### Chinese Mafia Intrusion Case - Shock in Kabukicho in 1994 and its chain of events

### Chinese Mafia Intrusion Case - Shock in Kabukicho in 1994 and its chain of events

In August 1994, a Chinese mafia member carrying a knife broke into a Chinese restaurant "Kai-Katsu-Lin" in Shinjuku's Kabukicho district, killing and injuring employees and customers. This was not just a simple in-store incident, but part of a war among Chinese organizations that was rapidly expanding in the 1990s.

The number of illegal residents increased during the recession that followed the bursting of the bubble economy, and they became involved in smuggling, prostitution, and drug trafficking, turning Kabukicho into a hotbed of international crime. In particular, mafias from northeastern China and Fujian Province grew in power and took over the town while the existing yakuza gangs declined. Since the enactment of the Anti-Gang Law in 1992, the police have focused their efforts on cracking down on domestic gangs, and foreign gangs have exploited the gaps in their operations.

The "Kaiko-Rin" incident, in which ordinary citizens were involved, caused a shock and defined the image of Kabukicho as a dangerous area. In September 2002, a group of Chinese delinquents shot and killed a gang leader inside a coffee shop in the "Barigenne Incident," shaking the city with reprisals. In October of the same year, a series of incidents in which tear gas was thrown into a Chinese club, and the war between the international mafia became a social problem.

Against the backdrop of these incidents, in April 2003, Governor Shintaro Ishihara initiated the "Kabukicho Cleanup Operation. The Metropolitan Police Department rounded up all the brothels and gang offices, the neon lights disappeared, and the order of the town changed drastically. However, this did not lead to a simple improvement in public safety, as it resulted in new chaos, including an increase in the number of black touts.

In other words, the sequence of events from the "Kaiko-rin Incident" in 1994 to the "Barigenne Incident" in 2002 and the "Operation Purification" in 2003 symbolize a decade in which Kabukicho wavered between internationalization and deterioration of public safety. It was a time when the dangers posed by the multiculturalization of the city intersected with the delayed response of Japanese society.