Photo/Illutration Yoshinobu Kusunoki, head of the National Police Agency, delivers an address at the launch ceremony for a new intelligence unit targeting anonymous and fluid criminal groups in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward on Oct. 1. (Daichi Itakura)

“This is the ‘Operation Summit’ of the Reiwa Era!” declares Chief Kakuta in one episode of the long-running detective drama “Aibou: Tokyo Detective Duo.”

Usually an aloof supporting character, Rokuro Kakuta—a section chief in the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s Organized Crime Control Bureau—suddenly steps into the spotlight, rousing his colleagues as they prepare for a crucial operation.

His rallying cry, aired this past March, is a nod to history: a reference to the sweeping crackdowns on yakuza syndicates that began in the Showa Era (1926–1989), when police targeted gang bosses, or “summits.”

In the drama, Kakuta has been tapped to head a new integrated investigation task force pursuing a distinctly Reiwa Era (2019-present) threat: “tokuryu” groups, a portmanteau of "tokumei" (anonymous) and "ryudo" (fluid).

Created within the MPD at the prime minister’s behest, the unit is charged with tackling these amorphous crime rings that avoid fixed hierarchies or permanent membership, instead recruiting strangers online for one-off criminal jobs.

The “summit” Kakuta wants to bring down is the unseen apex of a tokuryu network. In the episode, after four home invasions and robberies occur in the same district, police arrest a key figure coordinating “yami-baito” (underground part-time “jobs”).

Yet even with this breakthrough, the investigation falls short of unmasking the true mastermind pulling the strings behind the scenes.

Now, back to the real world.

Amid a spate of robberies linked to yami-baito in the Tokyo metropolitan area, a joint investigation headquarters that includes the MPD has, for the first time, announced the arrest of suspects accused of serving as “instructors.” 

The alleged ringleaders are four men in their 20s, believed to have given orders in a robbery case in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture—just one of 18 similar incidents.

Tokuryu crime groups are defined by two features: the anonymity afforded by social media and the looseness of their ties. The perpetrators on the ground—the “executors”—never meet the instructors in person and are treated like disposable pawns.

When these executors, often already in desperate straits, are pushed further into a corner, their violence can intensify. There is something profoundly unsettling about this shadowy structure of crime.

As communication and command chains have shifted online, these covert operations have proliferated.

The word "tokuryu" itself was coined only about two-and-a-half years ago. Confronted with this new, era-specific form of crime, the police have been overhauling their organizational setup, reaching across traditional jurisdictional lines.

In the drama, the protagonist Ukyo Sugishita and his Special Task Unit try to strike at the heart of the case the old-fashioned way by wearing out their shoe leather. Their dogged fieldwork is backed up by a meticulous investigation in cyberspace.

In reality, too, new technology has transformed not only how crimes are committed, but how they are investigated.

—The Asahi Shimbun, Dec. 8

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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