Japan - Miyazawa family of 4 murdered, Setagaya, Tokyo, 30 Dec 2000 #2

[BatataPoha]

By “accept” I mean the Irie’s did not commit or have anything to do with the murder of their family next door. They have been cleared. That is the reason.

It is possible to be unsatisfied with an explanation but to also be satisfied that there is no connection or further investigation into to the murder needed at the same time. If there were it would have been looked into already.

I will have to disagree here respectfully. Going by Nic’s podcast -

1) The Chief still disagrees with their version of events.

2) There is a lack of finality in his conclusions about it. Contrast that with the 2chan evidence or even the evidence of the sand where he said that it has been investigated and that it does not lead to anywhere.

Here he says he is not convinced, what is he not convinced about? You, I and many others here have speculated about certain internal issues, which seem to be fairly reasonable explainations, in which case the Chief would have said something like “yes this was investigated but it all checked out, or it doesn’t lead to anything or its not significant”.

He doesn’t say any of that, or atleast thats my inference from the podcast.

I know the Anns didn’t commit the crime, I am just saying every discrepancy in a cold case ought to be looked into until the end. No offence and MOO.

 

[Incoherent]

I will have to disagree here respectfully. Going by Nic’s podcast -

1) The Chief still disagrees with their version of events.

Again, it is possible to be dissatisfied with an explanation and still have credible evidence that those giving it are not implicated in any way. Which is the case here. Even if they heard more than they said.

2) There is a lack of finality in his conclusions about it. Contrast that with the 2chan evidence or even the evidence of the sand where he said that it has been investigated and that it does not lead to anywhere.

The 2chan posts were confirmed fake.

Here he says he is not convinced, what is he not convinced about? You, I and many others here have speculated about certain internal issues, which seem to be fairly reasonable explainations, in which case the Chief would have said something like “yes this was investigated but it all checked out, or it doesn’t lead to anything or its not significant”.

He doesn’t say any of that, or atleast thats my inference from the podcast.

I’m not sure what you’re inferring here other than since the Chief (retired) hasn’t specifically stated or released information about something in particular, that it hasn’t been investigated to satisfaction. It has been 24 years with 280,000 individual officers on the case. If there were any inclination that the noise issue was worth pursuing, you don’t think that the force of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department hasn’t done so already? For one of the nations most notorious unsolved murders?

While I do also have my own doubts from personal experience I’m also very aware that 99% of what we, as humble WebSleuths, can speculate on the case has highly likely already been considered and looked into.

I know the Anns didn’t commit the crime, I am just saying every discrepancy in a cold case ought to be looked into until the end. No offence and MOO.

None taken at all! Conversation is what we are all here for and all of this, of course, is also MOO.

 

[BatataPoha]

Penelopeb,

I’ve also thought recently that maybe the killer targeted the family due to its makeup. I’m not thinking as much along the lines as the makeup being the same as whatever family situation he may have had, but simply that the Miazawa’s, as a family, seem sort of remarkable for being…unremarkable. They are to my eye what one might think of as “the perfect family”: Married husband and wife with two children, a boy and a girl each. They seem, from my point of view, to have been a happy and close family, celebrating birthdays and such together with much laughter and bonhomie. They lived comfortably in their own, quite nice, home.
A very cozy, and perhaps to some, enviable, situation.

I’m thinking that if a particular person had a goal to cause as much destruction as he could, he just might pick such a perfect looking family, with two, innocent children upon which to vent his rage. Maybe saw them out somewhere, followed them home…

I have a slightly different take on this, with much overlaps.

A child from a broken home, so called “problem child” will more likely than not have a long list of issues. From my personal experience and in general, that would range from cheating, bullying, manipulating to more nefarious things like robbing, kidnapping and torture before the escalation to murder.

Its hard to imagine someone with that kinda chequered past to go unnoticed and would be even more harder for them to go back to normal or near normal since the stressor of the broken home still exists.

However I think you are on the right track. But changed the broken home to a very strict home, with a lot of rules. Rules to lead a perfect but heavily censored life. Outwardly for the killer, everything is fine but from the inside he is rebelling. He is the perfect age - old teen/young adult where a lot of rebellion usually comes.

So now, in his mind, he might have rationalized this family as the living embodiment of those rules, maybe as a surrogate for his own future if he followed all the rules that he was supposed to. And then he rebelled, by killing off that family, he was fighting back against the rules.

But in the process he got hurt, atleast significantly initially. He maybe realised the importance of those rules, or it became an act of preservation to abide by those rules for his own safety.

 

[Sor Juana]

The Chief is not convinced about anything simply because the case isn't closed, and he cannot make any strong statements other than to confirm his personal dedication and commitment to finding the killer. Pretty much any police officer could second that.

