In a karaoke room, in the middle of the Black Dragon arc of Tokyo Revengers (chapter 87 of the manga; episode 28 of the anime), Kisaki and Hanma have paid a Black Dragon member a hundred thousand yen to tell them the routines of his boss, Taiju Shiba. Takemichi and Chifuyu are in the room. Before the informer can finish, the door opens: it is Hajime Kokonoi, “Koko,” who says he smells a rat. Two of his men drag the traitor away as he begs for his life. Then Koko notices the bills still on the table and makes an offer: for that money, he will tell them whatever they want to know. Taiju is never alone, he explains, except for one night a year, Christmas night, when he goes to church. Takemichi asks why he is betraying his own boss, and Koko answers that he likes strong guys. In a single scene he punishes an informer and sells the same information at the same rate.
Koko is the money man of the gangs in Ken Wakui’s saga. In 2005 he is elite guard captain of the tenth generation of the Black Dragons. After the Christmas defeat he joins the First Division of the Tokyo Manji Gang (Toman) with his friend Seishu Inui, “Inupi,” under Takemichi. In the Tenjiku arc he is abducted and ends up as Izana Kurokawa’s treasurer; in 2008 he is a staff officer of Mikey’s Kanto Manji Gang; and in several of the futures Takemichi visits he sits at the top: a leader of the criminal Toman in the present of the Valhalla arc, and a Bonten executive in another. Nobody wants him for his fists. They want him because he knows how to make money. (This case file reveals Koko’s past and how his arc ends in the manga.)
// The theoryThe offender who talks like a worker
In 1937, Edwin Sutherland published The Professional Thief, a book written almost entirely by a real thief he called “Chic Conwell,” with the criminologist’s analysis. What it described was neither a desperate man nor a sick one, but a worker: someone with refined techniques, status among colleagues, a shared code and vocabulary, contacts and an occupational identity. A professional thief, Sutherland concluded, is recognized as one by other professional thieves. In 1973, Peter Letkemann took the idea further in Crime as Work. He interviewed forty-five experienced property offenders, mostly safecrackers and bank robbers, and changed the question: not why they offend, but how they do it. He found learned skills, careful study of targets and a way of talking about crime the way people talk about a job. Darrell Steffensmeier completed the picture in The Fence (1986), about a dealer in stolen goods who lived between two worlds: the professional criminal needs clients, a reputation and open doors in the legitimate economy.
A trade without punches
In a saga where rank is won with fists, Koko’s trade is a different one, and chapter 159 shows it step by step. First he studies: he reads books about making money until he concludes that, for a child, the only fast route is an illegal one. Then he builds a crew: he recruits delinquents to steal and blackmail. In the first month they bring in a hundred thousand yen, and Koko does not spend it: he reinvests it in the crew, which moves on to stealing credit cards while he builds connections with wealthy people who give him jobs. Then comes reputation: one rumor leads to another, and gangs start looking for him. These are the pieces Letkemann found in his interviews (technique, method, clients and standing), with one difference: Koko does not crack safes. He fills them.
// The subjectThe signing everyone wants
Three moments define him. The first is the past (chapters 157 to 159; episode 45). As a boy, Koko is in love with Akane, Inupi’s older sister, five years his senior; one day he tells her he wants to marry her when they are grown, and she promises to wait for him. On his way home he sees the Inui house on fire. He runs into the flames sure he is bringing Akane out, and outside he finds he is carrying Seishu. Akane survives with terrible burns; her treatment costs forty million yen that the family cannot pay, and Koko swears to raise it even if it costs him his life. That is where the trade begins. It is also where it starts to lose its meaning: Akane dies before the money arrives, and the money-making machine keeps running with no one to save.
The second moment is the market. Taiju revives the Black Dragons with Koko and Inupi on the condition that they devote their lives to him (chapter 105). In the Tenjiku arc, Mucho, captain of Toman’s Fifth Division and Izana’s spy, abducts Koko, Takemichi and Inupi and lays out the plan: Izana wants Koko’s talent for money, Kisaki’s brains and Mikey’s charisma to build the most powerful criminal organization. As Mucho talks, Takemichi understands something he had missed: in the futures he has visited, Koko was always there, running the finances. Koko finally agrees to join Tenjiku when he sees that Mucho is about to finish off the other two (chapters 141 and 142; episode 41). The gangs change. The financier stays.
The third is his fight with Inupi during the battle against Tenjiku (chapters 157 and 159; episodes 44 and 45). Inupi asks him to come back; Koko replies that Toman does not make money. When Inupi reminds him that Akane is dead and that he has nothing left to save for, Koko explodes: everyone who came to him, Izana, Taiju, wanted the same thing, his money. And he asks Inupi whether he was using him too, to rebuild the Black Dragons. It is the complaint of a professional who has become his own merchandise.
