Japan’s Most Infamous Case | The Sakakibara Seito Incident

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now if you were to ask a Westerner what's Japan's most heinous incident they'd likely bring up the slaying of junko furuta or one of the other major cases that have received Global attention but if you were to ask a native more often than not the first case that Springs to their mind is our region locked one a case that rarely gets discussed or reported on in English and it just so happens to come from my former home city of Kobe incident [Music] on the morning of May 27 1997 the janitor of tomogawka Junior High in the seaside District of Suma began making his way to the school's entrance gate that Tuesday began like any other for this weary custodian who always arrived before the students and teachers just as the sum was beginning to rise even at such a calm and quiet hour there was still a tangible sense of unease in the air there had been for a while the city of Kobe was still reeling from a Spate of attacks that had occurred earlier in the year where a number of local youngsters have been targeted by a still unquote Madman in February two schoolgirls had been bludgeoned in the back of their heads with a hammer as they walked home from class the perpetrator managed to escape before anyone got a good look at him fortunately despite suffering severe cranial injuries both goals went on to make full recoveries this would however turn out to be more than just a one-off incident the same perpetrator struck again on March 16th this time attacking 10 year old ayaka Yamashita and nine-year-old Kazumi Ishikawa the former was repeatedly clubbed in the head with a hammer and the latter whom he assailed just 10 minutes later was stabbed in the abdomen with a sharp blade ayaka suffered a cranial contusion and passed away a little over a week after the attack Kazumi on the other hand survived her horrendous ordeal her attacker's blade stopped just short of rupturing her spinal artery and unlike all of the others Kazumi had managed to get a good look at the man's face detectives immediately knew that the same individual was behind all four attacks near the site of each incident he had left them his calling card the mutilated Caucasus of animals in one location I found a headless pigeon in another a polar scant with May drawing to a close it had now been two months since the Killer's lost attack and although he remained at large the local parents School teachers and students were daring to breathe a sigh of relief believing that this deranged lunatic had gotten bored or moved on or realized the error of his ways and yet that sigh of relief had just been replaced with a gasp of concern on May 24th a local 11 year old boy named Jun hase had gone missing everyone suspected that the same elusive man was the one responsible for his disappearance as the janitor approached the school on the morning of the 27th he noticed some small dark objects nestled on the ground just outside the main entrance as he drew near he realized what they were the mutilated remains of two cats confused and Disturbed the janitor continued forwards noticing one more object at the foot of the main gate upon closer inspection he realized that this wasn't just another cat it was the severed head of jun hasi the boy who had gone missing just three days earlier his eye sockets were empty and small x marks had been carved into his flesh stuffed inside his mouth which had been sliced open from ear to ear was a crumpled up paper note on it John's Keller had left detectives a taunting message written in red ink this is the beginning of the game police guys stop me if you can I desperately want to see people die it's a thrill for me to commit murder a bloody judgment is needed for my years of great bitterness beneath this the killer had also written a message he misspelled English then it was signed sake kabara Sato an alias maid using the kanji vasake devil Rose Saint and fight headless body was found later that day just 500 meters west of the school on the mound known as tank Mountain he had been hidden under the floorboards of an old decrepit antenna station and it was quickly determined that the boy's head had been removed with a handsaw and had subsequently been mutilated with the same instrument despite an appeal for information no new Witnesses came forward even so newspapers and TV stations announced that the killer was most likely a male in his 30s or 40s with a very strong build a week and a half after jun's head was discovered a brown envelope with no return address arrived at the head office of Kobe shimbum one of the city's biggest newspapers inside was a three-page letter written by a person claiming to be Jun hassay's killer in a 1400 word outpouring of insanity the killer wrote I'm putting my life at stake for the sake of this game if I'm caught I'll probably be hanged police should be angrier and more tenacious in pursuing me it's only when I kill that I'm liberated from the constant hatred I suffer and that I'm able to attain peace it's only when I give pain to people that I can ease my own the writer stated that he would be targeting schools due to his hatred of the Japanese educational system a system which he said had turned him into an invisible person isolated and alone the letter was again signed sakikabara Sato however in their initial Panic to cover the topic the Japanese media misreported his name as anibara Devil's Rose this mistake infuriated sakikabara compelling him to send another letter to a news broadcaster from now on if you misread my name or spoil my mood I'll destroy three vegetables a week if you think I can only kill children you are greatly mistaken the term vegetables referred to members of the General Public in essence he was saying that he would take three random lives per week should anyone get his name wrong again eventually a young man in the city came onto the investigator's radar someone with a history of tormenting animals with the help of the eyewitness and victim