Personally, I cannot understand such elevated suspicions about the relatives. Is it really imaginable that even if they didn't like their neighbours (sister, children), they couldn't find a way to just move somewhere else? As I understand it, there was no large inheritance to dispute. And in any case, they are not that kind of people. If the police have no interest in them, it means only one thing: there is nothing to be suspicious about.

One explanation for why Mikio paid for soundproofing both houses could be that his house has more wooden parts, therefore amplifying noise, so he probably accepted that his side of the duplex was responsible for the noise. Or simply because he had more money, or he got a decent discount for doing both houses at once rather than just one. They are close relatives, so paying for one another is not that unusual. Maybe the Anns helped Mikio in other ways, like babysitting.

That kind of murder simply could not have been done by someone close. JMO.

 

[Charlot123]

I will have to disagree here respectfully. Going by Nic’s podcast -

1) The Chief still disagrees with their version of events.

2) There is a lack of finality in his conclusions about it. Contrast that with the 2chan evidence or even the evidence of the sand where he said that it has been investigated and that it does not lead to anywhere.

Here he says he is not convinced, what is he not convinced about? You, I and many others here have speculated about certain internal issues, which seem to be fairly reasonable explainations, in which case the Chief would have said something like “yes this was investigated but it all checked out, or it doesn’t lead to anything or its not significant”.

He doesn’t say any of that, or atleast thats my inference from the podcast.

I know the Anns didn’t commit the crime, I am just saying every discrepancy in a cold case ought to be looked into until the end. No offence and MOO.

Very interesting ideas, thank you!

I was always thinking about An’s house. She and her family were ruled out, as I understand, because the DNA, the prints and the blood group didn’t match. I, too, believe that they didn’t commit the crime.

But did the police explode her house with a scotch tape, to check for the presence of all fingerprints?

One situation when I would probably understand knowing something and being silent would be if the murderer were her son’s older friend. Who came to their house, was welcomed and then did this thing and threatened them to be silent, lest they wanted to go the same way. This I would understand, being silent out of fear, and later, perhaps, the guy really left the country and they stayed with the burden. This would be the situation when they’d recognize the voice but be silent out of fear, or maybe they didn’t expect to end like it did.

Another, more simple, explanation, is that they, not knowing the murderer, indeed, heard the voices but were silent not to attract the killer to their side of the house. They could have had a more solid defense weapon, they lived abroad.

What do you do if there is noise/screams/etc? You pull out your most serious weapon and wait in silence, being prepared to sell your life dearly. You may be afraid to call the police, knowing the police will be loud, but slow and maybe, the conversation might alert the murdere in the other house.

This would be understandable, hearing more but keeping silent out of fear, and then, it is hard to publicly acknowledge it.

 

[Incoherent]

Very interesting ideas, thank you!

I was always thinking about An’s house. She and her family were ruled out, as I understand, because the DNA, the prints and the blood group didn’t match. I, too, believe that they didn’t commit the crime.

From what I understand too even if they had heard more and for whatever reason did not elaborate, the end result is still that they’re all innocent.
From interviews it was mentioned that the family said the night was “quiet”. Nothing remarkable happened. Except the thud of the ladder that was heard. Besides that, nothing. The house opposite reported the same: no noise.

One situation when I would probably understand knowing something and being silent would be if the murderer were her son’s older friend. Who came to their house, was welcomed and then did this thing and threatened them to be silent, lest they wanted to go the same way. This I would understand, being silent out of fear, and later, perhaps, the guy really left the country and they stayed with the burden. This would be the situation when they’d recognize the voice but be silent out of fear, or maybe they didn’t expect to end like it did.

I also speculated something similar a while back. My thought process was that because we have an American POI, and the fact the Irie’s spent years in the UK, that the teenage Irie son would likely speak English and possibly be a part of language or study group that he was in. Given that the POI at the time would be at the lower end of the age range suspected of 15, he could have crossed paths with the Irie son as someone living in Japan and likely learning Japanese.
Picture: two similarly aged boys each learning another’s language, and Yasuko also running a cram school at the time, made me think there could have been something there for the POI to know of Miyazawa’s house and family. Even distantly. But it was all really just my brain ramblings to try and find a connection.

 

[BatataPoha]

Very interesting ideas, thank you!

I was always thinking about An’s house. She and her family were ruled out, as I understand, because the DNA, the prints and the blood group didn’t match. I, too, believe that they didn’t commit the crime.

But did the police explode her house with a scotch tape, to check for the presence of all fingerprints?

One situation when I would probably understand knowing something and being silent would be if the murderer were her son’s older friend. Who came to their house, was welcomed and then did this thing and threatened them to be silent, lest they wanted to go the same way. This I would understand, being silent out of fear, and later, perhaps, the guy really left the country and they stayed with the burden. This would be the situation when they’d recognize the voice but be silent out of fear, or maybe they didn’t expect to end like it did.

Another, more simple, explanation, is that they, not knowing the murderer, indeed, heard the voices but were silent not to attract the killer to their side of the house. They could have had a more solid defense weapon, they lived abroad.

