<figure id="attachment_468733" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-468733" style="width: 2500px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="91c21342"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/05/4c44814bacaf9dbf97de5e0df0830e9c.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-468733" class="wp-caption-text">At the end of July &#8217;24, a joint task force of Iwate and Miyagi police arrested eight people, including the head of Tokyuu. They were in possession of guns and methamphetamine.</figcaption></figure>
<h3> Glock and Colt concealed by company employee &#8220;wife doesn&#8217;t know&#8221;</h3>
<p> It must have been about 10 years ago that our investigators visited a well-kept, elegant house in Tokyo.</p>
<p> The house was ostensibly a &#8220;company employee&#8217;s residence,&#8221; so the wife was very surprised at the visit by the detective. He had been reported to have &#8220;firearms hidden in his home.</p>
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<p><span class="strongInContent"> The husband wanted to keep his family in the dark.</span></p>
<p> The search began with the wife, who knew nothing about the situation, waiting in one of the rooms of the house. Every room was neat and tidy, and not a speck of dust fell in any of them. We went out into the yard, thinking, &#8220;This is no way to hide a body indoors.</p>
<p> I went out into the garden and found a road bike, which must be the owner&#8217;s hobby, hanging on the fence. I saw a warehouse behind it, and it hit me.</p>
<p> The storage room, which was made of aluminum like those sold at home improvement stores, was locked.</p>
<p> When I unlocked the door, I found a duralumin attaché case with a Glock and a state-of-the-art Colt Government inside.</p>
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<p> Fumitaka Kobihiruimaki, 52, a former police lieutenant of the Metropolitan Police Department, has devoted most of his 30-year career to investigating organized crime and drug cases since he joined the police in 1993. He has twice introduced the &#8220;reality of drug investigations&#8221; in this magazine, and this time he details the field of firearms countermeasures.</p>
<p> When we obtain information on drugs, we sometimes receive information on firearms at the same time. This is because drugs and firearms are the same &#8220;hot-selling&#8221; black market for criminal organizations.</p>
<p> In Japan, hundreds of guns are seized annually. In addition to &#8220;stray guns&#8221; leaked from gangs and other criminal organizations, imitation guns owned by enthusiasts and homemade guns that at first glance appear to be toys but shoot live ammunition are also subject to seizure. If even a single bullet flies forward and is capable of killing, it is a &#8220;handgun, etc.&#8221; under Japanese law.</p>
<p> How do the police know where the firearms are? The main pillar is &#8220;information provision.</p>
<p> For good information, they pay 50,000 yen as a gratuity, and sometimes several hundred thousand yen in total. A budget is set up by the police, and a proper receipt is obtained and declared. The source of the information is kept strictly confidential, and the identity of the provider has never been leaked.</p>
<p> The people from whom we get the information are &#8220;people in criminal organizations who are causing trouble. We contact them when we get wind of rumors of trouble, such as a debt that has been overdrawn or a woman who has been touched by a woman.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> I hear you&#8217;re in some kind of trouble.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> Detective, listen to me!　That son of a bitch is a hell of a guy. &#8230;&#8230;&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> Then, bring me the information. I&#8217;ll take a crack at it. But don&#8217;t make a case. Bring me clean information.</span></p>
<p> And so on.</p>
<p> But you never know who will betray you at any time in the underworld. Some yakuza keep a model gun at home in case they are snitched on. Some yakuza would even have a detective who came to search their house grab the model gun and say, &#8220;Is this what you mean by &#8216;chaka&#8217;? and then they boast, &#8220;Is this what you mean by &#8216;chaka&#8217;?</p>
<p> On the other hand, they give some money to Teko, who was mentioned in the episode at the beginning of this report, and leave their genuine guns with him.</p>
