#15 Japan's Sickest Killer Could Be Sitting Beside You

The News, This Week in Japanese History, & Much More

Illustration: Cody Lee Berry

How well do you know the men in your life?

Japan’s most twisted murderer decapitated an 11-year old boy and beat a 10 year old girl to death with a hammer — and he might be sitting next to you right now. That’s because he served less than 7 years in prison and is now free, living under a government-issued false identity. He could be your teacher, your neighbor, that guy on the same train as you each morning. God, you may even be sharing your bed with him.

Illustration: Cody Lee Berry

Early morning, May 27th 1997. The custodian at Tomogaoka Junior High School in Kobe finds the head of an 11 year old boy impaled on the school gates.

The killer had designed the gruesome scene to be witnessed by arriving schoolkids — the custodian’s stumbling upon it meant the PTSD stayed all his— but what increased the level of mad horror was the note scrawled in red ink stuffed in the mouth of the dead boy:

Now the game begins

Stupid police

Try to stop me

I find killing extremely amusing

I just can't help but want to see people die

I want filthy vegetables to die

I require a bloody judgment for my long-standing grudge

Signed 酒鬼薔薇

The note also included, in misspelled English, the words SHOOLL KILLER.

This was more than just a crazed murder — it was the beginning of a sadistic game.

The immediate aftermath saw a nationwide panic, plus gigantic police operation to find the killer, who psychological profilers judged a middle-aged man with a long-standing grudge against the education system.

However, when the killer was finally caught — and their other attacks discovered — it turned out the profile had been disastrously wrong.

A WARNING

Things are going to get intense this week, so if you’re no fan of murder and mayhem, just scroll on down to the bottom for our regular features.

Illustration: Cody Lee Berry

The dead boy whose head was mounted on the school gate was quickly identified as a local boy named Jun Hase, 11. He had been missing for two days. The rest of his body was quickly found hidden at a TV antenna station on a nearby hill. There were reports of a suspicious Nissan Bluebird car seen in the area.

The police held a press conference, disclosing the contents of the letter retrieved from the dead boy’s mouth, including the name it was signed with: 酒鬼薔薇. Written in Japanese characters meaning “sake” “demon” and “rose”, it was not clear how the name should be pronounced, and the police (and media) initially reported it as “Onibara”.

Big mistake.

Within days the Kobe Shimbun Newspaper received another letter from the killer, handwritten in the same red ink, complaining their name should be pronounced “Sakakibara”, and threatening reprisals:

From now on, if you misread my name or spoil my mood I will kill three a week. If you think I can only kill children you are gravely mistaken.

The taunting tone of this missive, as well as the ornate threat in the original note, “I require a bloody judgment for my long-standing grudge” (積年の大怨に流血の裁きを) evoked a calculating psychopath enacting their revenge on the world — another Tsutomu Miyazaki, the middle-aged, damaged marginal who murdered four young girls in Tokyo and Saitama Prefecture in 1988-1989.

Seishi Yamashita, who led the investigation as head of the First Investigative Division of the Hyogo Prefectural Police, was the kind of blue collar detective you want in the situation — back to basics and impervious to bullshit. He and the team, which numbered more than 200, waded through a flood of tips while dodging the ever-present press pack.

Then, on June 28th, 1997, four weeks after the murder, Yamashita holds a press conference — and horrifies the entire nation by announcing the killer is a 14 year old boy who attended the junior high school where the head was found.

This bombshell is shortly followed by news that the suspect — referred to as Boy A to protect his identity — has also confessed to a series of random street assaults that killed a 10 year old girl and injured three others in March the same year.

Illustration: Cody Lee Berry

Yes, this twisted individual who killed and kept up a grotesque correspondence with the authorities was barely a teenager. That ornate threat from the murder note —“I require a bloody judgment for my long-standing grudge” — that implied a middle-aged loser’s deep-seated grudge against society? That was a line Boy A cribbed straight from a manga series called “Baramon Family”(瑪羅門の家族)

After that press conference Boy A disappeared into the youth reformatory system while the aftershocks of his crime persisted, including widespread calls for the censoring of manga and television, and the reduction of the age of criminal responsibility.

* * *

Some people persist in the naive belief that they can know the contents of another person’s heart.

You’ll often find these people in the aftermath of shocking murders, dazedly insisting the killer just isn’t capable of committing the crime. Often these people are the parents.

In the case of the Boy A, a coalition including Shōjirō Gotō (a lawyer who dealt with false accusation cases), and the former principal of the junior high school that Boy A attended got together to form an advocacy group insisting he must be innocent.

Their arguments ranged from Sherlock Holmes crap regarding the likelihood that one of the murders was committed by someone left-handed (Boy A being right-handed), to the fact Boy A had bad grades but the handwritten Sakakibara notes were decently literary (notwithstanding the Shooll Killer misspelling). With Boy A having disappeared into the reform system, they kept up a steady lobbying effort on his behalf, publishing pamphlets and maintaining a homepage.

We’ve talked here before about Japan’s tolerant approach to underage murderers, the gist being that they are treated as lost souls to be nurtured, rather than incorrigible criminals.

The upshot of this being that, when he reached the age of majority (20 in Japan), Boy A was released.

