<figure id="attachment_210327" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-210327" style="width: 3840px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="f8795edb"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2021/10/aflo_23388405.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-210327" class="wp-caption-text">The mother was driven to the &#8220;voice&#8221; (Photo: Image. (Image: Naho Yoshizawa/Afro)</figcaption></figure>
 The woman had doted on the baby in her belly during her pregnancy, calling him &#8220;Maru-chan. The following is a part of her diary.
 Hiro-chan (her husband) and I are getting more and more lovey-dovey. I&#8217;m sure Maru-chan (the unborn baby) will be very happy if the two of them are in love.
 Hiro-chan is very active, checking out bathing videos, mimicking me washing my body, practicing and prepping for bathing, and is more enthusiastic than I am. He is always concerned about my body and Maru&#8217;s, and because he is so happy, I can rest assured that Maru will be too. It&#8217;s amazing. Even if I want to cuddle her at night, I&#8217;ll make sure to let her sleep, me.
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 However, three months after giving birth, she murders her unborn child by dunking it in the bathtub.
 Why did such a thing happen?
 In fact, there are many cases where the mother&#8217;s mental problems are deeply involved in the background of the abusive death. Let&#8217;s take a look at some of these cases.
<h2> &#8220;The sound of my own footsteps annoyed me.</h2>
 Yunako Ozaki (pseudonym. The following characters are all pseudonyms. Yunako Ozaki (pseudonym, all characters below are pseudonyms. 38 years old at the time of the incident) married her husband, Hironobu, in 2009.
 Yunako was a homely woman who graduated from a cooking school and enjoyed cooking. On the other hand, Hironobu was an earnest salesman for a tableware sales company, and was known for his parental love.
 They chose an apartment in Setagaya Ward, near her husband&#8217;s parents&#8217; house, as their new home. They had no children and were enjoying a quiet life together.
 On March 11, 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake hit Japan. In the wake of this, Yunako became mentally ill and her strange behavior became more noticeable.
 Her husband, Hironobu, said at the trial.
 &#8220;In the spring of 2011, one year after the earthquake, Yunako began to be very concerned about the noises she made in her daily life. She said that the sound of her footsteps or the sound of putting down a cup might be disturbing to the people living in the same apartment. Or if I heard a horn or a child&#8217;s voice from outside, I was frightened because I thought they were mad at me.
 One day, when Hironobu came home, Yunako was so frightened by the noise that she tried to kill herself with a kitchen knife. He finally realized the seriousness of his wife&#8217;s illness and took her to the hospital.
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 The doctor said, &#8220;She may be schizophrenic.
 &#8220;It could be schizophrenia. Delusions about sound may be a symptom. In some cases, you may need to be hospitalized.
 After returning home, Yunako said, &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to go to the hospital. I don&#8217;t need to see him anymore. I don&#8217;t want to go to the hospital. I don&#8217;t need to see her anymore.&#8221; Thinking that Hironobu might be drugged at the hospital, he decided to let her stay at home for a while to rest.
<h2> &#8220;That doesn&#8217;t sound good.&#8221;</h2>
 Having been sent back to her parents&#8217; home in Shizuoka for a while, Yunako&#8217;s mental state seemed to have calmed down somewhat. The fact that she had been a full-time housewife since their marriage might have been a bad thing. Yunako worked part-time at a bakery three times a week, and in 2002, she quit her part-time job and started fertility treatment while starting her pregnancy.
 In January 2004, Yunako became pregnant with the baby of her dreams. As mentioned in the beginning of this article, she called her unborn child &#8220;Maru-chan&#8221; and loved it dearly. In another diary entry, she wrote as follows
 Maru-chan is growing up very healthy and well. He was very happy to play with Maru, saying, &#8220;Maru-chan, where are you? I&#8217;m glad to see that Hironobu is so childlike.
 She was definitely becoming a mother.
 However, two months before the birth, Yunako began to show symptoms of schizophrenia again. What was different from the last time was that she not only became hypersensitive to outside noises, but also had auditory hallucinations. Strangers are calling out to her. For example, when he closed the door in his house, he would hear a male voice out of nowhere saying, &#8220;That&#8217;s a good sound&#8221; or &#8220;That&#8217;s a bad sound. Eventually, it spread to all kinds of sounds, not only the opening and closing of doors, but also cooking and washing.
