On 13 August 2025 the Kanto-Shinetsu Regional Bureau’s Narcotics Control Department announced Japan’s largest single seizure of an illegal drug: about 1,046 kilograms of dried cannabis with an estimated street value of roughly ¥5.2 billion.[1][2]
Investigators said the cannabis was hidden in a shipping container that left Da Nang, Vietnam, between 26 May and 5 June 2025 and reached Tokyo Port in June.[1] Tokyo Customs found roughly five-kilogram packs inside 200 cardboard boxes marked as charcoal among about 1,500 imported boxes; narcotics officers then tracked the load and seized it in northern Kanto.[1][2]
Three Vietnamese nationals were arrested, including a 51-year-old woman living in Chikusei, Ibaraki Prefecture, whom Yomiuri described as a self-employed renovation worker, and two men arrested on 18 June while holding the drugs at a materials yard in Tochigi Prefecture.[1] Tokyo prosecutors later indicted them on profit-motivated import charges under the narcotics control law.[1][2] NHK said officers were investigating possible involvement by an international smuggling network and that the shipment was bound for a company in Osaka.[2]
