The Konosu Kokusui-kai Office Shooting brought an escalating gang conflict into a seven-floor condominium in Konosu, where a Kokusui-kai office operated behind the sign of a private-investigation agency. The attack stood out from the earlier exchange of gunfire between the groups: it took place inside the office, and the assailant left only after a struggle with a young man outside. Two days later, the gunman surrendered to police.

Setting and First Reports

The shooting occurred amid hostilities between the Kokusui-kai and the Yamaguchi-gumi. On November 16, 1994, the Kokusui-kai had struck first, severely wounding two Yamaguchi-gumi members who had visited its Tokyo office. The Yamaguchi-gumi retaliated the following day, and the conflict spread across Saga and Yamanashi prefectures, into Shinjuku, and finally to Saitama Prefecture. The widening violence gave the press reason to expect another incident, though not necessarily one inside a gang office.

The Kokusui-kai office was on the first floor of a condominium in central Konosu. Its door bore the name of an eastern and European private-investigation agency, one of three local detective businesses that served as fronts for Kokusui-kai offices. The group even advertised these agencies in the telephone directory. At the scene, police cordoned off the first floor as gang members moved in and out, speaking on their phones and largely disregarding the officers. The reporter photographed the activity despite one man’s forceful gesture telling him to stop.

Course of the Attack

According to the account later relayed to the reporter, the gunman entered the office, asked who was in charge, and immediately shot two Kokusui-kai members. He then left the building. Outside, an eighteen-year-old aspiring gang member tried to seize him, and the two struggled; the gunman escaped after injuring the young man. The attack’s directness set it apart from the earlier shootings in the conflict, which had involved gunfire at office doors rather than an assault carried out inside an office.

The building manager came downstairs after hearing the commotion and drove the three wounded men to a hospital. Police were called while crime-scene investigators remained at the site. The sequence made the shooting more than an attack on a gang office: the attempted intervention on the street briefly brought a bystander into the gunman’s path, while the building manager’s response provided immediate aid before the investigation could proceed.

Surrender and Investigation

On the morning of November 18, someone claiming to be the gunman called the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and said he would surrender that afternoon with the weapon. He kept his word: the caller was identified as Takehiko Sugaya, then twenty-seven and a member of the Yamaguchi-gumi. The self-identification and promised handover brought the attack’s immediate manhunt to a swift end, though they did not make its investigation a priority for long.

Sekiguchi was assigned to interrogate Sugaya in Saitama. By then, the gang war had ended, and another case—fraud involving forged pachinko receipts and millions of dollars taken from major pachinko companies—was close to breaking. With the gunman in custody, the shooting was already becoming old news; Sekiguchi’s work, however, was not finished. The contrast captures the press and police beat’s shifting attention: a dramatic clash could quickly recede from view even while investigators continued pursuing what remained unresolved.

The Office as a Front

The shooting also exposed the organization behind the office’s respectable sign. At the time, the Kokusui-kai was Saitama’s third-largest crime group, with eighteen offices and about 230 known members; after the attack, police stationed officers outside each one. Private-investigation agencies were among its less usual fronts. The group used them to take on infidelity cases, then exploit what they uncovered by threatening to expose unfaithful spouses to their clients. The Konosu office therefore stood at the intersection of the gang war’s open violence and a quieter business built on concealment and leverage: the same organization that maintained a network of offices could present one of them as an ordinary detective agency.