TOKYO (TR) – Perhaps probably the most infamous juvenile crime in historical past, the homicide and torture of highschool faculty lady Junko Furuta by a gaggle of youths occurred primarily at a residence in Adachi Ward between 1988 and 1989.
What do the residents within the neighborhood who proceed to stay there assume even now, greater than three many years after the incident?
To reply that, the location for weekly tabloid Shukan Bunshun supplies an excerpt from non-fiction author Takaaki Yagisawa’s new e book “The Murder House,” printed by Tetsujinsha in 2024.
Junko Furuta killing
The residence was that of Shinji Minato, one of many 4 youths convicted within the Furuta case. It is positioned in a residential space not removed from Ayase Station.
In November, 1988, Minato (then utilizing the primary identify Nobuharu) and Hiroshi Miyano (now utilizing the surname Yokoyama), labored collectively to abduct Furuta, 17, as she commuted residence from a part-time job at a plastic molding manufacturing unit. That identical month, her household reported her lacking with police.
Thereafter, Minato and Miyano, then aged 15 and 18, respectively, and two different youths took her to the residence in Ayase the place they repeatedly raped, sodomized and tortured her over a 44-day interval.
On January 4, 1989, Furuta died after the youths set her on fireplace. The boys then wrapped her physique in blankets and packed it in an oil drum together with concrete. The drum was then dumped at what’s at present Wakasu Park in Koto Ward.
“The Murder House”
In “The Murder House,” Yagisawa writes that the realm across the station has change into a well-liked residential space for households with youngsters, partly as a result of the Chiyoda Line runs on to Otemachi. He means that the incident greater than 30 years in the past that maybe this technology is much less acutely aware of the previous.
Leaving the business space in entrance of the station, the place pachinko parlors are distinguished, the cityscape quickly turns into residential. Suddenly, a love resort seems in view. Next to it’s a park the place youngsters play. The extraordinarily unbalanced surroundings leaves an indescribable feeling, Yagisawa writes.
The space round Ayase was a rice paddy space till the beginning of the interval of excessive financial progress. Before it was developed into residential areas, love accommodations had been constructed. It was then developed into residential areas, making a surroundings that Yagisawa describes as “untamed.”
Shinji Minato
After Miyano and one different youth, Jo Ogura, then 17, had been arrested in one other rape case, police uncovered their involvement within the disappearance of Furuta. During questioning, Miyano advised police the place to seek out her physique, which was discovered on March 29.
A court docket later handed the youths differing jail sentences: Minato, between 5 and 9 years; Ogura, between 5 and 10 years; and Miyano 20 years. The fourth youth, Yasushi Watanabe, then 16, obtained a time period of between 5 and 7 years.
Since the decision was handed down, Watanabe has remained the one one of many 4 to keep away from additional hassle with the legislation.
Five years after his launch from jail in 1999, Ogura was arrested for assaulting and confining the supervisor of a “snack” hostess membership. He was sentenced to a four-year time period, which he accomplished in 2009.
After Miyano was launched from jail in 2009, he modified his identify to Yokoyama. Four years later, he was arrested on suspicion of fraud. However, he was not prosecuted after he remained silent after his arrest.
In 2018, police arrested Shinji Minato for beating a 32-year-old male firm worker in the proper shoulder with a steel baton on a highway in Kawaguchi City, Saitama Prefecture. He additionally slashed the sufferer’s throat with a knife.
Minato went to trial for tried homicide. Despite the notoriety of the Furuta case, the arrest of Minato and his trial didn’t obtain mainstream media consideration. The subsequent yr, a court docket handed him a suspended jail time period.
Young girls with youngsters
Since the start of 2009, Yagisawa has walked via Ayase many occasions. Each time, he will get off at Ayase Station and heads to the home the place the crime occurred.
About quarter-hour from the station, the home in query sits on a nook. It was demolished after the incident, however the lot continues to be the identical because it was again then.
While strolling right here from the station in the future, Yagisawa notices younger girls with youngsters. They gave the impression to be of their 30s or 40s.
Yagisawa asks one of many girls their ideas on the Minato household.
“We bought a detached house around here in 1972,” the girl says. “That April, we moved in. The [Minato] family moved in a month or two later. I think that house was worth about 12 million yen at the time.”
Yagisawa notes that although the home has been demolished the electrical pole that the boys used on the time to enter and exit the home straight from the second flooring with out utilizing the entrance door nonetheless stays.
“Karma will not disappear”
Minato was born in 1972, the identical yr the household moved to Ayase. His mother and father had been Communist Party members and had been strict with him, Yagisawa writes.
To get a greater really feel for the realm, the creator goes to a bar close to the crime scene. Inside, two males sit ingesting beer.
At the counter, Yagisawa orders some yakitori. He then asks them concerning the state of the neighborhood 20 years in the past. One of them says that the existence of boarding homes and the metropolitan housing within the space induced delinquency.
“There were a lot of people who didn’t have proper jobs,” the person says. “It was a bad environment for children. But after Kita-Ayase Station was built the boarding houses disappeared, which improved the environment.”
After the boys left, he asks the proprietor of the bar concerning the crime. He remembers the perpetrators and their buddies coming to purchase yakitori.
“There were always two young guys who came here to buy yakitori with salt,” the barman says. “They had cigarette marks on their hands.”
Since there have been these marks on their arms, Yagisawa surmises which will have been pressured to run errands for the top of a gang.
For Yagisawa, he stays puzzled as to how the ghastly homicide of Furuta might have unfolded all these years in the past.
“I cannot help but feel a sense of emptiness in the surprising the transformation from ordinary boys who come to buy just a few yakitori to beasts who commit the worst crime in history,” Yagisawa says. “How did the boys go astray and commit such a beastly act?
The concrete remaining at what was the house is slowly eroding. Meanwhile, the area around the landfill where they dumped Furuta’s body has become a seaside park where families gather.
Yagisawa concludes that this seeming peace hides what lurks unnoticed. “The karma that resides in the people who committed the crime will not disappear so easily,” he concludes.