Masaru Takagi, leader of Chinese Dragons gang, arrested
Masaru Takagi, leader of Chinese Dragons, taken into custody on a plane
A senior member of an underworld group made up of descendants of Japanese abandoned in China in the chaotic closing days of the second world war has been arrested by Tokyo police after being extradited from Shanghai.
Masaru Takagi, the 33-year-old leader of the Chinese Dragons gang, was arrested in China last February and found guilty of entering the country illegally.
After serving his prison sentence, he was put aboard an aircraft bound for Tokyo's Haneda International Airport on Tuesday and arrested by Japanese police during the flight.
Police are questioning Takagi on suspicion of violating Japan's passport laws.
A spokesman for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police declined to comment on Takagi's arrest on the grounds that the case is continuing, although it is understood that the case focuses on his application for a passport in March 2011. During the application process, Takagi allegedly failed to declare that he was on probation after being convicted of assault, broadcaster NHK reported.
Nine months later, Takagi flew from Tokyo to Hong Kong on another person's passport.
Police are attempting to determine how he obtained the passport and his activities in Hong Kong and mainland China.
The arrest of Takagi is the second significant blow against the Chinese Dragon gang, which has recruited members from the estimated 10,000 children of Japanese colonial families who were left in China in the scramble to escape back to Japan in 1945.
Known as war-displaced Japanese, the children were frequently raised by Chinese families until a programme by the Japanese government in the 1980s sought to identify and repatriate the survivors. Their families were also permitted to settle in Japan, although many found the transition to a new culture - as well as discrimination - difficult to overcome.
Japanese authorities have been staging a broader crackdown on the activities of gangs in the country and the Chinese Dragon group has been a target.
In late December, 36-year-old Nobuaki Takahashi was extradited to Japan from Thailand, where he had allegedly fled after stabbing a Ghanaian man with a knife and assaulting him with a pool cue in a bar fight in the Roppongi district of Tokyo in May.
The Ghanaian man's injuries required two weeks of medical treatment, police reportedly said.
Takahashi, a member of the group and manager of the bar, has declined to respond to police questioning and is now awaiting trial.
