On September 20, 2009, the Tokyo District Court held the first trial in the case of a university student who severely injured a male acquaintance by pouring sulfuric acid on him at a station in Tokyo in August 2009.
 The defendant, Hirotaka Hanamori, 26, a university student from Shizuoka City, is accused of injuring a male acquaintance by pouring sulfuric acid on him at the Tokyo Metro Shirokane-Takanawa Station, causing serious injuries to his face, including a three-month recovery. Hanamori admitted that &#8220;there is no doubt&#8221; about the nature of the charge, but the defendant&#8217;s lawyer said, &#8220;I was bullied by the victims.
 Hanamori was bullied and teased by the victims, and he began to feel trapped. Out of anxiety and fear, he made sulfuric acid, which led to the incident.
 He claimed that he was a &#8220;bully. However, FRIDAY interviewed Hanamori&#8217;s acquaintances immediately after the incident, and found the exact opposite of what he claimed: that he was a &#8220;bully. The past articles are reproduced below (age, title, etc. remain as they were at the time).
<figure id="attachment_265389" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-265389" style="width: 788px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="e118bce4"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2022/09/fc0e26501c999bec0e4794f7fb21a132.jpeg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-265389" class="wp-caption-text"> The suspect Hanamori was sent to prison on August 30, 2021. He admitted that there was &#8220;no doubt&#8221; about the indictment.</figcaption></figure>
 When I saw the news report of the incident, I immediately realized, &#8216;It&#8217;s Hanamori-kun! I was surprised. The reason I remembered him was that Hanamori-kun was a notorious bully in school. He would sneak around and relentlessly bully kids he didn&#8217;t like. He even forced them to eat caterpillars and slugs.
 This is how a person who knew the suspect, Hirotaka Hanamori, 25, during his elementary school days described him. On August 28, Hanamori was arrested by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department for allegedly hurling sulfuric acid in the face of a male acquaintance at the Tokyo Metro Shirokane-Takanawa Station.
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 On August 24, the suspect followed Mr. A, a junior student at the University of the Ryukyus who worked for a real estate company in Akasaka (Minato-ku), and committed the crime. Although he escaped blindness, he also suffered burns to his corneas and will be hospitalized for two months. The day after the crime, Hanamori headed for Okinawa Prefecture, and on the 28th, the Okinawa Prefectural Police secured him in a park in Nakagusuku Village, near where he was hiding.
 Hanamori and Mr. A belonged to the University of the Ryukyus Film Society at the university. Ms. A met the suspect on a street in Tokyo in July of this year, and the suspect told her that he had called her names as a &#8220;tame&#8221; when they were in college, and that he had a grudge against her. After that, she was followed by the suspect Hanamori many times until the incident occurred.
<figure id="attachment_265392" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-265392" style="width: 1863px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="0dad3244"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2022/09/788213d9fafc4062386c402be127f517.jpeg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-265392" class="wp-caption-text"> High school graduation album. He stayed in high school for one year and wasted one year in university entrance exams (from Twitter).</figcaption></figure>
 Hanamori is from Shizuoka City, Shizuoka Prefecture. He had a father who was a famous local osteopath and a mother who was a Chinese medical professional. He was well-off, but was kept at a distance by those around him. A classmate from elementary school recalls.
 His father was very busy with work, so he didn&#8217;t interact with his mother much. He was good at studying, but he was not good at sports and did not participate in many school events such as athletic meets. I floated around in class and was always alone. I sometimes broke every single one of the exhibits that everyone else in the class had made, or stuffed live grasshoppers into the class-shared pencil sharpener. I was quick to lose my temper, and people thought I was creepy.
 He also relentlessly bullied his classmates, as described in the beginning of this article. The mother of one of Hanamori&#8217;s classmates said, &#8220;Hanamori was a bully.
 The bullying of Hanamori-kun became quite an issue at the parent-teacher conferences, and the details made me want to turn my back on it. There were stories of not only violence, such as throwing stones at the targeted child and beating him, but also of feeding him insects and cow dung. He would grab the bully&#8217;s weakness and mentally push him to the edge, saying things like, &#8216;If you tell on me, I&#8217;ll kill you.
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 After graduating from elementary school, Hanamori went on to a local junior high school and then a private high school, where he became even more isolated. He changed his environment at university, where he met Ms. A. &#8220;Ms. A. was very nice to me,&#8221; Hanamori said.
 The suspect committed the crime for the incomprehensible reason that he &#8220;talked to her as if she was his friend. It is highly possible that he had other targets in addition to Ms. A. Before the crime, Hanamori had visited the University of the Ryukyus to obtain a list of alumni, and in April, he contacted another acquaintance from the same circle, hinting at the crime with words of resentment.
 In response to our questioning, the suspect, while reserving his admission or denial, still shows an excessive degree of obsession with Ms. A, oozing resentment toward her. In the future, he will be detained for an evaluation to determine whether or not he has the capacity for criminal responsibility,&#8221; said Ryo Imai, a journalist and author of &#8220;The Forefront of Metropolitan Police Forensics.
 Hanamori committed the murder out of a one-sided grudge. It is extremely selfish.
<figure id="attachment_265394" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-265394" style="width: 2568px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="eb44e327"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2022/09/32ed4f548674e95f05348789c059e7ef.jpeg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-265394" class="wp-caption-text"> Hanamori was transferred to the Takanawa Police Station of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department on August 28.</figcaption></figure>
<figure id="attachment_265396" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-265396" style="width: 986px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="26cce987"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2022/09/301f44742b7701112ae5931471943827.jpeg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-265396" class="wp-caption-text"> Hanamori was transferred from Okinawa to Tokyo on August 28. He was in possession of nearly 600,000 yen when he was taken into custody.</figcaption></figure>
<figure id="attachment_265397" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-265397" style="width: 779px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="a8448ff8"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2022/09/5c2e82d33d4088300c98b4fada308147.jpeg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-265397" class="wp-caption-text"> Suspect Hanamori sent to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department on August 30.</figcaption></figure>

 Shinji Hasuo

 On September 20, 2009, the Tokyo District Court held the first trial in the case of a university student who severely injured a male acquaintance by pouring sulfuric acid on him at a station in Tokyo in August 2009. The defendant, Hirotaka Hanamori, 26, a university student from Shizuoka City, was accused of hurling sulfuric acid at a male acquaintance at the Tokyo Metro Shirokane-Takanawa Station.

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