What do you do if there is noise/screams/etc? You pull out your most serious weapon and wait in silence, being prepared to sell your life dearly. You may be afraid to call the police, knowing the police will be loud, but slow and maybe, the conversation might alert the murdere in the other house.

This would be understandable, hearing more but keeping silent out of fear, and then, it is hard to publicly acknowledge it.

This was one of my first theories, that the target was the other house or the killer was somewhat known to the members of the other family. However I discarded it pretty early for two reasons -

1) the neighbours reported the thud themselves. If they were protecting someone, they would have probably gone with radio silence instead of volunteering a little bit of information and putting them into more questioning.

2) While it could have been someone the Ann’s knew from abroad, this would have to be someone who knew a decent bit of Japanese to get around, make a perfect exit and also get medical attention without drawing any attention to oneself. I don’t think it could have been a foreigner of that sort like a visitor.

The neighbours are innocent of the crime itself. I don’t think anyone should doubt that. Now whether the act of the murders is in someway connected to them (like a threat or a warning) or whether they knew the killer ( presumably not Japanese coz the TMPD would have found him out by now so a foreigner perhaps) is unknown.

 

[FacelessPodcast]

This was one of my first theories, that the target was the other house or the killer was somewhat known to the members of the other family. However I discarded it pretty early for two reasons -

1) the neighbours reported the thud themselves. If they were protecting someone, they would have probably gone with radio silence instead of volunteering a little bit of information and putting them into more questioning.

Welcome @BatataPoha. From my conversations with the Chief, I think it might well be possible it was the young boy who volunteered this information. In this scenario, radio silence might have been the intention except for that spanner in the works. At any rate, ignoring the sound problem of a bang being heard but no struggles, no falling down the stairs, no screams -- my grasp of this is that it was odd even in concept. Ignoring anybody hearing the loud bang, how is it possible that four people could die without a peep when the walls are so thin? Thud or no, experiments were carried out. To nobody's satisfaction. But the Irie family, to use their preferred sobriquet, were always going to be questioned.

2) While it could have been someone the Ann’s knew from abroad, this would have to be someone who knew a decent bit of Japanese to get around, make a perfect exit and also get medical attention without drawing any attention to oneself. I don’t think it could have been a foreigner of that sort like a visitor.

I disagree. Of course, as I've said many times, I think it's likely the killer had some Japanese. And I've been open about having a POI (who has a very decent grasp of it). But the killer *required* zero Japanese in these murders. Nor would I use the word 'perfect'. Had the grandmother recalled the state of the front door when she entered, this would be an entirely different conversation. I think "very lucky escape" is more accurate. And as I've discussed at length throughout this thread, there are 12,000 people on Yokota AFB, all of which can access healthcare or medical attention without Japan having any inkling. That's just one base of the many throughout the islands. But even ignoring the possibility of US military bases, we know that the TMPD questioned and fingerprinted thousands upon thousands of men in hospitals (or recently released from hospitals) in the days after the murders. From what I've heard, several had presented themselves seeking medical attention for cuts. As there have been zero arrests, we can conclude either these cuts were unrelated. Or possibly the killer got extremely lucky again and no records were taken. Given this would have been on New Year's Day or thereabouts in the holiday season, such a scenario isn't beyond the realms of possibility. We see this in the Tobu-Nikko incident at the train station, too.

The neighbours are innocent of the crime itself. I don’t think anyone should doubt that. Now whether the act of the murders is in someway connected to them (like a threat or a warning) or whether they knew the killer ( presumably not Japanese coz the TMPD would have found him out by now so a foreigner perhaps) is unknown.

Nobody can doubt that the Irie's are involved in the murders themselves based on the forensic evidence. They are simply not. That's not a debate. (Though there have been users on this thread who, somehow, have found Haruko suspicious).
Now, I will say there are questions the Irie family have left unanswered. Some of these I've spoken about here. Others, I have not. I do not say that lightly. They are entirely innocent of the crimes we're discussing here and they deserve every respect. It does not somehow magically dissolve the fact that those points are left unanswered.

 

[Charlot123]

From what I understand too even if they had heard more and for whatever reason did not elaborate, the end result is still that they’re all innocent.
From interviews it was mentioned that the family said the night was “quiet”. Nothing remarkable happened. Except the thud of the ladder that was heard. Besides that, nothing. The house opposite reported the same: no noise.

I also speculated something similar a while back. My thought process was that because we have an American POI, and the fact the Irie’s spent years in the UK, that the teenage Irie son would likely speak English and possibly be a part of language or study group that he was in. Given that the POI at the time would be at the lower end of the age range suspected of 15, he could have crossed paths with the Irie son as someone living in Japan and likely learning Japanese.
Picture: two similarly aged boys each learning another’s language, and Yasuko also running a cram school at the time, made me think there could have been something there for the POI to know of Miyazawa’s house and family. Even distantly. But it was all really just my brain ramblings to try and find a connection.

