TOKYO (TR) – Perhaps the most notorious juvenile crime in history, the murder and torture of high school school girl Junko Furuta by a group of youths took place primarily at a residence in Adachi Ward between 1988 and 1989.
What do the residents in the neighborhood who continue to live there think even now, more than three decades after the incident?
To answer that, the site for weekly tabloid Shukan Bunshun provides an excerpt from non-fiction writer Takaaki Yagisawa’s new book “The Murder House,” published by Tetsujinsha in 2024.
Junko Furuta killing
The home was that of Shinji Minato, one of the four youths convicted in the Furuta case. It is located in a residential area not far from Ayase Station.
In November, 1988, Minato (then using the first name Nobuharu) and Hiroshi Miyano (now using the surname Yokoyama), worked together to abduct Furuta, 17, as she commuted home from a part-time job at a plastic molding factory. That same month, her family reported her missing with police.
Thereafter, Minato and Miyano, then aged 15 and 18, respectively, and two other youths took her to the residence in Ayase where they repeatedly raped, sodomized and tortured her over a 44-day period.
On January 4, 1989, Furuta died after the youths set her on fire. The boys then wrapped her body in blankets and packed it in an oil drum along with concrete. The drum was then dumped at what is today Wakasu Park in Koto Ward.
“The Murder House”
In “The Murder House,” Yagisawa writes that the area around the station has become a popular residential area for families with kids, partly because the Chiyoda Line runs directly to Otemachi. He suggests that the incident more than 30 years ago that perhaps this generation is less conscious of the past.
Leaving the commercial area in front of the station, where pachinko parlors are prominent, the cityscape soon becomes residential. Suddenly, a love hotel appears in view. Next to it is a park where children play. The extremely unbalanced scenery leaves an indescribable feeling, Yagisawa writes.
The area around Ayase was a rice paddy area until the start of the period of high economic growth. Before it was developed into residential areas, love hotels were built. It was then developed into residential areas, creating a scenery that Yagisawa describes as “untamed.”
Shinji Minato
After Miyano and one other youth, Jo Ogura, then 17, were arrested in another rape case, police uncovered their involvement in the disappearance of Furuta. During questioning, Miyano told police where to find her body, which was found on March 29.
A court later handed the youths differing prison sentences: Minato, between five and nine years; Ogura, between five and 10 years; and Miyano 20 years. The fourth youth, Yasushi Watanabe, then 16, received a term of between five and seven years.
Since the verdict was handed down, Watanabe has remained the only one of the four to avoid further trouble with the law.
Five years after his release from prison in 1999, Ogura was arrested for assaulting and confining the manager of a “snack” hostess club. He was sentenced to a four-year term, which he completed in 2009.
After Miyano was released from prison in 2009, he changed his name 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 company employee in the right shoulder with a metal baton on a road in Kawaguchi City, Saitama Prefecture. He also slashed the victim’s throat with a knife.
Minato went to trial for attempted murder. Despite the notoriety of the Furuta case, the arrest of Minato and his trial did not receive mainstream media attention. The next year, a court handed him a suspended prison term.
Young women with children
Since the beginning of 2009, Yagisawa has walked through Ayase many times. Each time, he gets off at Ayase Station and heads to the house where the crime occurred.
About 15 minutes from the station, the house in question sits on a corner. It was demolished after the incident, but the lot is still the same as it was back then.
While walking here from the station one day, Yagisawa notices young women with children. They seemed to be in their 30s or 40s.
Yagisawa asks one of the women their thoughts on the Minato family.
“We bought a detached house around here in 1972,” the woman 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 though the house has been demolished the electric pole that the boys used at the time to enter and exit the house directly from the second floor without using the front door still remains.
“Karma will not disappear”
Minato was born in 1972, the same year the family moved to Ayase. His parents were Communist Party members and were strict with him, Yagisawa writes.
To get a better feel for the area, the author goes to a bar near the crime scene. Inside, two men sit drinking beer.
At the counter, Yagisawa orders some yakitori. He then asks them about the state of the neighborhood 20 years ago. One of them says that the existence of boarding houses and the metropolitan housing in the area caused delinquency.
“There were a lot of people who didn’t have proper jobs,” the man 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 men left, he asks the owner of the bar about the crime. He remembers the perpetrators and their friends coming to buy 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 were those marks on their hands, Yagisawa surmises that may have been forced to run errands for the head of a gang.
For Yagisawa, he remains puzzled as to how the ghastly murder of Furuta could have unfolded all those years ago.
“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.
