True Crime Japan: Thieves, Rascals, Killers and Dope Heads: True Stories From a Japanese Courtroom

220 Pages·2016·1.91 MB·English

by  Paul Murphy

TRUE
CRIME
JAPAN
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my wife Maki and our children Nao, Aaron, and
Cathal.
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Copyright © 2016 by Paul Murphy
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ISBN 978-4-8053-1342-8; ISBN 978-1-4629-1897-3 (ebook)
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Ordinary People
1. House Proud
2. Late in Life
3. Gangsters
4. Perverts
5. Mama's Boys
6. Drug Intolerance
7. Fessing Up
8. Mother Killers
9. Learning from Japan
10. Conclusion
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
wish to thank my wife Maki for her love, support and wise insights about
I
Japanese society and who, along with our daughter Nao, made an invaluable
contribution to the research for this book. I also want to thank my brother
David whose East Asian journalistic experience I have long tapped and who has
been a sturdy influence in my life. Thanks as well to veteran Tokyo-based
correspondent David McNeill for being a constant source of well-articulated
wisdom on things Japanese and a great supporter and friend. Gratitude also to
my other brother John for reading and commenting on certain chapters and to
Ryann Connell, a generous friend and expert on Japan, for doing likewise.
I am indebted to the ever-professional clerks of Matsumoto City’s courts and
to all who granted me interviews, especially lawyers Susumu Ozawa, Hirofumi
Idei and Jiro Yamane, who greatly aided my understanding of Japan’s legal
system. I wish to thank also Cian Ferriter and Martin Walsh: our long
conversation about elderly crime on a train to Nagoya City persuaded me that
there may be a wider audience for a book such as this. Thanks also to Diarmaid
Ferriter, Mary Ruane and Micheál Ó Siochrú, who in different ways influenced
my initial journey to Japan, and to David Malatesta who insisted I learn the
language once I got there. I also want to acknowledge the irrepressible Koji Ueda,
who recently departed this life, Colm Ó’Comartún, Chie Matsumoto, Paul
Rouse, Gregory Prendergast, Frank Shouldice, Masaru Misawa, Koichi Terao,
Michiko Mutai, David Carlson, Miho and Hideki Shinohara, Shin and Rie Mutai,
Angela Chen, Paula Brudell, Cormac Behan, Dónall King, Shane McGonigle,
Mick Ryan and Takatsugu Nakayama. Very sincere thanks too to best-selling
author and veteran crime journalist Jake Adelstein for sparing time from a hectic
schedule to read a final draft and write a very kind endorsement. Finally, I wish
to thank the staff of Tuttle Publishing for their encouragement, especially Cathy
Layne for her impeccable advice and diligent editing skills and also Terri Jadick
who so ably took up when Cathy departed to other pastures.
INTRODUCTION:
ORDINARY PEOPLE
riminal court cases in Japan begin with the fairly predictable—the
C
defendant pleads guilty—and end with the utterly predictable—the
defendant is found guilty. What happens in between is the interesting bit.
This book is about the “in between.” It is about the tales of perverts, arsonists,
mobsters, shoplifters, pimps, embezzlers, fraudsters, killers, and others who came
before the courts of Matsumoto City in central Japan over a 12-month period.
So it is a book about crime and criminals, but it is also a book about Japan.
While members of Japan’s mafia, the yakuza, feature in many cases, the great
majority of defendants are not career criminals; they are ordinary people. People
such as Kesae Shikada, a hard-of-hearing octogenarian shoplifter; accountant
Satoru Hara and his wife Hitomi, who planned to kill themselves and their
daughter because their house had been repossessed; former retail manager Shinji
Horiike, who was obsessed with filming women in toilets; and carpenter Takeshi
Tomioka, who beat his 91-year-old mother to death and went to work the
following day, leaving her body for his wife to find.
Their stories and others from Matsumoto’s courtrooms provide a window to
a fascinating society that can be difficult to figure out even for those who, like
me, have lived in Japan for many years and understand the language. It’s not
uncommon, for example, to work alongside someone and know virtually nothing
about their personal life, perhaps only knowing their family name and not their
first name. One Japanese man I consider a friend, for example, got married and
divorced without telling me of either. I learned of his marriage about six months
after the event; he has yet to tell me of his divorce.
Part of the problem, especially for a foreigner seeking to understand Japan’s
people, is that relaxed conversation is regulated, and usually stymied, by custom
and the structure of the language. Almost every sentence carries a status marker:
a word, the absence of a word, or a verb ending that indicates whether you are