Serial child-killer hanged as Japan steps up death
penalty
Published Date: 18 June 2008
ONE of Japan's most notorious serial
killers, who murdered and mutilated four little girls and reportedly drank the
blood of one of them, was hanged yesterday.
Tsutomu Miyazaki, 45, killed the
girls, aged four to seven, in the late 1980s. He burned one victim's body and
left her bones on her parents' doorstep. Japanese newspaper reports said he ate
part of the hand of another girl and drank her blood.
Miyazaki was one of three men hanged yesterday – the others were Shinji Mutsuda, 45, who was convicted of murdering and robbing two people, and Yoshio Yamasaki, 73, who was convicted of killing two people for insurance money.
That took the number of executions in Japan to 13 in only six months, as a pro-death-penalty justice minister and rising fears over violent crime – such as the recent deaths of seven people in a stabbing rampage in Tokyo – have combined to boost acceptance of capital punishment.
In contrast, only one inmate was executed in all of 2005.
http://news.scotsman.com/world/Serial-childkiller-hanged-as-Japan.4194794.jp
(AFP)
– Jun 16, 2008
TOKYO (AFP) — Japan on Tuesday
executed three people including notorious serial killer Tsutomu Miyazaki, a
fetishist convicted of murdering four little girls and eating some of their
bodies, officials said.
Miyazaki, 45, was nicknamed the
"killer nerd" for his obsession with sexual cartoons and pornography.
But defence lawyers contended he was mentally ill and could not be held fully
responsible for his actions.
Japan is the only major
industrialised nation other than the United States to apply the death penalty
and has been stepping up the pace of executions, which enjoy wide public
support.
"We are carrying out executions
by selecting the people whom we can execute with a feeling of confidence and
responsibility," Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama told a news conference.
The executions come one week after
Japan saw a deadly stabbing spree in a Tokyo neighbourhood known for nerd
culture, carried out by a troubled young auto worker who sent messages of
despair over the Internet.
Miyazaki was arrested in July 1989
while trying to take naked pictures of a girl outdoors and the details that
emerged from his case stunned Japan.
He confessed to having killed four
girls, aged between four and seven, in Tokyo and its suburbs and eating some of
the remains of two of them.
Miyazaki mutilated the bodies of the
victims, slept next to the corpses and drank their blood.
He sent letters to the media under a
woman's name claiming responsibility for the crimes and sent a box containing
the remains of a slaughtered girl to her family.
"The atrocious murder of four
girls to satisfy his sexual desire leaves no room for leniency," Chief
Justice Tokiyasu Fujita said in January 2006 when he upheld his death sentence.
"The crime is cold-blooded and
cruel," he said.
When police arrested Miyazaki, they
found about 6,000 videotapes, many of which contained horrific footage, at his
home in Saitama prefecture, near Tokyo.
During the nearly two-decade
judicial process, Miyazaki never uttered a word of remorse to the victims and
their families. He cryptically said that a "rat man" -- a cartoonish
image of which he drew -- committed the crimes.
He also distanced himself from his
family. When his father, unable to come to terms with what his son did, jumped
into a river to his death in 1994, Miyazaki wrote to a publisher: "I feel
refreshed."
But court-appointed psychiatrists
agreed with defence lawyers that Miyazaki was mentally ill.
One finding was that Miyazaki
suffered from a multiple personality disorder, while a second said he was
schizophrenic.
Hirokazu Hasegawa, a clinical
psychologist who saw Miyazaki in 2006, said the killer believed his crimes
would resurrect his grandfather, who died three months before the grandson
committed his first crime in 1988.
"What he told me lastly was
'Please tell the world that I'm a gentle man', " Hasegawa said at the
time.
The death penalty enjoys wide
support in Japan, despite criticism from the country's human rights groups and
lawyers, as well as the European Union.
Japan had a de facto moratorium on
executions for 15 months until 2006 as the then justice minister, Seiken
Sugiura, said the death penalty went against his Buddhist beliefs.
Since then, Japan has executed 23
people. More than 100 people remain on death row.
The other two inmates who were
executed Tuesday were both convicted murders, Shinji Mutsuda and Yoshio
Yamasaki, a justice ministry statement said.
Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights
reserved.
From The Times
June 18, 2008
Japanese 'cannibal killer' Tsutomu Miyazaki executed
in Tokyo
Leo Lewis in Tokyo
Japan’s most reviled serial killer –
a “cannibal nerd” who preyed on primary-school girls and drank their blood –
has been executed in Tokyo.
