Last year, the famous Japanese journalist Kiyomizu Shimizu's "Okegawa Stalker Murder Case" was released in simplified Chinese, becoming one of Douban's "Most Popular Books" in 2021, and it can be described as the dark horse of the year in the publishing industry. This is a book full of records of a woman who was stalked and murdered in 1999. It tells how a girl was killed three times: the first time by a criminal, the second time by police who did not investigate, and the third time The second is the media that hurt her reputation.
Following the "Okegawa Stalker Murder Case", Kiyomizu Shimizu's masterpiece "The Case of the Continuous Disappearance of Ashikaga Girls" was published in July this year. The "Ashikaga Incident" described in the book has bizarre twists and turns, and can be called a novel: five girls have disappeared for no reason in the past seventeen years. Some of these little girls are still missing, and some are found with a cold body. More importantly, an innocent person was imprisoned for seventeen and a half years because of improper police investigation, fabricated evidence, and false confessions, but the real culprit is still at large. By reporting this case, Shimizu not only saved a person's life, but also pierced the huge dark side of Japanese justice.
"Through this book, I want to say that the 'Ashikaga Incident' that has been rehabilitated is not the end, but the beginning." Shimizu said, "In Japan, the five innocent girls with the weakest voices have disappeared from the world. I will not stop there. Give it up. Absolutely not."
On May 12, 1990, in Ashikaga City, Tochigi Prefecture, the 4-year-old girl Matsuda Masada went missing in a pinball game hall. The next day, the girl's body was found by the Watarase River not far from the arcade, along with the girl's shirt with the murderer's body fluids. The police determined that this was a case of kidnapping, molesting, and killing children.
Before that, in 1979 and 1984, 5-year-old girl Fukushima Manya and 5-year-old girl Hasebe Yumi also disappeared in Ashikaga City, Tochigi Prefecture; in 1987, another 8-year-old girl Tomoko Osawa was in Gunma Prefecture Ota city disappeared. Of the three girls, the bodies of two were dumped by the river and one was abandoned on the farmland. The four cases actually occurred in the same area (the junction of Ashikaga City, Tochigi Prefecture and Ota City, Gunma Prefecture), but the Tochigi Prefectural Police only care about cases in Tochigi Prefecture, and the Gunma Prefectural Police only care about cases in Gunma Prefecture.
In 1991, when investigating the true disappearance of Matsuda, the Tochigi prefectural police arrested the kindergarten school bus driver Tochika Suga with the results of DNA identification, and identified him as the murderer of the three cases in the prefecture. After 13 hours of interrogation, the Suga family confessed, saying that they had come to the riverside with Matsuda on a bicycle and killed him. However, it is strange that, in addition to the Matsuda real case, the other two Ashikaga cases confessed by the Suga family were ultimately not prosecuted due to insufficient evidence. After he was sentenced to prison, he repeatedly overturned his previous confessions and advocated his innocence.
What is even more frightening is that just when the public believed that the murderer of the serial child murder case had been arrested and imprisoned, in 1996, in Ota City, Gunma Prefecture, a 4-year-old girl named Yukari Yokoyama disappeared. It seemed to announce that the nightmare was not over.
In 2007, Kiyoshi Shimizu noticed the unsolved Yukari case of Yokoyama and the previous disappearance of a girl. He suspected that it was a cross-regional serial killing of children, and found that the sentence of the Suga family was also suspicious: why was only one case prosecuted in the end? Why did the Suga family overturn the previous confession many times after being imprisoned? Why did the tragedy not stop after the Suga family was arrested?
He began to investigate. Although they could not meet in prison, the Suga family used a letter to tell Shimizu Kiyoshi that they had been tortured by the police: "No matter how I explained that I didn't kill anyone, they wouldn't listen. They kicked my calf under the table and tried to force my way to the ground. Then he grabbed my hair and scolded: 'Don't pretend to be stupid!' I wanted to be freed from the interrogation too much, so I made a false confession. I'm too weak." When looking at the Suga family's previous letters, Shimizu said that I found this sentence: "I still have 2,000 yen of tax left to pay, please help me pay it. I have caused trouble to the city government, and I will ask you to pay the tax."
Not only that, there was no eyewitness testimony in the trial materials of the case, but Qingqing found that two eyewitnesses had given detailed testimony. One said that the murderer looked like "Lupin" in the comic "Lupin III". , tall and thin, which is completely opposite to the appearance of the Suga family; the other drew a sketch of the murderer leading the girl at the time, which is completely different from the statement that the Suga family carried the girl on a bicycle. The most important thing is that Shimizu learned from Matsuda Shin's mother that 4-year-old Little Shin would never ride on the back seat of a bicycle, which was enough to overturn the Suga family's "cycling" confession and the police's lies.
