Chinese restaurant "Kai-Katsu-Lin" murder case - August 1994, Kabukicho

Chinese restaurant "Kai-Katsu-Lin" murder case - August 1994, Kabukicho

In August 1994, Chinese mafia members broke into the Chinese restaurant "Kai-Katsu-Lin" in Kabukicho, Shinjuku, with knives and attacked employees and customers one after another. Several people were injured, and the violence that unfolded in the midst of the downtown area shocked the public and became a symbolic event that shook the myth of security in Japan. In the background was the presence of migrant Chinese and illegal immigrants who had rapidly increased after the bursting of the bubble economy, and the mafia from Fujian and northeastern China had expanded their organizations in Japan, expanding into drugs, prostitution, and illegal immigration piracy. Friction with the existing Yakuza over interests deepened, and fights between the Chinese mafia and clashes with gangs came to the surface in this incident. At the time, Kabukicho was a bustling "town that never sleeps," with a high concentration of restaurants and entertainment establishments, but behind this prosperity
, foreign organizations were emerging and the traditional control structure was being shaken. In the early 1990s, the number of Chinese-owned clubs and restaurants increased to such an extent that it was called "Chinatownization," and internationalization and disorder were progressing at the same time. The Kai-Katsu-Lin incident symbolized these changing times, and triggered the Metropolitan Police Department to strengthen its measures against foreign crime, a trend that would later lead to the Kabukicho purification operation.