<figure id="attachment_468736" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-468736" style="width: 1821px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="369e8dd9"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/05/29f7fcf30f756f6ec0f84dccda0ef3c8.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-468736" class="wp-caption-text"> Tetsuya Yamagami, 45, attacked former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2010. The murder weapon, a homemade gun, was recognized as a handgun at the trial and found to be in violation of the Firearms Control Law.</figcaption></figure>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" Found at customs...rusted handguns were smashed all over the wall."></div>
<figure id="attachment_468737" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-468737" style="width: 1768px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="547f5974"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/05/763abdc44babe954f06dfb2fb1d5ca4b.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-468737" class="wp-caption-text">In July 1995, three employees of a supermarket in Hachioji City were shot to death with inexpensive Philippine-made pistols.</figcaption></figure>
<h3> Pistols laid out in a pile</h3>
<p> Although well-known handguns such as Glock, Colt Government, and Beretta were popular among criminal gang members, Russian-made Tokarevs, Makarovs, and Chinese-made Tokarevs were overwhelmingly used as murder weapons.</p>
<p> The Chinese-made Tokarev was a copy, with a black star mark on the side of the grip, known in Chinese as a &#8220;black star (hei xing). Since the weapons were discarded as soon as they were used, cheap handguns such as the Tokarev were the weapon of choice.</p>
<p> As with drugs, handguns are seized at customs. There have been rare cases where handguns or live ammunition have been mixed in with baggage and brought on board, only to be discovered upon entry, but &#8220;in most cases they are sent mixed in with trade cargo (containers and other imported goods),&#8221; says Obirimaki.</p>
<p> We once found a large number of handguns hidden in a container that was brought in daily from overseas in large quantities. Customs has a huge X-ray machine that can inspect every container, but if we had to check every container, logistics would be delayed.</p>
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<p> One time &#8211; while observing the exterior of a container, a customs official became suspicious when he saw welding marks on the exterior wall of the container and checked it with the large X-ray machine. The customs officer checked the exterior of the container with a large X-ray machine and found that the walls were covered with rusted handguns. There were several hundred of them. Even in this high-tech age, what is important is manpower. It is skill and sense.</p>
<p> I myself have many times been shown the skilled work of senior detectives.</p>
<p> That was when I received information and conducted a raid on an apartment building. I showed him a search warrant for a firearms violation and said, &#8220;We&#8217;re going to start now. If you have anything strange in your possession, go ahead and serve it. Although it is less than 10% of the time, it is rare for a suspect to turn in a handgun with this one word.</p>
<p> At that time, the suspect was slinking away, so I stepped into the room and said, &#8220;At 00:00, start the search. At the time, I was just starting out, and I wondered if he was going to fish around in the back of the wardrobe or the back of a drawer &#8211; but the senior detective made a beeline for a cage in a corner of the room. Inside the cage, a tarantula was moseying about. It was the suspect&#8217;s pet.</p>
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<p> As I turned away, creeped out, the senior detective pulled the tarantula over the edge with a piece of stick and dug up the soil at the bottom of the cage. Then, he revealed a revolving imitation handgun in a plastic bag.</p>
<p> If you&#8217;re going to hide a handgun, it should be behind furniture or in a drawer &#8211; this is a preconceived notion. We are instructed to eliminate such &#8220;noise&#8221; and &#8220;use all five senses in the search,&#8221; and the senior detective was able to reach the tarantula cage because he had the skills to do so.</p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" Descendant of Meiji-era police commissioner finds rare pistol in storehouse"></div>
<figure id="attachment_468734" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-468734" style="width: 2500px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="844d6a42"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/05/6d4012d3ee166563111d26ed0ca01af6.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-468734" class="wp-caption-text">About 30 years ago, when he was just starting out, Mr. Kobujimaki said, &#8220;The first gun I ever saw seized was a Colt Government. The first pistol I ever saw seized was a Colt Government.</figcaption></figure>
<h3> Police Commissioner&#8217;s Folding Gun</h3>