As for the most effective "evidence" DNA type identification that year, Qingshui also turned to a number of experts, and unexpectedly found that the DNA type identification in the early 1990s was likely to have huge flaws due to immature technology. In addition, the police equated the Suga family with "lolicon" only because of the Suga family's identity as a kindergarten school bus driver and the existence of adult videos. With all kinds of evidence, Shimizu overturned the 17-year unjust case in one fell swoop, prompting Suga Lihe to be acquitted. This caused a sensation in Japan that year. 
However, despite Suga's reconciliation, the truth remains unknown. Decades have passed, and the case of the missing girl remains unsolved.
The families of the girls who were killed are suffering. Fukushima Manya's father, Fukushima Jean, said: "It has been 30 years before we suddenly told us that this was an unjust case, and the real culprit has escaped legal punishment because of the statute of limitations. Should he be allowed to go unpunished like this?"
"A decision of the Supreme Court of Japan deprived an innocent person of freedom and time; even more terrifying, it gave the real murderer 'special grace' - an hourglass called 'limitation'. Even if the Japanese judicial organs in the future Acknowledging the mistake and giving justice to the Suga family, the culprit still won the 'Gold Medal'." Regarding the incomplete truth, Shimizu even felt that he should listen to the voices of the little girls under the Jiuquan, and he kept telling himself that he should Flip that game of Othello and make the truth public.
He also discovered that the "Ashikaga Girl Continuous Disappearance Incident" is actually quite similar to the "Okegawa stalker murder case": the police will call it a trick for self-protection, and the media will be firmly manipulated by the indistinguishable information provided by the police. . He writes books just to get the message out.
The book received a great response after it was published in Japan. It won the Japan Reasoning Writers Association Award, the Trendy Documentary Award, was nominated for the Otaku Soichi Nonfiction Literature Award, and was named the best book of the year by the Kinokuniya Bookstore. The book deserves readers' attention, in addition to the truth of the incident itself, there are many sharp and realistic questions, such as child abduction, women's safety, victim guilt theory, wrongful convictions and miscarriages of justice, media coverage disputes, etc. It is reported that the Matsuda family had suffered serious reporting injuries. The media had surrounded their home, filming day and night, and even live broadcasts of the wake and funeral.
"There are victims and bereaved family members at the scene. They were injured by murderers and false reports. I try to get close to these injured souls, listen to and spread their weak voices." Shimizu Kiyomi, born in Tokyo in 1958, is now a reporter and commentator for the Nippon TV News Bureau. Member, part-time lecturer at the Graduate School of Journalism, Waseda University. He said that no matter how weak the voice is, one must listen, and no matter how strong the voice is, one dares to question it.
Following the "Okegawa Stalker Murder Case", Kiyomizu Shimizu's masterpiece "The Case of the Continuous Disappearance of Ashikaga Girls" was published in July this year. The "Ashikaga Incident" described in the book has bizarre twists and turns, and can be called a novel: five girls have disappeared for no reason in the past seventeen years. Some of these little girls are still missing, and some are found with a cold body. More importantly, an innocent person was imprisoned for seventeen and a half years because of improper police investigation, fabricated evidence, and false confessions, but the real culprit is still at large. By reporting this case, Shimizu not only saved a person's life, but also pierced the huge dark side of Japanese justice.
"Through this book, I want to say that the 'Ashikaga Incident' that has been rehabilitated is not the end, but the beginning." Shimizu said, "In Japan, the five innocent girls with the weakest voices have disappeared from the world. I will not stop there. Give it up. Absolutely not."
On May 12, 1990, in Ashikaga City, Tochigi Prefecture, the 4-year-old girl Matsuda Masada went missing in a pinball game hall. The next day, the girl's body was found by the Watarase River not far from the arcade, along with the girl's shirt with the murderer's body fluids. The police determined that this was a case of kidnapping, molesting, and killing children.Before that, in 1979 and 1984, 5-year-old girl Fukushima Manya and 5-year-old girl Hasebe Yumi also disappeared in Ashikaga City, Tochigi Prefecture; in 1987, another 8-year-old girl Tomoko Osawa was in Gunma Prefecture Ota city disappeared. Of the three girls, the bodies of two were dumped by the river and one was abandoned on the farmland. The four cases actually occurred in the same area (the junction of Ashikaga City, Tochigi Prefecture and Ota City, Gunma Prefecture), but the Tochigi Prefectural Police only care about cases in Tochigi Prefecture, and the Gunma Prefectural Police only care about cases in Gunma Prefecture.
In 1991, when investigating the true disappearance of Matsuda, the Tochigi prefectural police arrested the kindergarten school bus driver Tochika Suga with the results of DNA identification, and identified him as the murderer of the three cases in the prefecture. After 13 hours of interrogation, the Suga family confessed, saying that they had come to the riverside with Matsuda on a bicycle and killed him. However, it is strange that, in addition to the Matsuda real case, the other two Ashikaga cases confessed by the Suga family were ultimately not prosecuted due to insufficient evidence. After he was sentenced to prison, he repeatedly overturned his previous confessions and advocated his innocence.
