<figure id="attachment_414056" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 1803px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-414056"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="2aa8c388"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/02/6f9eacdcf41729bc253526ec4f42ddfe.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-414056" class="wp-caption-text"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Marijuana buried in the sand (all photos provided by Takahama).</span></figcaption></figure>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Ryoji Takahama, who served as a narcotics officer, or &#8220;Matri,&#8221; on the front lines of drug investigations for 36 years from the Showa to Heisei eras, has chronicled the real scenes of his work in the series &#8220;Narcotics G-Men’s Case Files.&#8221; On February 1, Takahama released a book titled Matri’s Monologue: What I Want to Leave Behind as a Former Narcotics Officer (published by Bungeisha), which includes content from this series.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">To commemorate the final installment of the series and the release of his book, we conducted an interview with Takahama, where he discussed the most memorable case of his Matri career.</span></p>
<h2><b>Even after conducting a raid, no items were found</b></h2>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Not necessarily the biggest case, but looking back, the cases that made the biggest impression on me were probably more common in small and medium-sized cities in the countryside than in big cities. In particular, Sendai, where I was assigned from 1993 to 1997, was a place where there were few cases, but there were many memorable cases.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In the core cities of the provinces, there is not the same variety of drugs being trafficked as in the big cities. Methamphetamine or marijuana are the most common. The interesting thing is that when drug addicts in big cities run out of drugs, they go into debt or even cheat people to get money to buy shabu. However, in Sendai, when they run out of money, they don&#8217;t buy shabu, so they don&#8217;t inject themselves with it.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">So, even though there was information that</span><b> &#8220;he has meth,&#8221; </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">there were often times when a raid would be carried out, but no items would be found. Then, when we asked them to</span><b> &#8220;give a urine sample&#8221;</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> for testing, they would calmly comply, thinking that nothing would come out because the drugs had already left their system.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In big cities, there are many cases where ordinary people become dealers, but in rural areas, there are still many cases where gangsters were trafficking methamphetamine. I was told that a gang member was trafficking methamphetamine, and since I didn&#8217;t know his address, I staked out his ex-wife&#8217;s house.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Then, a woman came out, and when we searched her, we found 30 grams of methamphetamine in a plastic bag inside her second bag. When I asked, </span><b>&#8220;Where did this meth come from?&#8221;</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> she replied, </span><b>&#8220;I was asked to hold onto it, but I got scared. When I asked, &#8216;How long do I need to keep it?&#8217; they told me to move it somewhere, so I took it out.&#8221;</b><span style="font-weight: 400;"> When I asked, </span><b>&#8220;Where did the man go?&#8221; </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">She said he went to Chiba for a gang meeting.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">He said he would be back late, so while I was preparing to request an arrest warrant for the man, I waited in front of the ticket gate at Sendai Station. He returned, and as soon as I tried to stop him and make the emergency arrest, he started shouting,</span><b> &#8220;Show me the warrant!&#8221; </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">and began to resist. He threw the paper bag he was holding and tried to escape. He was struggling so violently that I had to hit his shin with a baton to bring him down before cuffing him.</span></p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead="The contents of the paper bag were something unexpected."></div>
<h3><b>The unexpected treasure that came out of the paper bag</b></h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">He was holding a paper bag with great care, and I thought he might have stocked up on cocaine in Tokyo. However, when I opened the bag, I found two Smith &amp; Wesson pistols and 50 bullets in a paper box. The bullets were unloaded, but it was after 9:00 at night. There were a lot of people getting off the train, so I was horrified when I thought about what might have happened if the gun had gone off.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Since handguns are out of our jurisdiction, we handed the case over to the Sendai Chuo Police Department. In the city, there are plenty of cases where handguns are seized, but in the countryside it is rare. I didn&#8217;t think he had a gun either, so it was a very special case.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Talking about marijuana, there is wild marijuana in Hokkaido and Tohoku. In the summer, students from Tokyo who go to Hokkaido sometimes pull out wild marijuana and try to take it with them, but the locals find them and report them to the police, resulting in their arrest.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The case I am going to discuss here is not wild marijuana, but rather a case of cultivating marijuana from seeds that they planted themselves. I heard that some of the recent foreign products have THC concentrations of close to 10%. According to the people who arrested him, it is not expected to have much effect other than making his throat tingle.</span></p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead="What did the man confessing to possessing marijuana say?"></div>
