https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/16709378 (https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/16709378)
3 arrested over payments for organ transplant in Cambodia
Tokyo police said July 7 they have arrested three members of a medical association on suspicion of receiving payments for arranging an organ transplant surgery in Cambodia for a Japanese patient.
One of the suspects, Hiromichi Kikuchi, 66, had previously been arrested over organ transplant operations in Belarus.
The latest arrests came in Japan's first criminal crackdown in connection with receipt of payments for arranging an organ transplant surgery.
According to the Metropolitan Police Department, the suspects are members of Kokusai Iryo Soudan s***su (International medical consultation office), a general incorporated association based in Tokyo.
They are believed to have taken advantage of the donated organ shortage in Japan to seek profits from desperate patients.
Kikuchi effectively ran the organization with his son, Mitsuru Kikuchi, 42, while Takaki Ando, 66, was the association's representative director, police said.
According to the MPD's living environment division, the three men conspired between November 2025 and January 2026 to solicit Japanese people seeking living-donor transplants overseas.
They referred one male patient from Tokyo to a cooperating hospital in Osaka, where blood tests and other examinations were performed.
A referral letter written by the hospital director was then sent via a Chinese coordinator to a team of Chinese doctors working at a hospital in Cambodia.
The patient traveled to Cambodia in January and, acting on instructions from Kikuchi and others, reportedly handed over about 25 million yen ($154,000) in U.S. dollars to the Chinese coordinator for "local medical expenses."
Police suspect the Chinese medical team performed the living-donor kidney transplant surgery at the hospital in the center of Phnom Penh. The donor was believed to have been a Cambodian woman.
The suspects also instructed the patient to pay about 12.3 million yen into the bank accounts of Kokusai Iryo Soudan s***su and others under the guise of physician honoraria and administrative fees, the MPD said.
The patient was quoted by investigators as saying: "My relatives refused to donate an organ, and no donor could be found (in Japan). I knew it was illegal."
The hospital director in Phnom Penh declined to respond to Asahi Shimbun inquiries, saying only, "I do not want to talk about it."
PREVIOUS OFFENSE
Hiromichi Kikuchi had previously served as a director of nonprofit organization Nanbyo Kanja Shien no Kai (Association for supporting patients with difficult diseases), whose official certification as an NPO was revoked in January.
In February 2023, he was arrested on suspicion of violating the Organ Transplant Law by arranging organ transplants in Belarus without the required government authorization.
He was later convicted and sentenced to eight months in prison. Although he maintained his innocence, the conviction was finalized.
Police said that after Kikuchi was released on bail, he arranged the kidney transplant in Cambodia before his prison sentence started in late January this year.
The MPD suspects that Kokusai Iryo Soudan s***su, established in March 2024, has arranged transplants in Cambodia for several other patients.
Police are continuing their investigation, including interviews with transplant recipients.
DONOR SHORTAGE IN JAPAN
As of the end of 2025, more than 17,000 patients in Japan were waiting for organ transplants, including 15,043 for kidneys, 798 for hearts and 599 for livers.
In contrast, only 158 brain-dead or cardiac-death patients donated organs in 2025. Many patients needing organs have remained on waiting lists for years.
However, to prevent organ trafficking, the international principle is that organ donations and transplantations should be conducted domestically.
Organ transplants overseas can also involve substantial medical risks.
After transplantation, patients must be carefully monitored for signs of organ rejection.
And even after being discharged from the hospital, they must take immunosuppressive drugs, which increase the risk of infections and malignant tumors.
It is believed that some patients who travel abroad for transplants may have not received adequate explanations of these risks beforehand.
"Because the number of organ donors in Japan remains low compared with other countries, overseas transplants are likely to continue," said Takashi Kenmochi, vice president of the Japan Society for Transplantation and a visiting professor at Fujita Health University Hospital.
(This article was compiled from reports by Natsuno Otawara and Tomoyo Fukumiya in Tokyo and Eishiro Takeishi in Phnom Penh.)