What is even more frightening is that just when the public believed that the murderer of the serial child murder case had been arrested and imprisoned, in 1996, in Ota City, Gunma Prefecture, a 4-year-old girl named Yukari Yokoyama disappeared. It seemed to announce that the nightmare was not over.
In 2007, Kiyoshi Shimizu noticed the unsolved Yukari case of Yokoyama and the previous disappearance of a girl. He suspected that it was a cross-regional serial killing of children, and found that the sentence of the Suga family was also suspicious: why was only one case prosecuted in the end? Why did the Suga family overturn the previous confession many times after being imprisoned? Why did the tragedy not stop after the Suga family was arrested?He began to investigate. Although they could not meet in prison, the Suga family used a letter to tell Shimizu Kiyoshi that they had been tortured by the police: "No matter how I explained that I didn't kill anyone, they wouldn't listen. They kicked my calf under the table and tried to force my way to the ground. Then he grabbed my hair and scolded: 'Don't pretend to be stupid!' I wanted to be freed from the interrogation too much, so I made a false confession. I'm too weak." When looking at the Suga family's previous letters, Shimizu said that I found this sentence: "I still have 2,000 yen of tax left to pay, please help me pay it. I have caused trouble to the city government, and I will ask you to pay the tax."
Not only that, there was no eyewitness testimony in the trial materials of the case, but Qingqing found that two eyewitnesses had given detailed testimony. One said that the murderer looked like "Lupin" in the comic "Lupin III". , tall and thin, which is completely opposite to the appearance of the Suga family; the other drew a sketch of the murderer leading the girl at the time, which is completely different from the statement that the Suga family carried the girl on a bicycle. The most important thing is that Shimizu learned from Matsuda Shin's mother that 4-year-old Little Shin would never ride on the back seat of a bicycle, which was enough to overturn the Suga family's "cycling" confession and the police's lies.
As for the most effective "evidence" DNA type identification that year, Qingshui also turned to a number of experts, and unexpectedly found that the DNA type identification in the early 1990s was likely to have huge flaws due to immature technology. In addition, the police equated the Suga family with "lolicon" only because of the Suga family's identity as a kindergarten school bus driver and the existence of adult videos. With all kinds of evidence, Shimizu overturned the 17-year unjust case in one fell swoop, prompting Suga Lihe to be acquitted. This caused a sensation in Japan that year. However, despite Suga's reconciliation, the truth remains unknown. Decades have passed, and the case of the missing girl remains unsolved.The families of the girls who were killed are suffering. Fukushima Manya's father, Fukushima Jean, said: "It has been 30 years before we suddenly told us that this was an unjust case, and the real culprit has escaped legal punishment because of the statute of limitations. Should he be allowed to go unpunished like this?"
"A decision of the Supreme Court of Japan deprived an innocent person of freedom and time; even more terrifying, it gave the real murderer 'special grace' - an hourglass called 'limitation'. Even if the Japanese judicial organs in the future Acknowledging the mistake and giving justice to the Suga family, the culprit still won the 'Gold Medal'." Regarding the incomplete truth, Shimizu even felt that he should listen to the voices of the little girls under the Jiuquan, and he kept telling himself that he should Flip that game of Othello and make the truth public.
He also discovered that the "Ashikaga Girl Continuous Disappearance Incident" is actually quite similar to the "Okegawa stalker murder case": the police will call it a trick for self-protection, and the media will be firmly manipulated by the indistinguishable information provided by the police. . He writes books just to get the message out.The book received a great response after it was published in Japan. It won the Japan Reasoning Writers Association Award, the Trendy Documentary Award, was nominated for the Otaku Soichi Nonfiction Literature Award, and was named the best book of the year by the Kinokuniya Bookstore. The book deserves readers' attention, in addition to the truth of the incident itself, there are many sharp and realistic questions, such as child abduction, women's safety, victim guilt theory, wrongful convictions and miscarriages of justice, media coverage disputes, etc. It is reported that the Matsuda family had suffered serious reporting injuries. The media had surrounded their home, filming day and night, and even live broadcasts of the wake and funeral.
"There are victims and bereaved family members at the scene. They were injured by murderers and false reports. I try to get close to these injured souls, listen to and spread their weak voices." Shimizu Kiyomi, born in Tokyo in 1958, is now a reporter and commentator for the Nippon TV News Bureau. Member, part-time lecturer at the Graduate School of Journalism, Waseda University. He said that no matter how weak the voice is, one must listen, and no matter how strong the voice is, one dares to question it.
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