Advances in artificial intelligence have come along in leaps and bounds in recent years, prompting police in Fukuoka and Kyoto to look into ways of using the technology to tackle organized crime. The Fukuoka Prefectural Police in Kyushu face a particularly daunting task, with some ...

Business cards carry a lot of weight in Japan, so much so that they can be used to devastating effect if someone decides to deploy them for criminal purposes. A recent case highlights the danger that comes with placing trust in such cards. At the ...

Japan is for the most part a safe country. Gun-control laws are so strict in this East Asian nation of more than 120 million that fatalities remained in single digits last year. And yet we still feel a palpable sense of relief when we make ...

Is this a case of deja vu on the dancefloor? In 2012, police in Osaka started raiding clubs for violating the adult entertainment business law, popularly known as fūeihō. The law forbids dancing after midnight. When pressed on the matter, police officials said they were simply ...

Director Hirokazu Kore-eda recently won the Palme d'Or at Cannes for "Shoplifters," a critically acclaimed family drama that was partially inspired by real-life events. It attempts to depict a slice of life in which people are struggling to make ends meet, a set of circumstances ...

Everyone loves a tale of redemption. Unfortunately, this isn't going to be one of them. In a previous column, I introduced a man who had gone from being a greedy, violent, self-centered boss of an organized crime syndicate to become a compassionate male nurse. It's ...

Netflix last month released a yakuza film starring Jared Leto titled "The Outsider" to critical disdain. And as much as I expected to hate the movie, I didn't. It's portrayal of the world of organized crime in Japan after World War II is not ...

A new type of transfer fraud in which perpetrators take advantage of their victims' fear of prosecution has sparked concern among law enforcement officials in recent weeks. The Public Prosecutor's Office and the Metropolitan Police Department have issued a statement warning people about a "wire ...

Crime involving cryptocurrencies appears to be on the rise at a time when the total number of reported crimes in Japan is falling. The theft of 523 million NEM coins from Tokyo-based cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck Inc. on Jan. 26 has brought this issue to a ...

Fuji Television screened a popular TV series in 2009 called "Ninkyo Herupa" ("Yakuza Helper") that focused on the life of a former gangster who landed a job at a nursing facility for the elderly. Over the course of the series, he learned to follow the ...