On December 20, 2022, the Saitama District Court handed Kazuharu Shimada, a one-time member of the Yamaguchi-gumi criminal syndicate, a 20-year prison term over the murder of a male employee of a bar in Kawaguchi City, Saitama Prefecture about six years before.
The ruling was a milestone in a tale of murder that was covered up by somewhat tight-lipped accomplices and the use of a machine that is typically makes negitoro, which is minced fatty tuna mixed with green onions.
Obviously, this was no ordinary murder. Up to seven people participated in the fatal assault of 24-year-old Tatsunari Ito. His body was never found because the culprits ground it in the machine and later burned it.
In addition to there being no body, Ito was not immediately reported missing, meaning the crime was not discovered until police received a tip several years later.
Despite the spectacular manner in which the crime was carried out, most of those involved were not charged because the statute of limitations had expired on multiple charges. Shimada was the only defendant charged with murder.
The trial was tumultuous, yet did not receive media coverage proportional to the outlandishness of the crime. For what exactly transpired, The Tokyo Reporter editorial team has broken the tale into five parts. To start, we introduce the key players in the crime.
“Dismembered him with a machine”
The scene of the crime was Hawaiian Bar Lapule in the Nishi Kawaguchi red-light district of Kawaguchi. Early on March 18, 2016, seven men and one woman assaulted Ito, a bar employee at the time, until he died.
The key players in the crime were Shimada and Junya Motohashi, who owned Lapule. The other participants were three unnamed henchman working in a group of criminals overseen by Motohashi, his girlfriend and his driver.
As time passed, the perpetrators probably surmised that they had gotten away with murder. In essence, the perfect crime. That changed in December 2018.
“It was then that the police received an anonymous tip about ‘a person was assaulted and murdered at a bar in Nishi Kawaguchi, and the body was dumped,'” a local reporter tells weekly tabloid Shukan Bunshun (Nov. 2021). “The police then began an investigation.”
In February 2019, the police first explained the situation to Ito’s father and had him file a missing persons report. The investigation then ramped up.
In the first half of October 2021, police arrested the seven on suspicion of assault. Complicating matters, however, was that Motohashi committed suicide by hanging himself at the Kawaguchi Police Station on October 28, just weeks after his arrest. Aged 52, he left behind a suicide note.
The following month, the Saitama District Public Prosecutors Office indicted Shimada, then aged 54, on charges of murder. According to police, he made a shocking statement during questioning: “After killing him, I froze him in a freezer at a market and dismembered him with a machine.”
“Apparently lost his temper”
The incident began on the evening before the killing. At first, Motohashi and others gathered for drinks at Lapule. It was later that Motohashi summoned the three henchmen.
“Ito at one point was the boyfriend of Shimada’s daughter,” a person with knowledge of Motohashi’s ring tells the magazine. “Ito had been using a smartphone under his daughter’s name, but Shimada apparently lost his temper when he didn’t pay the bill [after they broke up]. Apparently, the daughter had consulted with Shimada about her relationship with Ito, and this was what led to the assault.”
At some point that evening, Motohashi began to question Ito about the aforementioned smartphone and allegations that he may have swindled customers at the bar.
Motohashi then took out his phone and called Shimada. Upon arriving at the bar, Shimada took Ito to the restroom while questioning him. After punching him, he immediately left the restroom. But by this time Motohashi had entered the space, and the assault began.
Scattered the pulverized remains
After the assault, which very possibly ended in the strangulation of Ito, the perpetrators carried his body out of the bar.
“During the interrogation of the seven, they said that they froze the body, dismembered it and dumped it,” a member of the Saitama Prefectural Police tells the magazine. “According to their statements, the body was frozen in a large freezer for tuna and other fish at a market in Saitama for up to five days. After freezing the body, they used a tuna-cutting machine to dismember it into between six and 8 pieces, and then they froze it again.”
One of the perpetrators also said that they later mixed it with some fish in a mincing machine for negitoro, and scattered the pulverized remains in a scrap yard.
“It is still unclear whether Ito died when he was strangled during the assault or when he was frozen,” the same police source says.
As to the “tuna-cutting machine,” that was a bandsaw, which is a saw with a blade that moves vertically at high speed.
“An automatic bandsaw can be used to cut frozen tuna and meat into blocks,” another member of the Saitama police says, “and has enough power that a human can easily be cut into small pieces.”
It is not surprising then that Ito’s body was never found.
“But since DNA found on the machine matched Ito’s,” the second officer says, “it seems that it was used to dispose of the body.”
The players > The victim > The smartphones > The witnesses > The verdict
