A senior yakuza member was found not guilty on Friday over a fatal shooting of the president of Gyoza no Ohsho restaurant chain operator in a high-profile case that took nearly a decade for the suspect to be arrested. The Kyoto District Court found Yukio Tanaka, 59, not guilty of killing Takayuki Ohigashi, the then-72-year-old president of dumpling chain operator Ohsho Food Service, in the early morning of Dec. 19, 2013, at a parking lot in front of Ohsho’s headquarters in the city of Kyoto. As the murder went unresolved in the following months and years, there was rampant public speculation about the culprit.
The case was considered one of Japan’s most captivating unsolved crimes alongside the 1984-85 Glico Morinaga corporate blackmail case and the slaying of a family in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward in 2000. Nine years after Ohigashi was killed, Tanaka, who had been in prison over a separate case, was arrested in October 2022 in connection with the crime and was on trial for murder and violation of a weapons law. Tanaka is a senior member of the Kudokai gangster organization based in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka.
The trial began in late 2025, and Tanaka pleaded not guilty to the charges.
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