Japanese restaurant group Sukiya temporarily closed almost all of its domestic locations after two contamination incidents prompted a broad review of hygiene controls. The company planned to keep most of its roughly 1,970 Japanese restaurants shut from March 31 through April 4 while staff cleaned sites and strengthened pest-prevention measures.
The decision followed separate complaints at outlets in different parts of the country. In the first case, a customer at a restaurant in Tottori, southwestern Japan, was served miso soup containing a rat. Sukiya said its investigation determined that the animal had reached a refrigerator through a gap in a door. The chain subsequently repaired possible entry points at the affected premises.
A second incident was reported at a Tokyo branch on the Friday before the closures, when an insect was found in a meal. Sukiya linked the nationwide shutdown to the need to address both pests and vermin, apologising to the customers involved and to the wider public. It said the reports were being treated seriously and that the closure would allow a coordinated deep clean.
Some restaurants inside shopping centres were initially exempt because access and closure arrangements depended on their host facilities. Japanese business reporting indicated that those branches would also shut once arrangements could be made. The temporary measure covered nearly all of the chain's domestic network rather than only the two locations where the complaints arose.
Sukiya is known primarily for gyudon, or beef bowls, and is part of Zensho Holdings, a major Japanese food-service group. The chain also has about 660 locations outside Japan, including restaurants in China, Singapore and Mexico. The announced cleaning programme applied to the Japanese estate.
The incidents drew attention in a country where large food-contamination cases are uncommon and sanitation expectations are high. Another prominent episode in 2024 involved a recall of more than 100,000 packages of sliced bread after rat remains were discovered in two bags.
The market reaction also showed the reputational stakes for Sukiya's owner. Zensho shares fell after the rat case became public, although they recovered later in the same week. The temporary shutdown was therefore both an operational response and an effort to reassure customers that checks would extend across the national network.
The four-day timetable gave the company a defined window for immediate remediation, but the supplied reports did not describe any regulator order or identify illness linked to either meal. The response was voluntary company action based on the reported foreign objects and its own site investigation.
