Crime · Japan
Tokuryū
In plain English
The National Police Agency's category for groups that assemble through social media for a specific offence and disperse afterwards. Two features define them: the organisers stay anonymous, and the people who carry out the offence are interchangeable and rotate. They are not a gang with a membership; they are a recruitment pattern. The category subsumes the earlier 準暴力団 and has displaced 半グレ in Japanese policy language.
Register
Agency category. An agency analytical category. Not itself a statute — no offence is defined by it.
The instrument
National Police Agency analytical category
In NPA publications from 2023; feature chapter of the 2024 (令和6年版) Police White Paper
An agency category, not a statutory one — no offence is defined by it. The NPA established a dedicated 匿名・流動型犯罪グループ情報分析室 on 1 October 2025.
Literally
Anonymous, fluid-type crime group.
What English gets wrong
The concept is largely missing from English-language writing, and where it does appear it is rendered as "semi-gangs", which confuses it with 半グレ — the older, looser category it absorbed. The deeper error is treating Japanese organised crime as bōryokudan-shaped, which misses where the activity has actually moved.
What to write instead
anonymous and fluid criminal groups — the NPA's own English. Give 匿名・流動型犯罪グループ and, if useful, the Japanese contraction トクリュウ (tokuryū) as a transliteration you gloss.
The issuing body's own English. The NPA renders it "anonymous and fluid criminal groups" in its own English-language White Paper digest. That is the phrase to use. "Tokuryū" is a transliteration of the Japanese contraction トクリュウ and does not appear in the NPA's English at all — do not attribute it to them.
Related
- Bōryokudan — 暴力団
- Hangure — 半グレ
Sources
- National Police Agency, Police White Paper (2024 edition) — feature chapter
- National Police Agency organised crime situation reports