this video is kindly sponsored by keeps find out more later in the video hey 42 here when you think of a classic prison escape you might picture a desperate inmate feverishly filing away at the bars of his cell window a spotlight sweeping across a prison yard as a few daring criminals clamber over a prison wall or maybe even an improbably long tunnel hidden behind a poster of a 1940s film icon one thing that's a little less likely to spring to mind is a steaming hot bowl of traditional miso soup but miso soup is exactly what
japanese anti-hero yoshi shiratori used to escape the formidable abhishari prison intrigued you should be because this soup based breakout was just one of [Music] four yes four successful prison escapes between 1936 and 1947 each of which was more ingenious than the last i want to take a moment to talk about hair loss because i've had people close to me start to lose their hair as early as their 20s and it's always been a really upsetting experience if you're in the same boat then you're not alone did you know two out of three guys will experience
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click the link in the description below to receive 50 off your first order don't miss out yoshi shiratori was born in the tohaku region of japan in 1907 towards the end of the meiji era a period in japanese history that brought with it a series of major political economic and social changes japan was a country torn between the draw of modernity and the stability of tradition but one thing still firmly rooted in the past was the legal system jail sentences were long and prisons were unforgiving violent places to be avoided at all costs at first
shiratori did a pretty good job of doing just that he lived a simple life working in a tofu shop then later as a crab fisherman but like many yoshi shiratori dreamt of the finer things in life the problem was without a proper education he found himself with very little opportunity to better himself eventually he felt the pull of gambling and petty crime and his life became one giant downward spiral that would finally lead to him being accused of murder shivatori always maintained his innocence insisting he'd been framed by a gang of local criminals and that's
a confession he'd made was coerced by corrupt police officers but despite his protests he was found guilty and sent to a mori prison to await sentencing he now faced a very real possibility that he might be put to death for a murder he claims to not have committed but yoshi shiratori was not the kind of person to sit around twiddling his thumbs whilst awaiting the grim reaper's arrival and from the second he walked through the amore prison gates shivatori was on the lookout for an opportunity to escape as it happened he didn't have to wait
all that long shimatori's daily routine mostly consisted of counting the cracks on his ceiling whilst avoiding the regular beatings dished out by the prison guards to put it bluntly life was grim but one of the few things the prisoners had to look forward to was a visit to the bathhouse which might conjure up images of a lovely roman spa with marble fountains and luxurious steam rooms but that couldn't be further from the truth in fact for the inmates of amory prison bath time quite literally meant being given a bucket of water but it was in
one of these buckets that shiratori found something that changed his fortunes and set him on the road to infamy that something was a short metal wire not much to look at but in the hands of yoshi shiratori who just so happened to be a master lock picker it was a skeleton key capable of opening any door after smuggling the wire back to his cell he bided his time waiting for the perfect moment to slip away unnoticed and since he'd been studying the guard's patrol patterns for months at this point he knew exactly when that perfect
moment would come the plan worked like a charm and before he knew it yoshi shiratori was free unfortunately that freedom was short-lived after just three days on the run shiratori was caught trying to steal supplies from a local hospital people don't tend to look too kindly on escaped convicts who steal from the sick and infirm so once again he was arrested and this time he was packed off to akita prison on the plus side he arrived at his new home to the news that he'd managed to evade the death penalty which meant he had plenty
of time to enjoy the misery of life behind bars unsurprisingly japan's answer to harry houdini wasn't planning on tolerating incarceration for very long this time shiratori had no way of picking the locks but that didn't matter something else had caught his eye a skylight was set into the ceiling of his cell that might sound like a bit of an oversight from a prison planning perspective except reaching this particular skylight was near enough impossible not only were the ceilings extremely high and the skylight securely barred but the cell walls were smooth offering very little in the
way of grip but unlike us mere mortals shiratori possessed a kind of climbing ability that spiderman himself would be proud of as soon as the coast was clear he shimmied up to the skylight to take a closer look to his delight he discovered the screws that held it in place were rusted and the fittings were loose still it took him several weeks of scaling the walls night after night to work the skylight free from the ceiling eventually he was able to remove the frame and after serving just three months of his life sentence shiratori was
