Japanese law enforcement officials confirmed Monday that two American citizens have been taken into custody following a reckless public stunt that saw one man breach the enclosure of Japan’s most famous infant primate at Ichikawa City Zoo, located just outside Tokyo. The viral baby macaque Punch has drawn massive crowds of visitors to the facility since his rise to global internet fame earlier this year.
According to local police accounts, the incident unfolded Sunday, when a 24-year-old American man identifying himself as a college student scaled a safety fence and dropped into the dry moat that surrounds the zoo’s monkey exhibit. His accomplice, a 27-year-old American man who says he works as a professional singer, remained outside the enclosure to record the stunt for sharing online.
Social media footage circulating after the incident shows the trespasser dressed in a full costume featuring a large smiley-face headpiece fitted with dark sunglasses. As the man climbed over the barrier, the entire troop of macaques in the exhibit scattered in panic. A senior Ichikawa Police official, who spoke to AFP on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that the pair never made direct contact with any of the animals, including Punch, and were quickly detained by on-duty zoo staff before they could escalate the incident.
Police confirmed that the two Americans are currently facing misdemeanor charges of forcible obstruction of business, a charge both men have formally denied. Investigators also noted that the pair carried no official government identification at the time of their arrest, and initially provided false names to responding officers.
The unauthorized intrusion comes in the wake of an unprecedented surge in visitors to Ichikawa City Zoo, a boom driven entirely by the global viral fame of Punch. The baby macaque captured global attention earlier this year after zookeepers shared photos of the tiny infant clinging to a plush IKEA orangutan toy for comfort, after he was rejected and abandoned by his biological mother shortly after his birth last July.
After being hand-raised by keepers in a controlled human care environment, Punch recently began gradual training to reintegrate into his troop. His story of resilience resonated with animal lovers across social media, where a dedicated global fanbase has formed around the hashtag #HangInTherePunch, drawing tens of thousands of domestic and international tourists to the previously little-known suburban zoo.
The incident is the latest in a growing string of high-profile cases of unruly tourist behavior in Japan, a trend that has sparked growing frustration among local residents as the country sees a record post-pandemic boom in international visitor numbers. Last year, a Ukrainian YouTube creator with more than 6.5 million subscribers was arrested after livestreaming himself trespassing inside an abandoned residential home in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear exclusion zone. In 2023, an American livestreamer known online as Johnny Somali was taken into custody on trespassing charges after he entered an active construction site without permission.