The hanging of 45-year old Tsutomu
Miyazaki brings to 13 the number of death-row inmates who have faced the
gallows since last August: a pace that has provoked rising criticism of Japan’s
new justice minister, Kunio Hatoyama.
But even amid growing public
discomfort in Japan over the continued use of the death penalty, the hanging of
Miyazaki raised few little in the way of condemnation.
His crimes may have taken place two
decades ago, but the mere mention of Miyazaki’s name remains sickening for many
Japanese. Unrepentant throughout his long run of trials and appeals, Miyazaki
entered Japan’s public consciousness as one of the worst monsters the country
had produced.
A voracious sexual predator, he
kidnapped girls aged between four and seven years old, molested and murdered
them. In some cases he ate parts of their bodies, in others he slept next to
their corpses.
"The atrocious murder of four
girls to satisfy his sexual desire leaves no room for leniency," Chief
Justice Tokiyasu Fujita said in January 2006 when Miyazaki’s final appeal was
thrown out and the death penalty handed down.
During his trial, Miyazaki sketched
cartoons and often talked nonsensically. He blamed the outrages of which he was
accused on a “rat man” alter-ego of himself – a character he also drew in
cartoon for the court. Miyazaki’s defence rested in the argument of his lawyers
that he was not mentally fit to be held responsible for his crimes.
Court-ordered psychiatric examinations reached no unified conclusions.
His extraordinary appetites for
pornography and manga comics gave the Japanese media its first example of a
“killer geek”. Since then, it is a label that has been repeatedly applied to
any murderer who appears to share those tastes – last week’s stabbing frenzy in
Tokyo’s Akihabara electronics district was carried out by a man instantly
branded in the public eye as a killer geek.
For his victims’ families and
Japanese society at large, the Miyazaki killings were particularly shattering.
Miyazaki began his spree of abductions and killings at the very peak of Japan’s
1980s economic bubble – a phase where the country’s mighty corporations seemed
to hold the world at their feet and society boasted of its unique “harmony”.
Miyazaki’s hanging, which was
carried out with the executions of two other convicted murderers yesterday,
comes as the question of Japan’s continued commitment to the death penalty has
come under close scrutiny. The country is to introduce jury trials for murder
cases next year, and the question of how far ordinary Japanese will be happy to
sentence criminals to death has yet to be resolved.
Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda told
reporters yesterday that there had been no discussion about halting the
executions. “In Japan, the majority view is that capital punishment should be
maintained, so I feel no need to change what we have continued doing until
now.”
Nerd cult murderer executed
A serial child murderer was executed in Japan today, two decades after he began a reign of terror in Tokyo's suburbs by abducting, killing and eating parts of four young girls.
11:46AM BST
17 Jun 2008
Tsutomu
Miyazaki, 45, revelled in his crimes in 1988 and 1989 and was the first serial
killer to be linked to the "Otaku", or nerd, cult in Japan.
Gaining
aliases such as Dracula and Little Girl Murderer, he seized girls aged between
four and seven years old before killing them.
He
cremated the remains of one of the girls and left the ashes on her parents's
doorstep. Miyazaki also taunted the police and victims' families in letters,
describing in detail what he had done to their children.
But
on July 23, 1989, he attempted to mutilate a girl in a park in the Tokyo suburb
of Saitama and fled. Returning later to collect his car, he was arrested.
Police
who searched Miyazaki's small flat found 5,763 videos, including violent anime
manga that quickly earned him the title the "Otaku murderer".
Throughout
the court hearings in his case, Miyazaki refused to apologise to the parents of
the girls and instead insisted he had done "a good job".
Miyazaki,
who was born premature with deformed hands, told judges that he committed the
crimes "in my dreams" or blamed his actions on being scared because a
"rat person" had appeared and ordered him to kill the girls.
Japan's
Supreme Court had upheld his death sentence in January.
Despite
mainly harmless associations with Japanese cartoons and films, the public fear
of the "Otaku" cult has never really abated since Miyazaki's crimes,
and was substantially fuelled on June 8 when Tomohiro Kato, a 25-year-old
loner, went on a knife rampage in Tokyo's Otaku district of Akihabara, killing
seven people and injuring 10 others.
Miyazaki
was among three men hanged today, justice minister Kunio Hatoyama said.
The
others were Shinji Mutsuda, 45, who had been convicted of robbery and murder,
and 73-year-old Yoshio Yamasaki had been found guilty of killing two people to
claim insurance payouts.
"I
ordered the executions because the cases were of indescribable cruelty",
Mr Hatoyama said.
