Japanese police are having difficulty cracking down on the smuggling of illegal stimulants amid an increase in their use among celebrities as well as ordinary citizens, including students and teachers.
     Japanese investigative authorities and illegal drug experts believe almost all illegal stimulants in the country have been smuggled in from overseas by domestic and foreign crime syndicates, who are often in collaboration in the crime.
     The authorities view it as important to interdict smuggling at the border, but crackdowns do not necessarily lead to the arrests of leaders of crime syndicates, or the masterminds of such smuggling.
     The confiscation of 120 kilograms of stimulants in a Kochi Prefecture fishing port in February resulted in the arrests of nine Chinese men and a Japanese gangster, but the authorities say it will be extremely difficult to arrest two suspects in Hong Kong believed to have masterminded the smuggling, as in many other cases.
     A Chinese man, who is among the nine Chinese who have been indicted for conspiracy in the smuggling of the stimulants in the fishing port in Muroto, testified in court that he and other Chinese acted under the direction of ''a person believed to be a mafia member'' in Hong Kong.
     ''I was promised to be paid HK$1 million (about 11.4 million yen),'' he said, adding he also received 1.1 million yen for expenses to stay and travel in Japan.
     According to the testimony, he and two other Chinese men entered Japan on a package tour from Hong Kong about a month before their arrest. They headed to Kochi from Osaka by rental car after the conclusion of their sightseeing tour.
     The joint task force of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, Osaka and Kochi prefectural police confiscated the stimulants worth 4 million doses and with a street value of 12 billion yen in a crackdown and arrested the three Chinese, whose role was to receive the drugs, and six other Chinese men who carried the narcotics from waters off China's Guangdong Province to Kochi by a fishing boat.
     About eight months later, the Kochi District Public Prosecutors Office indicted a senior member of a gang group affiliated with major Japanese crime syndicate Inagawa-kai for assisting in the smuggling.
     The prosecutors had also identified two ''Hong Kong mafia'' members who allegedly gave the instruction to the arrested Chinese men, and put them on an international wanted list.
     Sakae Komori, a Tokyo lawyer known for his expertise on drug issues, said the drugs found in Kochi were probably not made in China but in such countries as North Korea, South Africa and Thailand, but noted figuring out the entire smuggling route seems almost impossible.
     ''China is probably a stopover point where the drugs produced elsewhere are reloaded before coming to Japan in many cases,'' Komori said.
     According to the Japan Coast Guard, the number of crackdowns on major drug smugglings involving ships had declined since 2002 but it has been on the rise again from 2008, when more than 300 kg of illegal drugs were confiscated.
     ''The amount of the seized drugs hardly represents the reality of the drug problem (in Japan),'' a senior investigator pointed out.
     Komori said the street value of the drugs remains high, which suggests their stock is running low in the country.
==Kyodo