Great idea, but not cram schools. Today, I would immediately say, Meetups.com.
These interest groups popped up and most were in person, but all the connections were made online. Nowadays, postcovid, they are big and more computer-centered. Check for yourself, there is a huge online Tokyo-based group to study Japanese, but there are small local in-person groups for the same purpose everywhere. English in Tokyo nowadays? For sure, but you need to specify how long do you have to drive for a meetup.

Meetup - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Organized by Scott Heiferman. In 2002. Too late. But what language platforms were there before Meetups? We are talking about 2 years prior? Were they still posted on the same Japanese boards, or somewhere else?

Here is another thought. I remembered there was something pre-FB, and here is a list of earlier social platforms.

I remembered MySpace, it came in 2003. HABBO would have been ideal for a teenager, but it started in January 2001. Was there anything before 2Chan in Japan of 2000?

Which Social Media Platforms Ruled the Earth B.F. (Before Facebook)?

Sitcoms existed before Friends, football before the Premier League, and even cats before the internet. So, which social networks ruled the web in the pre-Facebook era? It's hard to imagine such a time, but looking to the past can help us predict what coming’s A.

www.linkedin.com

Someone has to know. They had to be online, not in person. They all met online here, i can’t imagine it being different in Japan. Chat rooms, AOL, what was there in Japan?

Any Japanese school kid in 2000 would know, only I don’t know any Japanese schoolkid in 2000.

 

[BatataPoha]

Welcome @BatataPoha. From my conversations with the Chief, I think it might well be possible it was the young boy who volunteered this information. In this scenario, radio silence might have been the intention except for that spanner in the works. At any rate, ignoring the sound problem of a bang being heard but no struggles, no falling down the stairs, no screams -- my grasp of this is that it was odd even in concept. Ignoring anybody hearing the loud bang, how is it possible that four people could die without a peep when the walls are so thin? Thud or no, experiments were carried out. To nobody's satisfaction. But the Irie family, to use their preferred sobriquet, were always going to be questioned.

Hey Nic. I have said it on reddit personally, but I will again congratulate you on your very excellent podcast.

As for this revelation, this is even more "interesting". The fact that the information was not volunteered by the adults. One of my gripes with the TMPD is that they have not investigated this discrepancy enough. It might ultimately be benign and have no relevance in its satisfactory conclusion, but still it would have been so helpful to clear this mystery out.

I disagree. Of course, as I've said many times, I think it's likely the killer had some Japanese. And I've been open about having a POI (who has a very decent grasp of it). But the killer *required* zero Japanese in these murders. Nor would I use the word 'perfect'. Had the grandmother recalled the state of the front door when she entered, this would be an entirely different conversation. I think "very lucky escape" is more accurate. And as I've discussed at length throughout this thread, there are 12,000 people on Yokota AFB, all of which can access healthcare or medical attention without Japan having any inkling. That's just one base of the many throughout the islands. But even ignoring the possibility of US military bases, we know that the TMPD questioned and fingerprinted thousands upon thousands of men in hospitals (or recently released from hospitals) in the days after the murders. From what I've heard, several had presented themselves seeking medical attention for cuts. As there have been zero arrests, we can conclude either these cuts were unrelated. Or possibly the killer got extremely lucky again and no records were taken. Given this would have been on New Year's Day or thereabouts in the holiday season, such a scenario isn't beyond the realms of possibility. We see this in the Tobu-Nikko incident at the train station, too.

I have to respectfully disagree on this. While the killer needed no Japanese proficiency for his murders, he did need some of it for his purchases of the items he entered the house with. As it has been said, a lot of the items were bought from the nearby market. How likely is it that someone very visibly foreign with language difficulties would be able to blend in like that?

In my experiences with the Japanese, they are generally very perceptive, especially for things that are not the norm.

As far as your extremely lucky theory goes, while it is certainly possible, it's quite disheartening coz the we have nothing to go by. The killer might just be some random Japanese guy who is not dead and whose fingerprints are not in the database.

Nobody can doubt that the Irie's are involved in the murders themselves based on the forensic evidence. They are simply not. That's not a debate. (Though there have been users on this thread who, somehow, have found Haruko suspicious).
Now, I will say there are questions the Irie family have left unanswered. Some of these I've spoken about here. Others, I have not. I do not say that lightly. They are entirely innocent of the crimes we're discussing here and they deserve every respect. It does not somehow magically dissolve the fact that those points are left unanswered.

Agreed. This is what I was trying to explain to @Incoherent earlier.

 

[Charlot123]

I have a slightly different take on this, with much overlaps.

A child from a broken home, so called “problem child” will more likely than not have a long list of issues. From my personal experience and in general, that would range from cheating, bullying, manipulating to more nefarious things like robbing, kidnapping and torture before the escalation to murder.

