Rise of 'Sushi Terrorism' Makes A Dent In Japan's $148 Billion Restaurant Business

Japan's restaurant industry is facing a major crisis over a prank trend called "sushi terrorism," which has gone overboard.

The trend involves pranksters intercepting food meant for other customers at restaurants featuring conveyor belts, as caught on videos that have recently flooded the internet.

Restaurant patrons are aghast over these clips, with some even vowing to stop going to these establishments altogether.

Meanwhile, shares of a leading restaurant chain that uses sushi trains to serve customers have fumbled as a result of the trend.

One video posted on Twitter last week, in particular, showed a young person licking the rim of a teacup before placing it back on the shelf. He also licked the mouth of a soy sauce bottle on his table and appeared to contaminate food on the conveyor belt with his saliva using his fingers, according to Time.

The clip was filmed at the Sushiro restaurant in Masakinaka, Gifu, which reportedly resulted in a 5% slump in the restaurant's stocks.

In another video filmed at another outlet, a man was seen putting wasabi on a sushi order meant for another customer before placing it back on the conveyor belt. A clip of a similar incident at another restaurant made it to Twitter, while another prankster was caught in a video eating a piece of sushi from an order meant for someone else. The clips can be viewed here.

While the people in these videos, also known as "sushi terrorists," appear to be having fun, the act carries legal implications, a lawyer told Japan Times.

"Acts such as putting wasabi on other customers' sushi and putting one's mouth on a soy sauce bottle may amount to fraudulent obstruction of business," the lawyer explained.

Restaurant chains have sprung into action as well to clamp down on the pranksters. Sushiro's operating company said they will "strictly deal with the incident as both criminal and civil cases while consulting the police soon," according to the outlet.

Meanwhile, the operator of the Hamasushi chain, where a customer's food was tampered with, filed a damage report to the police, along with the video.

"I hope (the perpetrator) will become aware that he did something that should not be done," an official at the operating company's parent organization Zensho Holdings said, as per the outlet.

Japan's food service market was valued at $142.84 billion in 2021 and will expectedly experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 12% by 2026.