 In the meantime, Yunako gave birth to a baby. It was a baby girl. The baby, called &#8220;Maru-chan,&#8221; was named Nanase. Although she was still troubled by hallucinations, she was overjoyed to be able to hold the baby in her arms, and wrote about it in her diary after she left the hospital. For example, she wrote the following
 She has a face and hands like an angel. Even when she is sleeping. I feel like squeezing them. The feeling of longing for the morning came to my mind when I looked at Nanase. It makes me happy to remember things from my childhood that I had forgotten.
 At the age of two months, Nanase gradually started to show some reactions. The following is Yunako&#8217;s description of this.
 A phone call from Dad brought super smiles and laughter. He was smiling and talking, gesturing with his mouth to speak, it was so cute, it made me smile too.
 The window was large and the morning sun was sparklingly beautiful. The windows are big enough to let the morning sun shine through, and it&#8217;s a beautiful space for Nanase to smile and try to suckle on her breasts.
 In her own way, Yunako was pouring out a great deal of love to her child.
<h2> &#8220;Nanase, Nanase.&#8221;</h2>
 But raising a child doesn&#8217;t always go the way the parents want it to. The more difficult it is for her to raise her child, the more she is troubled by intense auditory hallucinations. The voices in her auditory hallucinations recognized her daughter&#8217;s existence and began to call out to her, &#8220;Nanase, Nanase.
 This is what Yunako said in court.
 &#8220;It was the voice of a man I didn&#8217;t know at all. I thought it was absolutely strange because no one knew Nanase except my acquaintance. I wondered if Nanase was going to be kidnapped. Could Nanase be kidnapped, could she be targeted? When I thought about it like that, I couldn&#8217;t help but feel scared.
 As the year drew to a close, I began to hear the man&#8217;s voice three or four times an hour. In addition, he started to call her by her full name, &#8220;Nanase Ozaki, Nanase Ozaki,&#8221; instead of just &#8220;Nanase&#8221; as he had done before.
 In her diary, Yunako wrote
 It&#8217;s strange that they are saying my name from many places outside of Joon. Don&#8217;t spread the name Nanase Ozaki by saying it a lot. What is your name? My child&#8217;s name is Nanase Ozaki. I heard you saying it too much, so I&#8217;m saying it so much that people passing by here are saying my child&#8217;s name. My child has a life, you know. This is not a good way to do it. If the sound bothers you, please tell me directly.
 She did not take the voice as an auditory hallucination, but seemed to understand that someone was really saying it. It seems that she was no longer able to perceive her own condition objectively.
 On January 11th, Yunako finally started to panic.
 She thought that Nanase might not be able to live anymore, so she twisted Nanase&#8217;s neck and tried to kill her.
<h2> &#8220;Nanase Ozaki, Nanase Ozaki.&#8221;</h2>
 Shortly thereafter, she received a phone call from her mother at her parents&#8217; home in Shizuoka, which ended the attempted murder. Yunako was calmed down by the call and stopped the murder.
 The next day, on the 12th, Hironobu was worried about his wife&#8217;s strange behavior and took Yunako and Nanase to his parents&#8217; house in the neighborhood. He wanted his mother to watch over them while he worked.
 At first glance, Hironobu&#8217;s mother saw something wrong with Yunako. Her face was pale and she had no expression at all.
 She sat down in a corner of the room and started to hug Nanase with such force that she almost crushed her. Her mother stopped her and told her to rest for a while, saying that it would be painful if she did so. Her mother stopped her and told her to rest for a while, but she said she was leaving and went back to her apartment. I was worried, but I didn&#8217;t think that Yunako would kill Nanase. After that, I took some retort food to the apartment.
 It was the next day that the incident occurred.
 That morning, after her husband, Hironobu, left for work, Yunako heard a man calling out &#8220;Nanase Ozaki, Nanase Ozaki&#8221; several times an hour. As she listened, her mind became confused and she began to think again, &#8220;My child shouldn&#8217;t be alive! She began to think.
 Eventually Nanase woke up and suddenly began to cry loudly. She might have wanted some milk. However, Yunako thought, &#8220;Nanase&#8217;s crying will make the owner of the voice angry and come to take her away! She thought. She grabbed Nanase in her arms and ran from the bedroom to the bathroom.
