Yushima in Danger—The Evolving Sleep-and-Scam Scheme and Its New Tricks

Japanese operators and Chinese touts colluding in table rentals — victims are rapidly increasing

One morning, a man in his 60s living in Tokyo, Kenji Seta (pseudonym), woke to the sound of a car horn and a severe headache. He had fallen asleep inside a parking lot in Yushima’s entertainment district, about a 10-minute walk from Ueno Station, and a driver arriving to park had woken him up.

However, Seta had no memory of how he ended up in the parking lot. The last thing he remembered was drinking with a friend in Yushima and parting ways before the last train.

Panicking, he checked his wallet and found all the banknotes gone—replaced by a single ATM transaction slip.

“Unbelievably, I had withdrawn 500,000 yen early that morning. According to the walking-route history in my smartphone’s pedometer app, I stayed in a multi-tenant building in Yushima from around 1 a.m. to 3 a.m., then went to a convenience store and withdrew 500,000 yen using my cash card,” Seta said.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, drug-and-run scams (kon-sui bottakuri) have been rampant in Yushima. Chinese female touts approach intoxicated people on the street, saying things like “Unlimited drinks until the first train for 3,000 yen,” and lure them into a bar. Once the customer is made heavily drunk, they are hit with an exorbitant bill. If the victim doesn’t have enough money, the scammers take them to a nearby ATM and force them to withdraw cash. Seta, who was aware of such scams from the news, reported the incident to the local police.

“I was told, ‘There’s no solid proof that a crime occurred,’ so I wasn’t able to file a report. I know I stayed in a multi-tenant building, but I can’t remember which establishment I was in, nor do I remember who took the money or how. It seems like I have no choice but to give up.”

I (the writer) tried walking the same route Seta took in Yushima during post–last train hours. I expected many touts to swarm me, but no one approached. However, when a middle-aged man stumbling drunkenly walked alone, the women appeared from nowhere, followed him at a subtle distance, and then approached him at a moment when it wouldn’t attract attention. Kota Ezaki (pseudonym), who runs a restaurant in Yushima, explains:

“There are people watching from cars cruising the streets or from upper floors of buildings, looking for potential targets. They give instructions, and the women go out accordingly. In the past, groups of touts would constantly loiter on the streets waiting for victims. But recently, police patrols have intensified, and blatant street solicitation is no longer possible.”

Since I wasn’t drunk, I probably wasn’t seen as a target. While crackdowns have increased, the latest methods of these scams are said to be growing more vicious.

There have even been cases where these increasingly vicious methods have led to deaths

“It’s no longer just a matter of getting victims drunk — there’s now a widespread practice of mixing sleeping drugs or similar substances into the drinks. Over the past year, I’ve seen intoxicated people collapsed on the streets in the early morning being taken away by ambulance multiple times. A middle-aged man who was found unconscious on a Yushima street in mid-May later died. I saw people who seemed to be his acquaintances come to the spot to pray. According to them, the police treated the case as an accident,” he said.

I was shocked when I asked where this happened — it was right in front of the same multi-tenant building where Seta stayed before losing 500,000 yen.

“The building housed Snack ‘X,’ which had been repeatedly accused online of perpetrating scam charges. The shop closed after the incident, and the touts who had used it as their base disappeared from the area,” he continued.

Even though X closed, countless scam bars and touts still lurk in Yushima. A person working in the Yushima restaurant district explains:

“Some of the Chinese touts operating here came around 2022 from Akabane and Shimbashi, where police crackdowns had intensified earlier. Since they didn’t have their own storefronts to use for scamming, they partnered with existing snack bars and pubs. They would use those shops to run scam operations and split the profits with the shop owners — a system known as takukashi (table rental).”

In Yushima, this Japan–China collaboration in table-rental scams has become a serious issue.

“The shops involved in takukashi scams aren’t always Chinese-run; in many cases, Japanese-owned establishments cooperate with Chinese touts. Customers tend to let their guard down in Japanese establishments, which works to the scammers’ advantage.

Some shops have even had their operations effectively taken over by the Chinese side through blackmail based on their complicity. The Japanese shop owners get arrested as those legally responsible, but the touts simply go back to their home country and avoid arrest,” he said.

It may be the perfect season for a pleasant walk after drinks — but beware the sweet whispers of touts.

From the November 7, 2025 issue of “FRIDAY”