"We
are carrying out executions in order to achieve justice and to firmly protect
the rule of law."
Miyazaki
unrepentant to the last / Serial child killer goes to execution without
apologizing or explaining his thinking
The Yomiuri Shimbun
 |
| In this picture taken in August 1989, Tsutomu Miyazaki shows investigators the scene of one of his crimes in Koto Ward, Tokyo. |
Twenty years after his crimes stunned the nation, serial
child killer Tsutomu Miyazaki was executed Tuesday. To the very last, however,
he refused to lay bare the inner workings of his mind or apologize to his
victims' families.
Miyazaki mutilated young girls' bodies in his room, which
was cluttered with videotapes, and left the remains of one victim at the
entrance to her house. Though he was subjected to several psychiatric tests,
little was ever discovered about the workings of his mind.
After the Supreme Court finalized his death sentence in
February 2006, Miyazaki reportedly said: "This has to be wrong. I'll be
proved innocent someday."
Hiroyuki Shinoda, the editor of monthly magazine The
Tsukuru, exchanged more than 300 letters with Miyazaki.
"Until last month, I received letters twice a month
from Miyazaki. He would write about his recent situation in detail, such as what
he ate."
"I think even Miyazaki thought his execution day was
still a long way off," he added.
In February 2006, Miyazaki published a compilation of his
correspondence with Shinoda.
Commenting on the top court's finalization on the death
sentence, Miyazaki wrote in a letter:
"This is silly. That judge will be
sorry. He must be an idiot."
He also mentioned the four young girls whom he murdered and
their family members in one particularly provocative letter: "There's
nothing much to say about them. I'm happy to think I did a good deed."
At a hearing at the Tokyo District Court that began in March
1990, Miyazaki demanded the return of his videotape collection and his car.
He also made some incomprehensible comments, such as "A
rat man has appeared," before withdrawing into his own world.
The main issue in the court proceedings, which took about 16
years to be finalized, was Miyazaki's mental competency--an issue complicated
by the fact the various psychiatric examinations came to three different conclusions.
In his book, Miyazaki wrote, "I feel like trying a
psychiatric examination again," indicating an obsession with the test.
Kaoru Kobayashi, 39, was sentenced to death for abducting
and murdering a 7-year-old girl in Nara in 2004. Kobayashi reportedly said
during questioning, "As the second Tsutomu Miyazaki, I hope what I've done
will be remembered."
In response, Miyazaki wrote in his book, "I won't allow
him to call himself 'the second Tsutomu Miyazaki' when he hasn't even undergone
a psychiatric examination."
In a letter he sent to Shinoda in 2007, Miyazaki strongly
demanded that Japan adopt a different method of capital punishment.
"Under the current execution method [in Japan], death
row inmates have to suffer great fear at the time of their execution, and
therefore won't have a chance to feel regret for what they've done. For this
reason, we should switch to lethal injections of the kind used in the United
States."
Looking back on his correspondence with Miyazaki, Shinoda
said Tuesday: "He never wrote anything that indicated he was scared of the
execution. He behaved as if it was something that was going to happen to
someone else."
"After his death sentence was finalized, he regularly
complained of hearing things. But I never really figured out what was going on
in his mind," Shinoda added.
===
Ministry moved quickly
The Justice Ministry moved relatively quickly to carry out
the execution of Miyazaki, which took place only two years and four months
after the sentence was finalized.
Miyazaki and his chief lawyer had planned to request a
retrial. But the ministry made clear it planned to carry out the execution
without further delay.
Over the past 10 years, the average elapsed time between
finalization of a death sentence and execution has been eight years. It tends
to take even longer when death row inmates appeal.
In Miyazaki's case, his lawyer in late May notified Justice
Minister Kunio Hatoyama in writing that they were preparing to request a
retrial, making it unusual for the ministry to proceed with the execution in
such circumstances.
In the appeal hearing, Miyazaki's lawyer used medical
records from his time in the Tokyo Detention House to argue that he suffered
from a mental disorder.
The Criminal Procedure Code stipulates that an execution
should be halted in the event that a death row inmate is deemed to have a
mental disorder. In light of this, it would not have been unusual for the
ministry to show more caution over pressing ahead with Miyazaki's execution.
(Jun. 18, 2008)
Japan Hangs Three Killers As Pace of Executions Rises
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
TOKYO, June 17 -- Japan
hanged three convicted murderers on Tuesday, bringing the number of executions
to 13 in the past six months and ramping up the pace of capital punishment to
the highest level in more than three decades.