Hajime Kokonoi
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// The crackA trade that began as a promise
The theory of crime as a trade describes adults who choose a career and manage it. Koko does not quite fit. He enters crime as a child, out of a promise and out of guilt, not out of vocation; and when the motive disappears, the means becomes the end. That substitution, money that no longer pays for anything but cannot stop piling up, is not explained by the theory. It is explained by grief. Nor does he freely choose his employers. Taiju claims his life and Mucho abducts him: Koko’s job market looks more like a hostage auction than a job offer. And explaining Koko is not excusing him. The thefts, the blackmail and the stolen credit cards of his childhood crew had victims who knew nothing about Akane.
Nor is his way out decided by calculation. (Manga spoiler warning.) In 2008, now in the Kanto Manji Gang, Koko thinks that following Mikey is betting on the winning horse (chapter 237). In the final battle, in chapter 251, he watches Wakasa Imaushi and Keizo Arashi, two veteran legends, beat Inupi bloody; he hesitates, sees Akane, and punches Arashi. In chapter 252 he quits Kanto Manji and tells Inupi he will stop seeing Akane in him. Inupi warns him that he has switched to the losing horse; Koko disagrees. And in the final timeline, the one Takemichi manages to fix, Koko runs a legitimate company with Kisaki, the TK&KO Group, which sponsors Mikey’s racing team (chapter 278). The same talent in another world: what makes the trade criminal is not the skill, but where it is practiced and for whom.
Gangs need accountants too
No criminal organization runs on muscle alone. It needs people who move, store and launder money, who know the right clients and who can pass off the illegal as a business. Steffensmeier’s fence and the FATF’s report on professional money laundering (2018) point in the same direction: the financial specialist sells a service to whoever pays, and is often harder to replace than the soldier. Koko adds what those studies do not always see: sometimes that specialist started out as a kid trying to pay a hospital bill, and the gangs came once he already had a name. Cutting that career short early matters more than admiring his talent.
Three key ideas
- Crime as a trade (Sutherland, 1937; Letkemann, 1973; Steffensmeier, 1986) studies crime as a profession with technique, method, clients and reputation, and asks how it is done rather than why it is committed.
- Hajime Kokonoi, “Koko,” is the financier of Tokyo Revengers: he learns to make money as a child to pay for Akane Inui’s treatment, and his reputation takes him through the Black Dragons, Toman, Tenjiku, Kanto Manji and, in one future, Bonten.
- The crack: Koko does not choose the trade as a career; he enters it through a promise, stays in it through grief and does not always choose his employers. He leaves out of loyalty to Inupi, not calculation, and in the final timeline he uses the same talent in a legitimate company.
Sources · further reading
- Sutherland, E. H. (1937). The Professional Thief: By a Professional Thief. University of Chicago Press.
- Letkemann, P. (1973). Crime as Work. Prentice-Hall.
- Steffensmeier, D. J. (1986). The Fence: In the Shadow of Two Worlds. Rowman & Littlefield.
- FATF (2018). Professional Money Laundering. Paris: FATF.
- Wakui, K. (2017-2022). Tokyo Revengers. Kodansha. Chapters 87, 105, 141-142, 157-159, 237, 251-252 and 278.
- Liden Films (2021-2023). Tokyo Revengers (anime). Episodes 28, 41, 44 and 45.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is Hajime Kokonoi?
Hajime Kokonoi (“Koko”) is a villain from Tokyo Revengers, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. Nobody wants him for his fists.
Why does Hajime Kokonoi become a villain?
Hajime Kokonoi, “Koko,” of Tokyo Revengers, and crime as a trade: the financier of the Black Dragons, Tenjiku and Bonten learned to make money as a child, to pay for Akane’s hospital care, and never learned to stop.
Which criminological theory explains Hajime Kokonoi?
Hajime Kokonoi's case is analysed through Crime as a trade. Crime as a trade (Edwin Sutherland, The Professional Thief, 1937; Peter Letkemann, Crime as Work, 1973) studies people who live off crime as a profession: with technique, method, clients and a reputation among colleagues. Hajime Kokonoi, “Koko,” is the money man of Tokyo Revengers: elite guard captain of the Black Dragons, a member of Toman, Tenjiku’s treasurer, a Kanto Manji staff officer and a Bonten executive in one of the futures. He started committing crimes as a child to raise the forty million yen that Akane Inui’s treatment cost after she was burned in a fire, and when she died the trade kept running on its own.
