I am also from a small village in England originally of 2000 people and that is why I made the comparison.
When in the Kamisoshigaya neighbourhood it does not feel or look totally remote, and is in fact fairly noisy with its surroundings of parks, recreational areas, and roadside. But it is definitely residential by Tokyo standards.
If you go back to my original reply to you, I mentioned that the house does indeed stand alone but that it is not completely isolated. You can see from the images you gave that the surrounding neighbourhood has houses squeezed in, and like I also mentioned the house can be seen from its surroundings. If you lived in the apartment block you’d even be able to directly see the back of the house and its windows.
We know the killer was able to enter and exit unseen, but IMO he could have been seen or noticed without much trouble. And if he escaped in any other way besides car, he was going past a lot of houses and apartments mere seconds after escaping.
And to your point of it being chosen due to its location and less risk of being seen - it can’t be denied it may have been a factor, but there were 3 people literally on the other side of the attached house. It just so happened that even though all 3 of them reported hearing banging noises they did not investigate or call the police at that time.
Did the killer know that and just not care? In which case can we really say location was the main factor here? It is clear from the house that it has two sides to it and I don’t think it was the first time the killer saw the house and just didn’t realise another 3 people were on the other side of it. I think he went in there with intent, not just because it was somewhat isolated.
The Google Earth images make it seem like the surrounding dwellings are far enough away that it takes a minute to get to the house when in fact it actually takes seconds. They really are not that far away.
But anyway, I do appreciate all your comments! After all we are all here to discuss our theories.
I hope to come back soon with some pictures for those that want to see them!
In that case we've possibly had different experiences in the UK. I don't exactly live in Midsomer where there's a grisly murder every week, but there have been a number of unpleasant local crimes which weren't seen or heard as they were happening, despite happening in the middle of residential areas with homes fairly close by. One was a stabbing murder on a playing field surrounded by houses, and another was the rape and murder of a woman in her house as her daughter slept unaware in another bedroom. You'd think someone would have seen or heard something, but nobody did. The stabbing in the park is unsolved 45 years later, and the rapist killer was only caught because he turned himself in.
The setting of the Miyazawa home, surrounded by trees and fields, is very familiar to me. Even if it's only a few hundred yards away from other surrounding buildings, that could easily be enough to make a crime go unnoticed. Where I live is very quiet, and you'd think any commotion would be heard, yet it wasn't. If the area around the Miyazawa home is quite noisy, as you say, that would have made it even easier for the killer to go unnoticed, IMO.
As I understand it, a crime like this is exceptionally rare in Japan. If all that was heard was some banging, even if it was unusual, would that result in the police being called in a country where crimes such as this are virtually unthinkable? In the Miyazawa case, their family members next door seemingly thought nothing of it.
I believe there were four remaining houses in the Soshigaya Park area at the time of the murders. There are now two or three remaining, so the area doesn't seem to have changed massively. I think Nic has said the murders put a halt to a lot of the planned redevelopment. If the killing wasn't targeted for personal reasons against the Miyazawas, then those houses, standing conspicuously alone in the middle of the park, seem too striking to just be a coincidence. Whoever killed the family would, at the very least, have needed to be familiar enough with the area to know those houses were there. Which I'm guessing not everyone would know.
Something else I wonder about is the street lighting in 2000. At that time street lights in most countries, and I imagine in Japan, would have been fairly dim sodium-vapour lights. I'd guess that Japan, like most countries, now uses much brighter LED street lights. So what can be seen on a dark winter night now, in 2024, is probably quite different to what could be seen in 2000. It may not have been difficult at all to skulk around a dimly-lit side street. And once back on the main roads the killer would probably blend away.