Hiroaki Obata, the Arrested Head of the Illegal Scouting Group “Natural,” Was “Just a Cool Guy” in His Own Words

The head of “Natural” was arrested.

It was an electric shock, and the top of the group was captured in one fell swoop.

The illegal scout group “Natural” has about 2,000 members, mainly young people, and is called the largest and strongest (and most dangerous) group in Japan. Its leader, Hiroaki Obata, 41, has been arrested by the Anti-Gang Division of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department.

He was hiding out on Amami Oshima Island in Kagoshima Prefecture, 1,200 km away from Kabukicho, Tokyo, where Natural’s main activities take place.

Natural is an “anonymous and liquid criminal group (Tokuryu)” that has routes to introduce women to brothels in almost every downtown area in Japan, and receives “scout backs (introduction fees)” from the brothels, which is illegal under the revised Entertainment Establishments Control Law. The annual revenue is estimated to be at least 5 billion yen, but even the police have not been able to fully grasp the actual situation.

For nearly two years, our investigative team has been following this mysterious organization and has reported three times on its bizarre appearance, organized as if it were an ordinary company.

What kind of person is the suspect Obata? The police authorities’ investigative documents, which we obtained independently, refer to him as “Chairman Kiyama,” so we will refer to him as “Chairman” in this report in conformity with the documents. His background is as follows.

The founder of Natural was a man named Kiyama, who has since repeatedly changed his name and now goes by an alias. He started his scouting career around ’06, gaining experience as a scout for a group called Lancôme in Tachikawa. Around 2009, he moved to the entertainment district of Kabukicho in Shinjuku and gradually increased his group of scouts, and began calling himself and others “Natural.

A person in the underworld who knows who they are says, “They used to say, ‘I’ve been a member of every kind of breeding group in the country.

They have been saying for a long time, ‘We will conquer every downtown area in the country! He was always saying, ‘We’re going to conquer every downtown area in the country! He was just a very high-spirited person.

He sometimes showed a violent side.

When he was young,” he said, “he would say, ‘Yakuza are nothing,’ and he would make the gangsters bow down to him without backing down. Nowadays, he is less likely to take action himself, but his philosophy of domination through violence has not changed, such as circulating videos of young members being yakki-ed by the executives.

The February 6 issue of “FRIDAY February 20/27” and the paid version of “FRIDAY GOLD” report in detail on the police’s “summit operation” to arrest Obata and the latest situation of the illegal scout “Natural.

For more details and multiple photos, click here↓.

From the February 20-27, 2026 issue of “FRIDAY