Its hard to imagine someone with that kinda chequered past to go unnoticed and would be even more harder for them to go back to normal or near normal since the stressor of the broken home still exists.

However I think you are on the right track. But changed the broken home to a very strict home, with a lot of rules. Rules to lead a perfect but heavily censored life. Outwardly for the killer, everything is fine but from the inside he is rebelling. He is the perfect age - old teen/young adult where a lot of rebellion usually comes.

So now, in his mind, he might have rationalized this family as the living embodiment of those rules, maybe as a surrogate for his own future if he followed all the rules that he was supposed to. And then he rebelled, by killing off that family, he was fighting back against the rules.

But in the process he got hurt, atleast significantly initially. He maybe realised the importance of those rules, or it became an act of preservation to abide by those rules for his own safety.

One consideration:

- that Mikio had mild OCD, is almost self-evident from his personality and interests. But I woke up with the idea that the killer had OCD, maybe in the form of nagging thoughts, and upon waking up, I think it might be true.

His handkerchief, prompting the idea of him being from the fish industry. Him covering his victims, maybe even symmetrical placement of them. I don’t think these were strict rituals, just idiosyncratic behaviors. It is hard to see “methodical” in the killer because the scene is disorganized, only there may be traits of organization there. The dude is a planner. Maybe these traces of sands mean nothing but traces of prior childhood OCD, when he was gathering sands.

I don’t know what role it plays, except for now, the man is probably showing traits of slight bipolarity and is irritated if things are not done according to his rules, which are not multiple, but definite.

Also: if he had an obsessive, perfectionistic, strict father, his hypercompensation would be in the form of being a stoic samurai. Who would he feel livid with? The person whose behavior would hint that he is anything less than a perfect macho. I am still thinking that he was targeting not family but Mikio. Perhaps he was angry afterwards, or angry with the mother standing up for her child, a woman resisting him, so it ended up looking this way. But initially, somewhere, somehow, Mikio showed that he was seeing him less than a man, maybe smiled, made a joke?

If we walk away from the base, if he was a waiter serving on Mikio during a company lunch, or a young member of a theater group, he could have misinterpreted something that Mikio had said.

And the perp was angry with own family, then, again, maybe in his eyes, it was less than a macho family. The father who, in his eyes, didn't quite follow the bushido (especially if the killer was obsessed with the bushido without having clear understanding what it was, an attempt to distance from the peasants, so IRL, circumstances-driven and flexible.)

I am even wondering, were Miyazawa a gentry in old Japan? Was that what he was looking for, some form of a family tree?

Off this track, and the question more to @FacelessPodcast: if the perp was from the US, upon returning home, isn't it expected that he was briefly admitted to a psych hospital, a residential or such? It's dangerous to send him to a therapist but dangerous not to do anything, either.

 

[Charlot123]

I agree this is what should be done! The problem is that politics doesn't operate like that--it's intentionally concerned with the factors around an event and precedent. So, I don't think it's too early to discuss tensions, mostly because I'm quite certain the TMPD and other parties have considered them, and these considerations likely influenced the investigation even if not intentionally.

Like, I would guess the TMPD were thinking early on that it was more likely than not a Japanese citizen (which would have made sense until they got the sand samples analyzed, and then DNA too), so better not to rock the boat when things were still very tense after the Okinawa incident in 1995.

I'm not intending to argue for or against US military presence in other countries or about cultural perceptions and historical conflicts either! Just stating that they do exist and that certain conflicts that people in America aren't well-versed in still exist, and that some conflicts Americans by and large consider "over" are not considered that way in other nations. So I'm not arguing about this, just stating that these perceptions exist whether rightly or not.

Plus, a lot of politics requires looking at things through a different ethical lens that often defaults back to "the common good" or "least harm for most people." (Which I personally don't think is exactly awesome ethically, but again I'm not arguing that here--just trying to explain where I think they're coming from.) And a killer who killed one family isn't necessarily a priority when compared to ongoing tensions in the region and certain countries' stakes therein. Which if you ask me is really messed up.

The ramifications of the killer being X or Y or Z have definitely occurred to those directly involved in the investigation, including the TMPD. Since early on the odds were that they didn't have to rock this boat and set off this tensions, they didn't. Now that they might need to, those old ramifications are still there, and cultural barriers around asking for help from certain groups also exist as well. All of this creates a situation where things like, if the killer is someone with a similar profile to Nick's POI, or who even overlaps in one or two areas, the implications could be dicey. The hope that they don't have to deal with these ramifications is pretty small at this point, though, so imo they should--but that's where the DNA law creates problems, as you said.

It's messy, and I wish people could just do what you said - take this as a case by itself and think that Niina, Rei, Mikio, and Yasuko deserve justice in this world, and assert that their lives mattered and we're worse off without them.

