Kofu Yamibaito
Over the past year, TV news programs have devoted a lot of coverage to yami baito (闇バイト, a sort-of part-time criminal work.) They’ve emphasized that the culprits are recruited using social media and that their methods are flagrantly smash-and-grab. Almost all the reports include the capture of the robbers and the recovery of the loot. The coverage really peaked at the beginning of this year when the alleged ringleaders were extradited from the Philippines.*
And now there’s been an incident in Kofu. I don’t want make light of a criminal act, and I don’t want to make Kofu out to be some crime-ridden city, and I don’t think I’m in any danger of doing so. I also don’t want to catch payback for insulting tough guys but . . . here it comes . . .
The target
Highlights of the news coverage** -
After leaving Kofu, the young guys were arrested as soon as their train arrived in Tachikawa. (The 4th guy, an older man was caught later in Shizuoka.
As two guys fled on a motorbike, they smacked into a maid cafe sign, one of them dropped his phone, and they didn’t pick it back up.
Another angle of the crash involving another sign. This perspective helps clarify that it is in fact a maid cafe.
As the reporter addresses the camera, there is some beer glass decoration, with a side of … something?… in the news car.
The first time I watched the video, I found the amateurish execution of the stick-up to be outright humorous. Having watched it a few times, though, with all sympathy to the shop staff that was threatened, I now think about more about some things said in the news articles . . .
The posts “are skillfully targeting young people, as well as those with no financial leeway”
The gangs are recruiting “the young, naïve and financially desperate.”
These guys lost so spectacularly because they were dealt a hand with which they just couldn’t win.
* Japantimes article CBS News article (English)
** News broadcast on Youtube (Japanese)