There is broad public support here for the death penalty,
and one of those hanged on Tuesday was among the most reviled serial killers in
Japan's recent history.
Tsutomu Miyazaki, 45, killed four young girls in the late
1980s and left the charred bones of one 4-year-old victim on her parents'
doorstep. The Supreme Court, rejecting his final appeal, said he was motivated
by a desire for sex and to make videos with his victims' corpses.
Still, Japan, host next month to a summit of the Group of
Eight industrialized powers, is under mounting international pressure to halt
executions.
The U.N. General Assembly, in a nonbinding resolution passed
in December, called on all countries to impose a moratorium on executions as a
step toward abolishing the death penalty. Human rights groups, the European
Union and some Japanese legislators are also leaning on the Tokyo government to
impose a moratorium.
Japan and the United States are the only G-8 members that
carry out the death penalty. According to Amnesty International, 24 countries
conducted executions last year.
On Tuesday, however, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda ruled out
any change in policy. "The majority want it maintained," he told news
agencies from the G-8 countries. "I feel there is no need to change it,
but we must also keep an eye on world opinion."
In an effort to placate critics, Japan in December modified
its practice of shrouding executions in secrecy. It now publicly releases the
names and crimes of those hanged -- on the day they are executed. Previously,
the information was leaked to newspapers.
The three hangings Tuesday followed 10 others since Justice
Minister Kunio Hatoyama took office.
Hatoyama announced in September that he might eliminate a
rule requiring the justice minister's signature for every execution. That would
allow the government to automatically execute death row inmates within six
months after the end of their last appeal, according to Amnesty International.
There now 102 people on death row.
In a statement Tuesday, Amnesty said the quickening pace of
executions here is "proof that Japan is moving to routinely execute inmates
in large numbers."
Hatoyama denied this and said, "I'm conducting
executions solemnly." He added that he ordered Tuesday's executions
because "the cases were of indescribable cruelty."
The hangings took place nine days after a young man with a
knife killed seven people in a random attack in downtown Tokyo. Police said
Tuesday that they had arrested four people who used the Internet to threaten
similar attacks.
There is rising anxiety in Japan about violent crime,
although the rate of random violent attacks has not increased significantly in
the past decade.
June 18, 2008
Japan Hangs Three Convicted Killers
By MARTIN FOSTER
TOKYO — Three convicted murderers
were hanged on Tuesday, the Justice Ministry said, a sign that Japan is accelerating the
pace of executions amid a rise in violent crime.
Tsutomu Miyazaki, 45, was hanged for
the murder of four young girls he mutilated and cannibalized. In a case that
focused on the defendant’s mental ability to stand trial, Mr. Miyazaki told the
court that the girls were killed by a “mouse-man.” He asked the judge for a
bicycle to pedal while in prison.
Also executed were Shinji Mutsuda,
37, who robbed and murdered two people before throwing their bodies into the
ocean, and Yoshio Yamasaki, 73, who killed two people for insurance money.
That brought the number of
executions under Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama, who took office last August,
to 13, the highest rate of executions in the post-World War II period.
“I ordered their executions because
the cases were of indescribable cruelty,” Mr. Hatoyama said. “We are pursuing
executions in order to achieve justice and firmly protect the rule of law.”
On April 10, four people were
executed in a single day on orders from Mr. Hatoyama.
The acceleration in executions,
which must be approved by the minister of justice, comes at a time of rising
crime in Japan. Last week, the country was stunned by a stabbing rampage in
Akihabara, a shopping district in Tokyo, that left seven dead.
“I think the timing of today’s
executions on the heels of the Akihabara killings,” said Jeff Kingston,
director of Asia studies at Temple University Japan, “was designed to send out
a reassuring message to the Japanese people that the full sentence will be
carried out.” Although organizations opposing the death sentence do exist in
Japan, the lack of reaction from the Japanese general public suggests there is
support for executions.
Amnesty International
Japan protested the hangings on Tuesday and demanded that Japan abolish capital
punishment, The Associated Press reported. But Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said Tuesday there
was no need for a change, citing popular support for the death penalty.
Mr. Kingston expressed doubt that
Japan would join the countries that have, or are looking to abolish, the death
sentence.
“Japan is out of step with the rest
of the world on the death penalty,” Kingston said. “But they appear to be tied
to this policy, which does not appear to be a strong deterrent.”
PLEASE GO TO THIS BLOG POST TO SEE MY THOUGHTS ON HIS EXECUTION.
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