Kobe child murders
Sakakibara (also Seito Sakakibara (酒鬼薔薇聖斗, Sakakibara Seito)) is the moniker of a (at the time) 14-year-old student from Kobe, Japan who murdered an 11-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl between March and May of 1997. Also identified as Onibara (due to an error in reporting by the Japanese media), his real name has not been released to the press as per Japanese legal procedures prohibiting the identification of juvenile offenders, and he is officially referred to as "Boy A" in Japanese legal documentation.
The murders
On May 27, 1997, the head of Jun Hase (Hase Jun)(ca. 1986 - May 27, 1997), a student at Tainohata Elementary School, was found in front of the school gate hours before students arrived for classes. Hase had apparently been beheaded with a knife, with further mutilations being done before being left at the front. [1] A note, written in red pen, was found stuffed in his mouth, identifying the killer as "Sakakibara." The note read:
"This is the beginning of the game... You police guys stop me if you can... I desperately want to see people die, it is a thrill for me to commit murder. A bloody judgment is needed for my years of great bitterness."
Additionally, some English was on the note as well: "shooll [sic] kill".
Police commented that the style of Hase's killing and the note was reminiscent of that of the Zodiac murders in the San Francisco area during the late 1960s.
Other letters and "Onibara"
On June 6, a letter was sent to the newspaper Kobe Shimbun, in which Sakakibara claimed responsibility for the slaying and decapitation of Jun Hase, and threatened that more killings would follow. This second letter, delivered in a brown envelope postmarked June 3, had no return address or name. Enclosed was a three-page, 1400-word letter, also written in red ink, which included a six-character name which can be pronounced as "Sakakibara Seito." The same characters, which mean alcohol, devil, rose, saint and fight, were used in the first message that was inserted into the boy's mouth.
Beginning with the phrase of "Now, it's the beginning of a game," the letter stated that "I am putting my life at stake for the sake of this game...If I'm caught, I'll probably be hanged...police should be angrier and more tenacious in pursuing me.... It's only when I kill that I am liberated from the constant hatred that I suffer and that I am able to attain peace. It is only when I give pain to people that I can ease my own pain." The letter also lashed out against the Japanese educational system, calling it "compulsory education which formed me, an invisible person." [2]
In the initial panic, the Japanese media misreported the name as "Onibara" - Demon's Rose, though the killer insisted it was as he gave it. Infuriated by the mixup, Sakakibara later wrote to the station, "From now on, if you misread my name or spoil my mood I will kill three vegetables a week.... If you think I can only kill children you are greatly mistaken."
A 14-year-old junior high school student was arrested as a suspect in the Hase murder on June 28. Shortly after his arrest, "Boy A" also confessed to the murder of 10-year-old Ayaka Yamashita on March 16, as well as assaulting three other girls on and around that same date.
Analysis
The personality profile of Sakakibara is seen to be a classic case of hikikomori syndrome. In an analysis of the case, journalist Gamal Nkrumah wrote:
The worst thing about the Sakakibara case is that one might have seen it coming. Yet neither his family — nor Japan — heeded the tell-tale signs. Japanese children are confronted with an extremely difficult examination at the tender age of six. Their performance effectively determines their whole future, for it decides whether they will go to a good elementary school, or one of the despised state schools. Parents have no faith in the state system, and Sakakibara's mother was no exception. She pressured her first-born to excel at school, even though social workers warned her that her son was mentally unstable. He was already torturing and killing young animals as a 'hobby'. Soon after, he began physically attacking girls as he walked to school. [3]
Parallels to Tsutomu Miyazaki
In addition to the hikikomori angle, analysts and psychologists have found a number of disturbing similarities to serial killer Tsutomu Miyazaki. Like the 1989 "Otaku Murderer," Sakakibara was apparently set on a violent path from the very beginning. He began carrying cutting weapons while still in elementary school, writing in his diary that "I can ease my irritation when I'm holding a survival knife or spinning scissors like a pistol." At age 12 he exhibited extreme cruelty to animals, lining up a row of frogs in a street and riding over them with his bicycle, as well as mutilating cats and decapitating pigeons.
After the March 16 attack, he wrote in his diary: "I carried out sacred experiments today to confirm how fragile human beings are... I brought the hammer down, when the girl turned to face me. I think I hit her a few times but I was too excited to remember." The following week, on March 23, he added: "This morning my mom told me, 'Poor girl. The girl attacked seems to have died.' There is no sign of my being caught...I thank you, God Bamoidōki, for this... Please continue to protect me."
Additionally, a search of Sakakibara's room turned up thousands of H manga volumes and pornographic videos and anime, enough so that Japanese politician Shizuka Kamei called for restricting objectionable content, stating, "Movies lacking any literary or educational merit made for just showing cruel scenes... Adults should be blamed for this," and that "[t]he incident gives adults the chance to rethink the policy of self-imposed restrictions on these films and whether they should allow them just because they are profitable." [4]
Aftermath
In 2000, the Diet lowered the age for criminal responsibility from 16 to 14 as a result of the Sakakibara murders. However, in the wake of the June 1, 2004 murder of Satomi Mitarai by Natsumi Tsuji (better known as Nevada-tan), there has been some discussion for the need for further revision.
On March 11, 2004, in an unprecedented act, the Japanese Ministry of Justice announced that Sakakibara, 21 at the time, was being released on a provisional basis, with a full release to follow on January 1, 2005. [5] Critics have charged that since the government had taken the unusual step of notifying the public, that Sakakibara was likely not fit for release and should be transferred to prison. In the wake of the Nevada-tan murder, three months later, this criticism was exacerbated.
Due to the seriousness of the crimes and that they were committed as a minor, his name (Shinichirō Azuma) and new residence to this day remain a highly-guarded secret.
See also
External references
- Head of boy found at gate of Kobe school WebKanzaki, May 27 1997
- Kobe killer set free Japan Times, March 11 2004
- Kobe killer to be free man 1 January but location remains secret Japan Today, December 27 2004
- Sympathy for the devil Al-Ahram Weekly, March 18 1999
- Serial Killer Crime Index
- Murder keys Japan vid crackdown Variety.com, July 7 1999