 The bathtub was filled with water left over from last night. She thought to herself, &#8220;If I let her cry like this, she&#8217;ll get into trouble. If I submerge her in the water, I can make her die without her crying out,&#8221; she thought. Later in the trial, she described her feelings at that time as &#8220;scared, scared, scared,&#8221; but she was in a mental state where she couldn&#8217;t even figure out what she was scared of.
 She was in a state of mind where she couldn&#8217;t even tell what she was afraid of. Yunako took a dip in the cold water with Nanase in her arms. She then submerged Nanase in the water, holding her to her chest. The bubbles coming out of Nanase&#8217;s mouth made a popping sound as they came up. I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ll be happy to know that I&#8217;m not the only one who has a problem with that.
<h2> &#8220;I&#8217;ve &#8230;&#8230; killed my daughter.&#8221;</h2>
 After about ten minutes, Yunako slowly stood up and checked to see if Nanase was breathing. Her eyes and mouth were open and she had stopped breathing.
 &#8211;I&#8217;ll be in trouble if he comes up for air again.
 So she submerged Nanase in the bathtub for another ten minutes, holding him. The bubbles did not come up again.
 Yunako said.
 &#8220;I dunked her in the bath because &#8230;&#8230; Nanase would cry. I didn&#8217;t want to &#8230;&#8230;. I thought it was &#8216;the only way I could do it. But the bath was cold, so I felt sorry for her. &#8230;&#8230; I carried her in my arms because I felt sorry for Nanase when she was cold. So I took a bath with her.&#8221;
 Yunako got out of the tub soaking wet and called the police herself. However, she could not explain what she had done, and the police officer who answered the phone told her, &#8220;I&#8217;ll sort it out and call you back.
 &#8220;The police officer who answered the phone said, &#8220;Please call me back after you have sorted everything out.
 After the third call, Yunako was finally able to say.
 &#8220;I killed my daughter &#8230;&#8230;.&#8221;
 It was 10:30 when the police arrived. Nanase was sinking in the bathtub in the bathroom, wrapped in a blanket.
 Nine months after the incident, a trial was held at the Tokyo District Court. The psychiatrist who appeared in court as a witness stated the following.
 &#8220;There was nothing wrong with the defendant in terms of his upbringing, interpersonal relationships, or motor skills. However, she was born with a personality similar to that of a schizophrenic. The experience of the Great East Japan Earthquake may have aggravated her symptoms.
 It is believed that her symptoms appeared and became worse all at once after pregnancy and childbirth because she was neglected when she should have been properly treated. In schizophrenia, there are symptoms of &#8216;delusions,&#8217; in which the meaning based on perception becomes wrong, and &#8216;auditory hallucinations,&#8217; in which voices are heard from outside, but in the defendant&#8217;s case, these symptoms occurred together, and it must have gotten worse and worse.
 It is regrettable that her husband, who was nearby, did not realize the seriousness of the situation. However, in the case of mental illness, it often happens that the family takes it more lightly than it really is. They don&#8217;t want to believe that it is serious, or they don&#8217;t want to damage their relationship by treating the person as sick.
 The court&#8217;s decision was as follows.
 &#8211;Three years imprisonment, five years suspended.
 In an apartment in Setagaya Ward, Hironobu and Yunako started their life together again, just the two of them.

 Born in Tokyo in 1977. Non-fiction writer. Graduated from Nihon University College of Art. He is active in reporting and writing about culture, history, and medicine in Japan and abroad. His books include "The House of the 'Demons': Parents Who Kill Their Own Children," "Forty-three Killing Intentions: The Depths of the Kawasaki Jr. 1 Boys' Murder Case," "Rental Child," "Kinship Murder," and "Social Map of Disparity and Division.

 Kota Ishii

 Naho Yoshizawa/Afro

 A young mother submerged her beloved three-month-old baby in a bathtub and killed her. At first, she doted on her daughter. Initially, she doted on her daughter and was grateful for her father's childcare, but why? In the background, there was a terrifying "owner of the voice. A horrifying true story by non-fiction writer Kota Ishii.

The tragic reality of a mother who drowned her beloved three-month-old child in a bathtub…

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