<p> Guns are sometimes found unexpectedly. These are &#8220;relic handguns,&#8221; which are reported as family mementos. Even if it is a rare gun, of which there are only a few left in the world, &#8220;it is melted down in a blast furnace and disposed of without exception,&#8221; says Obirimaki.</p>
<p> Once, the grandson of a police commissioner in the Meiji era came to us with a pistol, saying, &#8220;I found a gun when I was cleaning out my storehouse, and I will return it to the police. She was an elderly woman.</p>
<p> Since there was a short time lag between when we found the gun and when we delivered it to the police, we had to send it to the police for violation of the Firearms Control Law, but the case was not prosecuted.</p>
<p> The Japanese police pistol is the New Nambu, but her belongings were an American-made gun called the Scofield, which is a mid-folding type. It is easy to understand if we say that the gun was shaped like the gun used by Colonel Muska in the animated movie &#8220;Laputa: Castle in the Sky. Since he was a police commissioner, the gun may have been a gift from a foreign dignitary, such as the ambassador to Japan.</p>
<p> A pistol was once found among the belongings of a veteran detective. He retired with a gun entrusted to him by a yakuza who had taken care of him when he was in the service. He died without leaving it. In the old days, people were probably more lenient in this area. The suspect was sent to the police station for violation of the Firearms Control Law without being found dead. Since a handgun was found, the case had to be closed.</p>
<p> I was surprised when a gun made in a former Soviet military factory was found. It was neatly stored, rust-free, and had been engraved in Russian by a craftsman. It was a pistol that would have fetched a premium in a country where guns were legal &#8211; but it ended up in the blast furnace. It was an illegal pistol in Japan, regardless of its historical value. I thought about taking it to the police museum. Incidentally, it was also a relic pistol.</p>
<p> The first time I seized a handgun was 30 years ago. When I heard that a senior detective was going to search my house, I asked him to take me there. But they made me wait outside until they said, &#8220;Okay.</p>
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<p><span class="strongInContent"> Stand here and look around.&#8221;</span></p>
<p> I was instructed to do so, but they wouldn&#8217;t let me in because it was more dangerous than watching. I wore gloves and a bulletproof vest, but you never know what might happen in a firearms investigation. As a rookie, you can handle firearms incorrectly, and you can be shot by a suspect out of the blue.</p>
<p> In fact, there was a senior detective who got into a gunfight with a suspect. The suspect fled the scene with a Colt Government. When I pursued him, he shot at me. The gunman was using a towed bullet, a bullet whose trajectory appears to glow, and he saw it snatch by the side of his face.</p>
<p> When he fired back one shot, the perpetrator, who had been firing a lot, suddenly became quiet. I went out from the shadows where he had been hiding and called out to him, &#8220;I&#8217;m coming to you now,&#8221; and went to check on him.</p>
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<p> The supervisor, who confronted the assailant with a baton, was wounded so deeply that his thumb was almost torn off, and he was forced to open fire. He was hit in the wrong place and shot the perpetrator dead, and he lived with the trauma until the day he retired.</p>
<p> Guns can destroy many lives in an instant. A good quality gun can last 100 years, whereas a &#8220;disappearing drug&#8221; can last 100 years. If we don&#8217;t make progress in catching them, the number will continue to grow and the number of tragedies will increase. That is why detectives are willing to take risks to go to the scene.</p>
<figure id="attachment_468735" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-468735" style="width: 1660px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="348bdc38"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/05/97225ec1941b1b5115d6b98871addd5d.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-468735" class="wp-caption-text"> Fumitaka Kohiruimaki <br>&#8217;73, born in Aomori. Joined the Metropolitan Police Department in 1993 and worked on major cases as a specialist in organized crime, international crime, and countermeasures against drugs and firearms until his retirement in &#8217;23. He was also active in the Organized Crime Department as an international investigator who speaks Mandarin Chinese. Currently working as a security strategy analyst.</figcaption></figure>


 Kyodo News (1st and 3rd pictures)

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