThe word used to designate the new form of crime that has been attracting the attention (and resources) of Japanese authorities for some time is the sum of two terms: tokumeikWhich can be translated as “anonymous”; And ryūdo“fluid” are adjectives that capture its essence well.

tokuryu These are criminal groups that ignore structures, rules, and even connections between people who join forces to commit crimes at a given moment. His structure has little to do with that of the yakuza. Also profiles. More Japan Times He directly mentions “quasi-gangsters” or citizens involved in criminal networks.

How do they work? Unlike other well-structured criminal organizations that have their own code of conduct, such as the traditional criminal organizations of Japan or Italy, this phenomenon tokuryu It is designed to evade control by authorities. In their case, flexibility is prioritized over organizational rigidity and hierarchy, even at the cost of less professionalization.

Newspaper Guardianwho dedicated an article to this subject a few weeks ago tokuryudefines them as created groups temporary Committing crimes with people who often do not know each other and do not know who is directing the “hits” they carry out. Many are hired for specific jobs online, even through Instagram. Where they are similar to traditional criminal gangs is that once you get into their network it is not easy to get out.

Some detainees claimed they had received threats against themselves and their families to continue complying with orders. “Ordinary people caught in the trap of crime” describes them Japan TimesHe warns about how this formula blurs the lines between the underworld and citizens.

Agile and elusive. Such a formula may have its drawbacks, but it can also have clear advantages: criminals operate anonymously, and it is not strange that they do not know their colleagues or those who planned the crimes, further complicating attempts to track them down. Criminals disperse and regroup easily, they operate without a clear organizational structure, and their areas of action are dispersed and very wide. Guardian It refers to groups that have worked from countries such as the Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand or Vietnam.

Equally diverse criminal profiles were found in their networks: from young people with no criminal record to former yakuza or individuals who maintained ties with traditional organized crime groups. “While doing field research, I noticed something strange. While some showed signs of being members of semi-organized groups, many turned out to be ordinary people, including teenagers,” said Noboru Hirosue, a criminologist at Ryukoku University.

Exceptions. The range of activities is quite wide. They range from theft and fraud to major crimes such as assault or murder. A year ago, in May 2023, three masked thieves robbed a luxury watch store in Tokyo’s Ginza and left with a huge loot of 74 items worth approximately 1.8 million euros. When the police caught them a short time later and investigated the driver who helped them escape, they found that these people were young people between the ages of 16 and 19. There is no background. They were recruited via the Internet.

“What was behind this was not a yakuza group, but a fraud network made up of members of organized crime groups and quasi-gangsters from the Kanto region,” authorities said. Another case in the shadow of the conflict tokuryu This is a recent murder that resulted in the discovery of two bodies in Nasu. Finding the “mastermind” of the crime has been a challenge for police. They have suspects in the case, people who were allegedly hired to commit the crime; But when the police want to go further, the clues become blurry. “In most cases, the superiors are never caught. Usually only the perpetrators are caught,” adds the Ryukoku expert.

Thousands of arrests. This tokuryu As data from the National Police Agency (NPA) shows, this is not an isolated trend. According to their chart, between September 2021 and February 2023, more than 10,000 people arrested in just a year and a half were classified with this label. And this is not the only indicator. Another is that this trend has already attracted the attention of experts like Hirosue or the international media. Guardian.

The authorities themselves seem to be paying increasing attention to this: in Fukuoka prefecture, a former yakuza stronghold, for example, a hundred-member division was recently created to counter this very enemy. tokuryu. And this is not the only one. There are experienced researchers focused on the same task in other prefectures of the country, such as Chiba, Aichi or Osaka.

Yakuza fluff? There are already those who warn this. tokuryu They seem to have taken over from the Yakuza. To be sure, its emergence occurs in a very specific context marked by more than a decade of legal efforts to make things harder for organized crime. The laws and repressive measures the country has adopted have put its members in a difficult position and limited its appeal when it comes to attracting new members.

Yakuzas cannot open a bank account in their own name, sign a credit card or mobile phone contract, rent a house, or buy a car; and regulations have also complicated relationships between companies and their organizations, forcing them to embrace changes. Their figures indicate at least a remarkable loss of membership in a country experiencing a marked demographic decline: from more than 180,000 members they reached in the 1960s, they have fallen to just 20,400 in 2023.

Pictures | Shankar S. (Flickr) and Wikipedia (Basile Morin)

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