(Tokyo) Three people between the ages of 15 and 21 have been arrested in Japan for carrying out unhygienic pranks in a sushi restaurant, and a video of which went viral online recently shocked the whole country.
The police accuse the trio of having thus sought to prevent the commercial activity of the Kura Sushi restaurant chain, which had been assailed by complaints from customers after the broadcast of the video and had to carry out urgent cleanings.
In these images, we can see a member of the trio, looking laughing, brutally grabbing a sushi on a revolving counter before shoving it in his mouth, then drinking soy sauce from the neck of a common bottle.
Similar videos at other restaurants had surfaced on Twitter and TikTok, with some appearing to have been shot weeks or even years ago.
These incidents, although seemingly isolated, had caused a scandal in Japan, known for its strict standards of hygiene and cleanliness, and had quickly been dubbed on social networks “sushi-terro”, an abbreviation of “sushi terrorism”. .
A 21-year-old man and a 15-year-old girl were arrested in the central Aichi department on Wednesday, a local police spokesman told AFP on Thursday.
A first member of the trio, aged 19, was arrested last month.
These arrests would be the first in the context of the “sushi-terro” affair.
“Forced obstruction of business activity” can result in heavy fines in Japan, even up to three years in prison.
“We sincerely hope that these arrests will make society aware that these pranks, which fundamentally undermine our system based on a relationship of trust with customers, are a crime, and that they will not be imitated in the future. “, reacted the Kura Sushi chain in a press release.
A similar Japanese restaurant chain, Sushiro, had also been the victim of similar filmed pranks, which had briefly caused its group’s share price to drop on the stock market.