<h3><b>A man who buried a large amount of marijuana in the sand</b></h3>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The 28-year-old man, who had a criminal record for violating the Anti-Prostitution Law and had received marijuana from someone who cultivated it, was arrested. While being taken back to his house after being apprehended outside, he began to make accusations, saying things like,</span><b> &#8220;Why do I have to go?&#8221; </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">This led to a scuffle, but the man quickly became compliant, realizing resistance would be futile, and agreed to cooperate with the search of his home. However, nothing was found during the search.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The officer then conducted a thorough search from the house to the location where the suspect had been apprehended. To their surprise, they found 6g of marijuana discarded in a matchbox. It appeared that the suspect had seized the opportunity to dispose of it while the officers were distracted. When the officer confronted him, saying, </span><b>&#8220;You threw this away, didn&#8217;t you?&#8221; </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">the suspect denied it, claiming, </span><b>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t throw it away,&#8221; </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">which angered the officer.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Based on the statement from the man who had been cultivating marijuana, the officer had a warrant for the possession of 1kg of marijuana. The officer threatened him, saying,</span><b> &#8220;Alright, I get it. I&#8217;ll execute the warrant for 1kg of possession and send you to prison. You won’t escape a prison sentence with 1kg.&#8221; </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">At this point, the suspect hesitated and began to confess, saying, </span><b>&#8220;Actually I buried it at the Unoshima coast in Natori City.&#8221;</b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Following the man&#8217;s confession, the officers dug at the coast as he described, and found 86g of marijuana in a cooler box, just as he had said. It was an unremarkable stretch of sand, and without his confession, it would have been nearly impossible to identify the spot. When asked </span><b>&#8220;How did you know it was buried in such a place?&#8221;</b><span style="font-weight: 400;">, he explained, </span><b>&#8220;Because the posts here are black, and the wire on the nearby fence is cut.&#8221;</b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The officer reflected that this was an unusual case, as typically drugs are hidden in rooms or nearby locations, not buried in the sand. Had the man admitted to discarding the small amount of marijuana at the beginning, he would have only faced charges for possessing the 6g. Instead, his denial led to the discovery of the larger quantity. This case left a strong impression on the officer, as such a turn of events was rare in his career.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In the second part of the series,</span><b> &#8220;【Drug Enforcement Officer&#8217;s &#8216;Memorable&#8217; Case Files】 &#8216;Why I Stick to the Habit of Not Standing at the Front of the Train Station Platform,'&#8221; </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">Takahama discusses the intensity of resistance from gang members in rural cities and shares his approach to conducting investigations when dealing with organized crime.</span></p>
<p><a href="https://friday.kodansha.co.jp/article/414079"><span style="font-weight: 400;">The first part, &#8220;Drug Enforcement Officer&#8217;s &#8216;Memorable&#8217; Case Files,&#8221; dives into his experiences.</span></a></p>
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<div data-friday-nextpage-lead="The &quot;crime scene photos&quot; that leave too strong an impression."></div>
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<figure id="attachment_414057" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 1561px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-414057"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="95ee2309"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/02/6bc212592ea2714988d0487e207dad58.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-414057" class="wp-caption-text"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Smith &amp; Wesson in a paper bag held by a gang dealer.</span></figcaption></figure>
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<figure id="attachment_414058" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 1803px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-414058"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="6832c658"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/02/c05049e7cad7c646280ae12cfc7b6682-1.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-414058" class="wp-caption-text"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Fifty rounds of live ammunition in a paper box were also seized.</span></figcaption></figure>
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<figure id="attachment_414059" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 1131px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-414059"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="fc65a61e"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/02/a017e0caf9119cc47e6729799c0161ba.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-414059" class="wp-caption-text"><span style="font-weight: 400;">The young Mr. Takahama.</span></figcaption></figure>
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<figure id="attachment_414060" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 755px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-414060"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="bec0d742"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/02/0fbd8541968d992266a9b367bde69159.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-414060" class="wp-caption-text"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Takahama reflects on his 36 years as a narcotics officer in &#8220;Matri&#8217;s Soliloquy&#8221; (Bungeisha).</span></figcaption></figure>
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<p><a href="https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%83%9E%E3%83%88%E3%83%AA%E3%81%AE%E7%8B%AC%E3%82%8A%E8%A8%80-%E5%85%83%E9%BA%BB%E8%96%AC%E5%8F%96%E7%B7%A0%E5%AE%98%E3%81%8C%E8%A8%80%E3%81%84%E6%AE%8B%E3%81%97%E3%81%9F%E3%81%84%E3%81%93%E3%81%A8-%E9%AB%98%E6%BF%B1-%E8%89%AF%E6%AC%A1/dp/4286261808/ref=sr_1_45?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.qg0badSNR9MIdFEq1esURgD7ja7wC3-GMzpTwzwO_XSyJvEdr4EX4ub7XeP7o0mV4NNCPE0qHDWloZ7cz20Cau3gOT2pQMD9kiCtyRvjigAZqZsNPsbpYBOlglFtsCLvlBevurKQIGi-bRrKYMyz30d9vkLW9rUBSwQdhq1SJ-cl-LqR2vk3Pk4ld4Oj7ws71jDh0lFPnttXzDALHAK20tq2HNyRUsSlJMv0AiS1Vr0.qhxERijzRq10n4UJPNUJOPtiD3iiW4C7ntv5iGS1UkQ&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;qid=1738119137&amp;refinements=p_n_publication_date%3A82839051&amp;s=books&amp;sr=1-45"><span style="font-weight: 400;">&#8220;Matri&#8217;s Soliloquy: What a Former Narcotics Officer Wants to Leave Behind&#8221; (Written by Ryōji Takahama, Bungeisha)</span></a></p>
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 This is the final installment of a series of articles by Ryoji Takahama, a former drug enforcement officer who knows the scene of drug investigations from the Showa Period to the Heisei Period. To commemorate the publication of the book, we interviewed Mr. Takahama about the most "memorable" case in his Matrix life.

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