Six-Year-Old Child Dies in Kobe, Japan… “Four People Arrested Lived” in Abusive House “Shivering Inside

The house where the grandmother, who had been confined and beaten, and the 6-year-old child who was found dead were living in a whirlpool of abhorrent domination.

On June 20, a man in his 60s living in Tarumi Ward, Kobe City (Hyogo Prefecture), witnessed a bizarre scene on his way home from work. It was after 11 p.m., and Yumiko Hosaka, 57, was sitting in a wheelchair on a street in an apartment complex illuminated by streetlights.

Yumiko’s face was lifeless and she had brown bruises. Her face was lifeless and she had brown bruises, and plastic bottles and notebooks that appeared to be her belongings were scattered around her. She is said to have repeatedly said, ‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ without effort,” said a national newspaper reporter.

Yumiko was found abused by four children who lived with her, including her eldest daughter, Saki Hosaka, 34, her second son, Daichi, 32, and twins, Tomomi, 30, and Asaka, 30, in downtown Sannomiya, Chuo-ku, Hyogo Prefecture, two days later at around 3:00 p.m. The four siblings, Saki, 34, her second son, Daichi, 32, her second daughter, Asami, 30, and Asaka, 30, were found in a shopping district in the same city. The four siblings, Tomomi, 30, and Asaka, 30, were found and arrested on suspicion of confinement and injury to their mother.

The Hosaka family lived in a room in a housing complex in Tamatsu-cho, Nishi Ward, about 20 minutes by car from the apartment complex in Tarumi Ward, where Yumiko, her four children, and her grandchild, Nao (6), lived together in a 3LDK maisonette-type room.

All of the children are unemployed. Since March of this year, Yumiko has been confined to a closet about 70 cm wide dozens of times and beaten in the back and other parts of her body with an iron pipe. When they were away, Yumiko apparently took a bus and fled to the Tarumi apartment complex where she had lived for about 20 years.

After his arrest, Shaki led investigators to a grassy field near his home. The police officers found the decomposed body of Shuki’s eldest son, Osamu, in an abandoned suitcase. It is believed that Osamu was murdered the day before Yumiko was taken into custody. The body had marks as if he had been beaten more than 10 times, and bruises were spread all over his back.

In April of this year, a daycare worker found bruises on Shu’s bottom and right shoulder and reported the incident to the Nishi Ward Office. When interviewed by the Nishi Ward Office, Shuki also asked for temporary custody of the child because he was having difficulty raising the child. The administration decided to take them in temporarily, but both Shaki and Yumiko refused to take them in. A neighborhood friend of the mother revealed the usual situation of the mother and child.

Shu-chan has been absent from day-care center since February and stopped coming since late April. Even though Shu-chan was six years old, he was not out of diapers and was slender for his age. I got the impression that Saki-san was kind to Shu-chan, drawing Anpanman with her. I don’t have a bad image of her being kind to children.”

On the other hand, from the neighbors’ point of view, the mother and son did not seem to fit into the community circle.

They did not warn him when he entered their house without permission, and there was a laissez-faire aspect to him. At the day-care center Shu-chan attended, he would go in and try to help without permission, which was not well-received by the parents.

Until last year, Shu-chan had been living with the suspects Saki, Asami, and Asaka, and his grandmother Yumiko.

The gas had been turned off for about two years, and he had been cooking his meals on a cassette stove. They went to the public bath about once a week, but the whole family smelled bad. Saki-san, who had a gangly figure and blond hair, would immediately yell at me and his attitude was so arrogant that I didn’t want to have anything to do with him. He would tell the children, “Don’t cry!　Don’t cry! I once saw her yelling at her children, “Stop crying!

The Hosaka family had been isolated in the community. Since the end of last year, when the suspect, Daichi, came to live with them, the family became even more closed off. A man who lives in the neighborhood told us about the situation.

As soon as the man came to live with us, I stopped seeing Osamu and Yumiko, and the sounds of life disappeared. I couldn’t hear the children’s voices anymore, and I closed the windows and went to ……. But I started to hear banging on the walls periodically. Even at about 2 or 4 am, it was thumping. Now I think it might have been an SOS from Shu-chan.

Just before Shu-chan passed away, a man strangely and cheerfully said, “Let’s go! and took three women with him. The women seemed to be following him. I was surprised to hear that he was Saki’s younger brother.

In elementary school, they were forced to shoplift and ……

After their arrest, the four siblings stated that they dumped Shu-chan’s body at the direction of the suspect, Daichi. While neighbors sympathized with Shu-chan, a resident of Tarumi Ward, where the four spent their childhood, spoke of the siblings’ tragic childhood. The mother of an elementary school classmate of the suspect, Daichi, recounted what she was going through at the time.

There are five siblings in the Hosaka family, and the oldest son is just below Saki. The house was closed off, always with the curtains closed, and there was no indication that the mother was working. I never saw the father.

There were strange men coming in and out of their house, you know. I guess they were locked out when men were in the house. Once, on a cold winter night, Saki and her oldest son, Daichi, were in a nearby park and asked, ‘Can’t you go home?’ When I asked him, he said, ‘My mother told me to go outside because I would give you 1,000 yen. …… There was even a problem in the neighborhood association about used condoms being thrown away on the balcony of that house.

In addition to the emotional distress, there are stories that Yumiko was violent toward her children. The mother of another classmate who was close to Daichi during their elementary school days reveals the details of the abuse.

The younger twins were neatly groomed and loved, but Shaki and her oldest son, Daichi, were treated terribly, and their mother beat them with an iron pipe even when they were out of sight. My son told me that his mother also made him shoplift sweets.

When the sweets she stole were not enough, Yumiko would hit and kick the children, saying, “How can you fill your stomach with such a thing? and she punched and kicked the children. Daichi and the other children were secretly fed school lunches twice a day, once for breakfast and once for lunch. They were not allowed to participate in events such as athletic meets and field trips, and they are barely in the graduation album.”

From the second grade of elementary school, Daichi also became aggressive, and it was rumored among the parents that it was better not to get involved with that family. The mother of a classmate who lived in the same apartment complex was astonished by the Hosaka family’s educational policy.

She said, “Yumiko-san teaches ‘take what you want, even by force,’ and since elementary school, Daichi-kun has been taking his classmates’ belongings even with his hands up. But from his point of view, that was normal.

At the time, the government was trying to protect the five, but Yumiko-san refused. When I heard about the incident, I thought Daichi had done to Shu-chan what he had been subjected to.

The pain that the suspects have suffered is immeasurable to others, but the fact that an innocent 6-year-old child became a victim of a “negative cycle” is something that cannot be forgiven.

From the July 14-21, 2023 issue of FRIDAY