OK, i'll post it once and won't get back to it, ever. "This is not how things are done in politics" doesn't quite apply, because any bureaucratic structure functions in many modes, one of them being harm-reduction. The worst scenario, IMHO: the situation when TMPD does get to DNA testing, uses a third country database and identifies the perpetrator as a US citizen via another country. This is way worse. US stepping in and doing everything to help with the DNA work is normal. The murderer is just that. It is the answer that is everything.

 

[BatataPoha]

One consideration:

- that Mikio had mild OCD, is almost self-evident from his personality and interests. But I woke up with the idea that the killer had OCD, maybe in the form of nagging thoughts, and upon waking up, I think it might be true.

He doesn’t have OCD, atleast not the clinical one. What you are describing is the OCD used in common parlance, which is for someone fussy. While he might have been a meticulous person, nothing in his behaviour indicates an excessive tendecy, something which was unreasonable for him or his family and an overcorrection of sorts. These are some of the criteria used to diagnose OCD in a person, and while I am not a psychiatrist, I have not read anything about the man to indicate that sort of a thing.

His handkerchief, prompting the idea of him being from the fish industry. Him covering his victims, maybe even symmetrical placement of them. I don’t think these were strict rituals, just idiosyncratic behaviors. It is hard to see “methodical” in the killer because the scene is disorganized, only there may be traits of organization there. The dude is a planner. Maybe these traces of sands mean nothing but traces of prior childhood OCD, when he was gathering sands.

Interesting observation. Hadn’t thought anything about the placement of bodies.

I don’t know what role it plays, except for now, the man is probably showing traits of slight bipolarity and is irritated if things are not done according to his rules, which are not multiple, but definite.

Also: if he had an obsessive, perfectionistic, strict father, his hypercompensation would be in the form of being a stoic samurai. Who would he feel livid with? The person whose behavior would hint that he is anything less than a perfect macho. I am still thinking that he was targeting not family but Mikio. Perhaps he was angry afterwards, or angry with the mother standing up for her child, a woman resisting him, so it ended up looking this way. But initially, somewhere, somehow, Mikio showed that he was seeing him less than a man, maybe smiled, made a joke?

I don’t think we have anything to suggest Mikio was the target. Mikio is attacked fairly quickly, a piece of knife gets stuck in his head and he drops down the stairs to his eventual death. The killer likely doesn’t attack him again or again mutilate him in any sort of a way. To me, there is nothing to indicate Mikio was the focus of the rage.

Although now that you have mentioned it, I think only Mikio’s drawers and files are rummaged through. That’s interesting.

If we walk away from the base, if he was a waiter serving on Mikio during a company lunch, or a young member of a theater group, he could have misinterpreted something that Mikio had said.

And the perp was angry with own family, then, again, maybe in his eyes, it was less than a macho family. The father who, in his eyes, didn't quite follow the bushido (especially if the killer was obsessed with the bushido without having clear understanding what it was, an attempt to distance from the peasants, so IRL, circumstances-driven and flexible.)

I am even wondering, were Miyazawa a gentry in old Japan? Was that what he was looking for, some form of a family tree?

Off this track, and the question more to @FacelessPodcast: if the perp was from the US, upon returning home, isn't it expected that he was briefly admitted to a psych hospital, a residential or such? It's dangerous to send him to a therapist but dangerous not to do anything, either.

These are some great thoughts, although you are mixing disorders here which is understandable. OCDs are generally ego dystonic, which means that the behaviour is generally opposite to the thoughts you are having. So if you think you are less of a man, you go to a gym more. If you think you are more likely to kill, you do prayer and that sorta thing.

However someone with psychotic tendencies could perceive something quite minor as as insult and attack a family.

 

[Charlot123]

He doesn’t have OCD, atleast not the clinical one. What you are describing is the OCD used in common parlance, which is for someone fussy. While he might have been a meticulous person, nothing in his behaviour indicates an excessive tendecy, something which was unreasonable for him or his family and an overcorrection of sorts. These are some of the criteria used to diagnose OCD in a person, and while I am not a psychiatrist, I have not read anything about the man to indicate that sort of a thing.


Interesting observation. Hadn’t thought anything about the placement of bodies.


I don’t think we have anything to suggest Mikio was the target. Mikio is attacked fairly quickly, a piece of knife gets stuck in his head and he drops down the stairs to his eventual death. The killer likely doesn’t attack him again or again mutilate him in any sort of a way. To me, there is nothing to indicate Mikio was the focus of the rage.

Although now that you have mentioned it, I think only Mikio’s drawers and files are rummaged through. That’s interesting.

These are some great thoughts, although you are mixing disorders here which is understandable. OCDs are generally ego dystonic, which means that the behaviour is generally opposite to the thoughts you are having. So if you think you are less of a man, you go to a gym more. If you think you are more likely to kill, you do prayer and that sorta thing.