free again and this time he had a plan he hoped would prevent him from ever having to return to jail you see during his time at akita shiratori had struck up an unlikely friendship with a prison guard named kabayashi kobayashi had always refused to partake in any violence aimed towards shiratori and over time shiratori had come to consider the god an ally perhaps even a friend as a result he believed kabayashi held the key to his freedom if a well-respected man of law could back up his pleas of innocence he would stand a much better
chance of having a conviction overturned and with that in mind the recently escaped shiratori decided to pay his one-time guard a visit but things didn't quite go the way shiratori had imagined although were somewhat startled kabayashi welcomed his former prisoner into his home and listened very keenly to the plan the second shiratori excused himself to use the bathroom kabayashi grassed him up the fugitive barely had time to finish doing his business before he was once again at the mercy of the japanese legal system unsurprisingly the authorities were starting to get a little bit annoyed with
shiratori at this point the insufferable convict simply wouldn't stay wherever they put him so this time they decided there was only one thing for it shiratori was sent to japan's answer to alcatraz the infamous abhishiri prison the fishing village of abbashiri had remained relatively unchanged for hundreds of years until the arrival of a meiji government official towards the end of the 19th century the official was awestruck by the vast unforgiving wilderness and the large icy lakes that surrounded the area and he quickly realized that this desolate village would make the perfect location for an inescapable
prison well almost inescapable the prison was built by convicts who were quite literally forced to construct the very cells where they'd then live out the rest of their miserable lives as the prison took shape many of the prisoners died from exhaustion and malnutrition and some were even attacked by the bears and wolves that lived in the surrounding wilderness anyone who was caught trying to escape this living hell was beheaded on the spot abhishiri was a prison forged from pain and suffering a theme that will continue long after its completion in 1890 and give rise to
its reputation as perhaps the most feared institution in the whole of japan in order to hold on to this proud reputation extra precautions were made for shiratori's arrival his hands and legs were bound by iron manacles that had been constructed without a keyhole and could only be removed by a blacksmith and this time there was no skylight in his cell meaning his only glimpse of the outside world beyond his four walls came when his meals were pushed through the food hatch in his cell door now imagine for a moment that you're an inmate at abbashiri
prison you've probably had a long day being used as a punchback your cell is damp and cold and it's more than likely you haven't eaten for a very long time just then the food hatch opens and a lovely steaming bowl of soup appears before your eyes what would you do next i imagine nearly all of you would have slurped down that bowl of soup before i'd even finished this sentence but not sure tori you see he knew that as well as containing stock miso paste and the occasional vegetable or two miso soup is extremely salty
and if there's one thing that salty liquids are good at it's slowly reducing anything made of iron to a pile of rust over the course of six months shivatori began sharing his daily portion of soup with both his manacles and with the frame surrounding the food hatch as expected slowly but surely the iron began to rust until eventually shiratori was able to free himself of his restraints and took the feeding hatch out of its frame in the door but there was a problem even with the frame removed the feeding hatch was far too small to
serve as an escape route or at least that's what the abbasiri guards assumed as it turned out shiratori had yet another trick up his sleeve quite literally you see aside from a scheming mind and an almost inhuman ability to resist the steamy charms of miso soup shiratori was able to dislocate his shoulders at will and so he waited until the coast was clear removed his manacles slipped the frame off the feeding hatch popped his shoulders out of their sockets and like a master contortionist he squeezed himself with a tiny hole in the door and made
a bid for freedom in doing so he became the first and only person ever to escape from abbashiri prison which is pretty remarkable considering it's been in operation for over 130 years but this time the escape came with dire consequences for those of you who aren't intimately familiar with the japanese penal system abhishiri is located in northern hokkaido one of the coldest parts of japan and without anywhere to go shivatori headed for the only place he knew he could be free of the japanese legal system the wild mountains to the north he soon found a
cave and began foraging and hunting for food but living in a cave in the mountains was only ever going to be a temporary solution and after two years alone in the wilderness it was time for yoshi shiratori to re-enter society unfortunately things didn't go quite to plan away from his trusty foraging spots shivatori soon became very hungry so when he came across a field of tomato plants he went to work stuffing his face and when the owner of the field turned up he found what appeared to be some kind of feral tomato juice covered human
