Tokuryū, the shadowy criminal groups taking over from yakuza in Japan

Watching three masked men smash their way into a luxury watch shop in Tokyo’s upmarket Ginza district in broad daylight, some onlookers assumed they were witnessing a TV drama or movie shoot.

But the heist in May 2023 was real. It was carried out by a group of teenagers aged between 16 and 19 who were recruited online, and part of a new crime phenomenon called tokuryū by authorities that is growing as Japan’s yakuza clans decline.

Who are tokuryū?

Formed by the characters for “anonymous” (tokumei) and “fluid” (ryūdo), the term tokuryū refers to ad hoc groups formed to commit crimes, where members often don’t know each other or those planning and directing their activities. They are distinct from the yakuza and less hierarchical, usually with loose organisational structures above those carrying out crimes ranging from robberies and frauds to assaults and murders.

Most of those arrested for such crimes are recruited online for what is known as yami-baito, or shady casual work. Many of them tell police that threats were made against them and their families to ensure they continued to obey orders. Some have said they were recruited via Instagram.

Related: Making a slow getaway: Japan’s anti-yakuza laws result in cohort of ageing gangsters

The three young watch robbery suspects and their alleged getaway driver had no history of offending. Despite making off with 74 timepieces worth around 300m yen (£1.55m), all four had been captured within an hour and all the stolen goods recovered.

One of the defendants, an unemployed 18-year-old, was sentenced to four and a half years’ imprisonment in September 2023 after pleading guilty. Two other members, both 19 at the time of the robbery, were given the same sentence the following month, while the 16-year-old was sent to a juvenile facility for evaluation and training.

A Tokyo police official told Gendai Media: “Behind the young men was not a designated yakuza group, but what was mainly a fraud ring made up of members of organised crime groups and quasi-gangsters from the Kanto region [around Tokyo].”

How big a problem are they?

According to the National Police Agency (NPA), more than 10,000 people arrested between September 2021 and February 2023 are classified as tokuryū.

Yasuhiro Tsuyuki, chief of the NPA, said shortly after the 2023 watch theft sentencing: “Such robberies committed in busy shopping streets in the city centre in daylight have reached unprecedented levels. The police nationwide need to cooperate on investigating quickly and effectively.”

In Fukuoka prefecture on the southern island of Kyushu, police last month established a 100-member division to combat the growing tokuryū threat. The prefecture is a former yakuza stronghold.

Violent crime is rare in Japan, and a string of dozens of burglaries across the country from 2021 to 2023, one resulting in the death of a 90-year-old woman, shocked the country.

The burglaries are alleged to have been orchestrated by a Japanese group operating out of the Philippines. Nicknamed “Luffy” after a famous manga character used by one of its leaders on messaging apps, the gang also ran telephone scams and extorted Japanese businesspeople working in Manila.

More than 30 of its members have been extradited to Japan, with a handful still detained in the Philippines. Among the members are former yakuza. Other tokuryū groups have formed alliances with traditional gangsters, and are suspected of sharing profits with them.

Groups have been also been found operating in Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam, all places where yakuza are known to have done business.

What has happened to yakuza?

After continuous crackdowns on yakuza syndicates, their membership fell to 20,400 last year, from a peak of more than 180,000 in the 1960s, as the older generations found it harder to tempt young men with promises of easy money.

Stricter laws, including those targeting businesses with links to gangs that had once operated with near-impunity, have made a life of crime increasingly unappealing: yakuza members are forbidden from opening bank accounts, obtaining a credit card, taking out insurance policies or even signing a contract for a mobile phone.

The crackdowns have seen the average age of yakuza steadily rise. “Japan’s ageing population is a factor, of course, but the yakuza scene is no longer an attractive proposition for young men,” Tomohiko Suzuki, an author and expert on the yakuza, told the Guardian in 2020. “They have to sacrifice a lot to lead the life of a gangster, but for increasingly diminishing returns.”