However someone with psychotic tendencies could perceive something quite minor as as insult and attack a family.

OCD is super complicated because while ritualistic behavior is ego-dystonic, OCD as such may not necessarily be. Chimps have symptoms that the investigators viewed as religion, and I see as OCD (ritualistic behavior in a group). There are genes linked to OCD, Tourrette's and religiosity, which in fact code for "mistake avoidance behavior". (There is so much shame associated with catching own mistake, that the person will do everything to avoid even making it. Kids who rewrite exams answers in a perfect handwriting, etc.) We are talking about a kid/ young adult, and these things are more obvious between 8-18. It is a huge mix, but all religious behavior is, in fact, OCD-ish. And, it is definitely pre-human. I should post an article here, nothing about murders but about perfectionism.

I don't cross out Mikio being the target, though. Mikio does everything not to stand out, even in photos, but I bet he is a complex personality.

I think the murderer had two worlds in youth which he managed to conceal. He probably was nice and likable, this part of him fountained out partially unexpectedly. Maybe he managed to merge them as an adult. Maybe he suppresses that episode. It is not easy to live with such burden.

 

[FacelessPodcast]

Hey Nic. I have said it on reddit personally, but I will again congratulate you on your very excellent podcast.

Thank you, very kind!

As for this revelation, this is even more "interesting". The fact that the information was not volunteered by the adults. One of my gripes with the TMPD is that they have not investigated this discrepancy enough. It might ultimately be benign and have no relevance in its satisfactory conclusion, but still it would have been so helpful to clear this mystery out.

The TMPD and law enforcement in general in Japan is wholly and absolutely different from, say, the US or the UK. I'm sure you know this. But given that you can be held for 23 days in a cell per charge by the police, given that the conviction rate in Japan is 99.9999%, given that the TMPD (and all major forces in that country) communicate via the objectively problematic kisha club system -- it's not a huge surprise that there are many, many gaps of understanding here in this case, at least in terms of the public. This is not a criticism of LE in Japan, it's just how things are. My own feeling is that, what may be 'helpful' to us, is absolutely not their concern.

I think you are wrong, though, in saying they haven't investigated this issue enough. I think they have absolutely investigated the sound issue -- frontways and backways -- they just have not communicated their findings. Like the vast majority of aspects here.

I have to respectfully disagree on this. While the killer needed no Japanese proficiency for his murders, he did need some of it for his purchases of the items he entered the house with. As it has been said, a lot of the items were bought from the nearby market. How likely is it that someone very visibly foreign with language difficulties would be able to blend in like that?

In my experiences with the Japanese, they are generally very perceptive, especially for things that are not the norm.

As you are totally welcome to do, respectful disagreement is the lifeblood of any conversation that moves forward not in circles. Though I disagree with your disagreement -- I had zero Japanese in the early 2000s when first turning up in Japan. I bought clothes, shoes, food, lodging etc. Pointing was all I needed.

Moreover, as I've said a trillion times, we don't know the killer 'looked foreign' at all. (Again, I'm ignoring my own POI here who you could easily mistake for Japanese). The items the killer bought weren't all available at a nearby market, it was the area of Ogikubo where many of them were available in different shops. I've been there. From my own experiences in Tokyo Uniqlo, would the cashier register I was foreign? Sure. Would they be able to accurately describe me several days later when they were barely paying attention? With all respect to your experiences with Japanese being perceptive, I can think of instances where I would agree. And instances where it is wholly inaccurate to make a blanket statement about 127 million people. Or even, a handful of people in Ogikubo 24 years ago.

As far as your extremely lucky theory goes, while it is certainly possible, it's quite disheartening coz the we have nothing to go by. The killer might just be some random Japanese guy who is not dead and whose fingerprints are not in the database.

It's entirely possible, yes. And disheartening is the word! That said, when you start factoring in his access to restricted military areas, his large feet despite his short size, his scars and so forth -- he's a pretty unique guy. Life takes turns and I'm keeping the faith.

 

[FacelessPodcast]

One consideration:

- that Mikio had mild OCD, is almost self-evident from his personality and interests. But I woke up with the idea that the killer had OCD, maybe in the form of nagging thoughts, and upon waking up, I think it might be true.

RSBM: I have zero opinion on whether the killer had OCD or any such disorder. But as I've said before, we hear many conflicting things about Mikio. In a case this widely-publicised, that's likely unsurprising.

His handkerchief, prompting the idea of him being from the fish industry. Him covering his victims, maybe even symmetrical placement of them. I don’t think these were strict rituals, just idiosyncratic behaviors. It is hard to see “methodical” in the killer because the scene is disorganized, only there may be traits of organization there. The dude is a planner.