laying into the crop as though on a personal mission to destroy every tomato in japan an altercation ensued and the farmer came off worse much worse actually he was dead shiratori was arrested once again and this time he was given a sentence he had no chance of escaping the death sentence he was sent to sapporo prison to await his execution sapporo wasn't quite as intimidating as his previous home but it did come with its own set of problems shivatori was given a specially designed cell said to be 100 escape proof which you'd think would be
standard practice for a prison cell but hey i'm no architect shiratori was assigned six guards whose sole purpose was to make sure that the crafty bugger under their care stuck around just long enough to be thoroughly executed things looked bleaker than ever for shiratori and over time his confinement and impending execution caused him to sink into a deep depression he began spending most of his time in bed the guards noted that on the rare occasions he did get up he would pace around his cell staring at the ceiling as though desperately trying to formulate another
one of his trademark escapes but the powers that be in the japanese prison system had learnt from their mistakes there was no skylight to climb out of no locks to pick and no food slots to squeeze through it appeared that shiratori had finally met his match well at least that's what the guards thought right up until the moment they discovered that his cell was empty [Music] you see every action shiratori had taken since arriving at the prison staring at the ceiling pacing around his cell lying in bed as though he'd given up all hope all
of it had been carefully designed to distract the gods from his real plan every night when the prison was in darkness shiratori had been secretly digging a good old-fashioned tunnel beneath his bed like a rebellious teenager sneaking out to go on a date he'd removed some floorboards and placed him underneath his duvet to make it appear as though he was still in bed when in reality he was borrowing his way to freedom below using a trusty miso soup bowl as an improvised shovel after escaping shiratori once again managed to evade capture living as a fugitive
for a year but this life was beginning to take its toll now in his 40s shiratori was no longer a young man he was tired of running tired of constantly having to look over his shoulder tired of pretending to be someone he wasn't something needed to change while shiratori planned his next move he found himself sitting on a park bench beside a police officer most escapees would have run a mile at this point but chiritory was made of sterner stuff after all he'd been doing this stuff for years he stayed calm and even struck up
a conversation with the policeman the officer was oblivious to the fact he was chasing away with one of japan's most wanted criminals so much so that he even offered shiratori a cigarette now this might not seem like a big deal but in post-war japan cigarettes were like gold's dust shiratori was blown away by the gesture it was the first time in years he'd been shown any real compassion by anyone least of all a representative of the law he was so moved that he promptly confessed all to the police officer he told him the details of
his wrongful conviction and how he'd been subjected to years of violence at the hands of his prison guards he explained the details of his many escapes and his long battle to clear his name of the murders attributed to it the officer listened intently to shiratori's incredible story a look of awe and compassion on his face when the fugitive was finished the police officer stood up with a smile on his face and then arrested chirotory on the spot i mean hey it was his job but fortunately for shiratori japan had changed considerably since his first conviction
and he now found himself at the mercy of a much fairer legal system his death sentence was revoked on the grounds that his murder of the tomato farmer had been in self-defense not only had shiratori escaped from four prisons but he'd now escaped from the executioner as well of course he was still very much a criminal and so he was soon back behind bars for a fifth stint this time in tokyo's future prison he would go on to serve 14 years of his 20-year sentence before being released on good behavior so far as anyone knows
shiratori never attempted to make one of his trademark escapes on release he returned home to his only surviving family member his daughter and lived out the rest of his days on the right side of the tracks before dying of a heart attack in 1979 at the age of 71. it's hard to say if the details of shivatori's remarkable life story have been embellished over the years the man came to be something of a legend in his native country and legends have a habit of growing with time his story has been immortalized in novels movies and
comic books and today there's even a memorial for him inside the notorious abishiri prison it's rather poetic that a place that one sought to break yashi sharatori's spirit now celebrates him as the ultimate japanese anti-hero [Music] thanks for watching do you really enjoy my content but you literally can't be asked to use your eyes then you're in luck because you can now listen to the new random interesting facts podcast with me 42 available on youtube spotify apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast you'll find a link to it in the description below check it
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