In total, for the 2 gruesome murders and his other attacks he spent less than 7 years institutionalized.

He was given a new identity and resettled away from the Kobe area.

And then promptly showed up the group who advocated for his innocence for the fools they were when, in 2015, he followed the path of many other criminals convicted of appalling crimes in Japan and released his autobiography, fessing up to everything. Zekka (絶歌) — the title a self-created term meaning “Extreme Ballad” — was released via Ohta Publishing, the serial provocateurs dealing in shocking/cash-in content, including The Complete Manual of Suicide.

As you might expect, Mamoru Hase, father of the murdered boy, was disgusted: “I don't know if the murderer of our child published this book to further extend our endless suffering. It shows he doesn't really feel bad about doing what he did. I wish this book would be pulled immediately and that no more copies be printed.”

A response would soon be forthcoming from Satoshi Oka, president of Ohta Publishing: “We have never had the opportunity to read the personal account of a juvenile criminal at this level. Although I understand this book will receive a great deal of criticism, I believe that the book details events that speak to issues of juvenile criminal accountability still relevant today,” Oka bullshitted.¹

You can buy Zekka in 1-click on Amazon Japan if you really want too — there’s even a Kindle edition — but it seems to contain detailed descriptions of the murders, and frankly we couldn’t stomach it.

One of the reviews (the book currently holds an average rating of 3.4 stars out of 5) is titled “中二病が覚めない子供のままの大人” - “Someone who never grew out of teenage delusions”.

This 中二病 (“chū-ni byou”) — literally middle school second grade syndrome — is a Japanese term used to describe early teens who are prone to grandiose delusions about their own importance, including imagined superpowers they yearn to use against their classmates; it is sometimes called “eighth-grader syndrome” when appearing in Japanese media translated into English.

There’s good reason to assume that the anonymous Amazon reviewer is correct, and Boy A is still an unreformed narcissist.

* * *

To drum up publicity for Zekka, Boy A did what every other author does these days: he started a blog.

And gave it the grandiose title The Unbearable Transparency of Being (存在の耐えられない透明さ), evoking the Kundera book — and, chillingly, his own confession, where he stated, speaking about himself in the third person: “Because he was bullied during his school days, he came to think of himself as a ‘transparent being’.”

The blog is now inactive, but can be dredged up using various Internet archival services; here’s the profile that greeted visitors back in 2015:

Profile

The Former Boy A

Born Kobe, 1982

Height 165.6cm, Weight 54.3kg

Eyesight: right 0.03, left 0.05

Blood type: A

Aortic heart murmur

INFJ*

Delusions of grandeur

I don’t use Twitter, Facebook or any other social media

* In the Myers–Briggs personality test, INFJ is listed as the “Advocate” type. “Their personal values, and a quiet, principled version of humanism guide them in all things.” Which is yet more proof that Myers-Briggs — distressingly popular in Japan — is a bunch of worthless horsesh*t.

You get an instant sense of what kind of an annoying little prick Boy A is from the way he lists his height to the nearest millimeter and weight to the nearest gram — but the homepage was also a way for him to inflict his art on the world, which mostly consisted of a shirtless masked man (Boy A himself?) photoshopped onto various insects, including scorpions. It seems a direct continuation of the imagined superpowers of middle school second grade syndrome, in other words, a sign of a continued, fundamental immaturity.

* * *

Boy A, alias Sakakibara, born (according to unofficial web sources²) Shinichiro Azuma, will now be around 42 years of age.

Perhaps he has reformed, changed, matured, and poses zero danger to others.

But, Dear Readers, for our peace of mind, please be careful out there…

Read More: Seishi Yamashita’s reminiscences of his time in charge of the Boy A investigation (Japanese)

THE QUIZ

A picture any Japanese person will understand instantly. Do you?

Question: who’s this kid? (Hint: not an anime character)

Answer at the foot of the mail.

THE HEADLINES

Making the news this week in Japan…

1. $1 = ¥157

[😂]

2. NY Times: Too Many Tourists in Japan

[Kyoto being ruined. Yep, we know]

3. Producer of Giant Media Franchise Evangelion Goes Bankrupt

[Has license to print money; still fails]

THE LINKS

Good stuff you should read:

• Yoshiwara: Edo’s Virtual Reality by Hiroko Yoda. The hard truths behind the fantasy of the “floating world” pictured in ukiyoé prints.

• Jack Krown with a piss-take Letter to the Editor page, where confused foreigners ask “Hideo Noguchi” questions on aspects of Japanese culture.

THE ANSWER

Question: who’s this kid?

Answer: he’s suffering from 中二病 (middle school second grade syndrome). A recognized psychological phenomenon in Japan, where some young teenagers are prone to delusions of grandeur and imagine they possess secret powers that would allow them to take revenge on unwitting classmates who underestimate them…

That’s all for now,

The Kyote

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The Kyote is published in Kyoto, Japan every Sunday at 19:00 JST

1. https://japantoday.com/category/crime/controversial-autobiography-of-1997-kobe-child-killer-released

2. https://xn--u9j5h1btf1ez99qnszei5c8ws.com/sakakibara-seito/