Kazumi they had enough evidence to charge him and so finally on June 28th one month after jun's head was found outside tomogalka Junior High this nightmare came to an end it was announced that a 14 year old suspect had been taken into custody in connection with jun's murder the public were astounded that somebody so young was the person responsible due to strict privacy laws in Japan the suspect's name would remain unannounced for decades with the media referring to him simply as Boy A however in more recent years his true name has come to light shinichiro Azuma one of jun hace's neighbors and a student of tomogalka Junior High the school where the head was found Asuma told the authorities how he had lured Jun up into tank Mountain on Saturday May 24th by promising to show him a giant turtle that lived by the water tank together they walked up a trail called the chocolate staircase all the way to the secluded Peak once there azama strangled Jun with a shoelace and then hid his body under the floorboards of a nearby Shack he returned the following day with a hand saw and a black trash bag there he removed jun's head and even drank some of the boys quote pure blood he did this in order to cleanse his own which he considered to be dirty he also removed Jin's eyes in order to extract his soul he took Jin's head back with him to his own home and then placed it by the main gate of his school in the early hours of May 27th when ostway he did all this Azuma simply said that he had a strong desire to kill that day and when he came across Jim who was on his way to his grandparents house he recalled that the boy liked Turtles and viewed him as an easy target Asuma claimed to feel satisfied that the boy now belonged to him his reasons for leaving the head outside the Junior High were twofold firstly it was a diversion in azama's mind detectives would never think that the killer would leave his handiwork outside his own School secondly he saw it as Revenge revenge against the school itself an institution which he felt had destroyed his spirit and turned him into a shell of his former self while being questioned by investigators Azuma not only admitted to taking jinhasi's life but also said he was the one who had attacked the four schoolgirls earlier that year including ayaka Yamashita who had perished from her injuries referring to ayaka azama had written in his diary I carried out sacred experiments today to confirm how fragile human beings are I brought the hammer down when the girl turned her face to me I think I hit her a few more times but I was too excited to remember when ayaka passed from her wounds on March 23rd Asuma again wrote in his diary this morning my mum told me that poor goal that was attacked seems to have died there's no sign that I'll be called I thank you Shin for this police continue to protect me it's unclear who bama dokishin is though I have seen one source claim that it's a deity often depicted as the floating head of Buddha why asima thought this being was protecting him is anyone's guess whatever the case the handwriting in his diary matched perfectly with the notes sent to the media in the end shinichiro Asama was found guilty of ayaka and jun's murders and sent to a juvenile correctional facility his defense attorneys tried to make the case that azama had been pinned for a crime he hadn't committed now Japan is notorious for having a 99. 8 conviction rate and is often accused of imprisoning blatantly innocent people by forcing false confessions his lawyers pointed to the fact that the perpetrator was according to investigators clearly left-handed azima was right-handed whoever append the notes to the media had also made use of many complex figures of speech and intricate kanji and was clearly a well-read and intelligent individual with the utmost respect they said Azuma who was a c student at best wasn't smart enough to have written them not to mention inasimus handwritten confession he claimed to have done things that quote would have been impossible for a 14 year old to accomplish these statements made by azima's lawyers prompted his own mother to visit him in prison and ask him face to face whether he really was the one responsible for committing the crimes he had been found guilty of with complete calmness and sincerity he assured her he had on March 11 2004 less than seven years after being incarcerated a then 21 year old Azuma was released from prison with experts claiming he had been cured of his sadism following his release azama published zeka the Memoir of his 1997 killings he even revealed how before leaving jun's head at the school Gates he had taken it into a bathroom and done unspeakable things with it despite public outrage that he was trying to profit from his terrible actions and torment the families of his victims that didn't stop the book from becoming a number one bestseller in Japan and making asima a wealthy man as if to add insult to injury azama sent his victims families a personal note of apology attached to a copy of his book had tried to block the Memoir from being released in a sense called for new laws Banning killers from publishing books related to their crimes in 2015 shinichiro Asma set up his own vanity website one titled the unbearable transparency of being the former boy Ace official homepage the site's Gallery section was filled with bizarre photoshopped images of azima himself some of which I can't show here psychologists have since expressed their views that azama is self-absorbed and desperate for public attention and as the website proves he'll take it however he can get it the site has since been taken down despite occurring almost 26 years ago the infamous Kobe School slayings are still talked about frequently in the Land of the Rising Sun and it's considered to be one of the most notorious cases in modern Japanese history it had a major impact on the nation itself too and not just psychologically but legally and led the government to lower the minimum age of offenders punishable under criminal law from 16 to 14.