To be clear, his handkerchief was simply bought from Muji (which are omnipresent in Japan and even have aisles in konbinis such as Family Mart etc -- in short, it could've come from anywhere in Japan). Also, he did NOT cover the bodies in any way. This is based on two things. 1) An interpretation that the draws from the cabinet that end up on Mikio are somehow 'covering his face.' Having seen the photos, to me in simply looks like they ended up where they fell. Certainly, if he was trying to cover Mikio's face, he did a terrible job of it. Moreover, he had zero compunction about walking over his body multiple times throughout the night, tracking his blood everywhere. 2) 'Covering Yasuko.' This was my own misunderstanding based on the scene photographs, so apologies for that. Due to Japanese law, there are strict norms about showing bodies / gore to the public. So her body was basically blanked out with a black shape which I mistook for the killer's jacket. It was not his jacket.

As for him being a planner, I'm not sure I subscribe to such defined categories. Clearly, he had a plan. But how methodical he is, I don't know. The plan went *advertiser censored* up pretty quickly, as we say in London. So, disorganisation? Well that would be inherent to the situation, I guess. To me, what's striking is that despite things going wrong, he stays and sees it through. Despite his injury. Despite possibly alerting neighbours. Despite the huge risks he was taking. That, to me, suggests that he was DRIVEN. And if that holds true, then it was likely something primal driving that.

Off this track, and the question more to @FacelessPodcast: if the perp was from the US, upon returning home, isn't it expected that he was briefly admitted to a psych hospital, a residential or such? It's dangerous to send him to a therapist but dangerous not to do anything, either.

It's entirely possible that he was. I'm not sure at which point mandatory reporting becomes a thing, or whether it depends on state. But this is assuming that anybody found out about his crime. My feeling is that his family would have noticed *something*. But denial isn't just a river in Egypt etc. It's also entirely possible that he's never been admitted anywhere or has any documented history.

 

[fridaybaker]

Nic, you may be "keeping the faith", but I've totally argued myself into the disheartened camp with all the talk about the politics of extraditing a U.S. citizen to Japan for a murder trial which could result in a death sentence. Maybe I need a break...

 

[FacelessPodcast]

Nic, you may be "keeping the faith", but I've totally argued myself into the disheartened camp with all the talk about the politics of extraditing a U.S. citizen to Japan for a murder trial which could result in a death sentence. Maybe I need a break...

I should clarify: keeping the faith that he can be unmasked! Whether or not there will be a successful conviction or not, that's all too nebulous a future to consider.

It's also worth pointing out here that, assuming he was over the age of 18 at the time of the murders, he would certainly be facing the gallows in Japan. It's pretty much guaranteed hanging given the various aspects of these crimes.

 

[Charlot123]

Nic, you may be "keeping the faith", but I've totally argued myself into the disheartened camp with all the talk about the politics of extraditing a U.S. citizen to Japan for a murder trial which could result in a death sentence. Maybe I need a break...

Do you think such control freaks ever live to the arrest? No way. Only Richard Allen in Delphi could see the writing on the wall and allow to be arrested. I am surprised about BK, maybe he is really out of any normal reasoning?

 

[Incoherent]

Re: language skills. You can very much do most daily things in Japan without using Japanese. I myself speak and understand Japanese well, however have friends who have lived here 20+ years that don’t speak a lick. To purchase clothing and cutlery, all you need to do is nod and point. The killer wouldn’t have needed any language skills for this.

Re: the drawers being only Mikio’s, that is incorrect. Some of the drawers rummaged through were from the living room cabinet. You can see that draw was still missing from the from the cabinet in the videos of when the press were allowed inside by An. The TMPD DVD on the case also shows this. The documents found in the bathtub were Mikio’s, Yasuko’s, and those that include the whole family.

Re: things being local. There is no such “local” in this case. It occurred in central Tokyo. The clothing items were suspected to be bought in Ogikubo, Suginami-ku, Tokyo. Millions upon millions of people pass by here everyday.
The location of the house is Setagaya-ku, Tokyo. The most populous ward of Tokyo metropolis. Again, millions pass by and through surrounding areas everyday.
The people here, while astute, see hordes of faces everyday and pass through thick crowds on their way to work and just daily life. It is not farfected at all that even if the POI did not have a distinctly “Japanese face” that he was still completely ignored by those around him.

In all the images and models that I’ve seen released about the killer his face is never shown. Do what degree LE know what his face actually may look like I’m not sure, but based on the descriptions given to the public it isn’t a lot to go by for, say, a cashier at a Uniqlo in central Tokyo. The size of his feet vs stature is probably the most distinctive feature I can imagine from the released information.

I think you are wrong, though, in saying they haven't investigated this issue enough. I think they have absolutely investigated the sound issue -- frontways and backways -- they just have not communicated their findings. Like the vast majority of aspects here.

Hard agree. On this issue in particular there isn’t anything further to be gained.
LE not communicating something does not mean it has not been considered nor investigated fully to satisfaction. As Nic mentions: this is Japan. Not the US or UK.