Playback ’15] “The Murder of a Kawasaki Junior High School Boy”: What Drove Boys Who Loved Anime and Games to Commit the Violent Acts?

What did “FRIDAY” report 10, 20, or 30 years ago? In “Playback Friday,” we take a look back at the topics that were hot at the time. This time, we introduce “Kawasaki Junior High School Murder Case: One of the Eight Finally Speaks Out About the True Relationship between Mr. A and the Murderer,” which appeared in the March 20, 2003 issue 10 years ago.

The boys had no place at home or at school, and were always clustered together. This is a horrific murder case that took place among such boys. （The descriptions in parentheses are quoted from previous articles. (All ages and titles are those of the time.)

Assaulted by several people in the nude

Shortly after 6:00 a.m. on February 20, 2003, the body of A, then 13, a student at a nearby junior high school, was found on the bank of the Tama River in Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture. The cause of death was shock due to hemorrhage. The body was completely naked, without shoes, and had numerous cuts and stab wounds on his neck. There were multiple bruises on the body, and the body was gruesome, as if he had been beaten and kicked by several people, and stabbed repeatedly with a knife.

On February 27, three boys were arrested for A’s murder: X (18), a playmate of A’s; Y (17), a classmate of A’s from his junior and senior high school and a self-proclaimed craftsman; and Z (17), a junior high school student one year younger than A. On the night of February 19, the three were drinking when A contacted Z on his LINE and they decided to meet up. The four of them went to the riverside.

“The four of them went to the riverbed, and X made Mr. A swim naked in the river; X and Y assaulted Mr. A by punching and kicking him, and it is believed that X killed Mr. A using a cutter knife. The decisive factor in the arrest was Z’s statement. The prefectural police had earlier conducted a voluntary interview with Z. A video of Z buying lighter oil to burn clothes was captured on the store’s security camera, and the record of the receipt and Z’s statement matched up perfectly. That is when we decided to arrest X.

When the incident first broke out, the media reported the following story: X was a notorious delinquent and leader of a 15-member group; A wanted to leave the group, but he was too afraid of violence to do so; A’s friends, unable to bear the sight of him, protested to X; X, who was rooted to the core, was the one who committed the crime. A’s friends protested to X, who took it to heart and committed the crime. …… The truth, however, was quite different.

A boy who was a member of X’s group and who often hung out with Mr. A said the following.

We never thought of X as a delinquent. He was a bit of a bad boy, but he was just a video game and anime fan who had anime figures and posters all over his room at home. There were reports that he usually carried a box cutter knife with him, but I have never seen such a thing.

X and A-kun met around the end of 2002 at a local game center.

“We both liked an anime called ‘Love Live! and they became friends while talking about it. There were five of us in the group, or rather, the five people we always played with: Mr. X, Z, A, and two other students from the same junior high school as A. No matter how many other people were in the group, there were always eight of us. However else we got together, there were eight of us. We just played games together and talked about anime.

Hatred Born of “Mistake

The incident was foreshadowed by an incident on January 14, 2003, when X assaulted A-kun. X and his friends went out to Yokohama to have fun, drank alcohol, and got drunk, hitting A-kun so hard that his face was covered with blue bruises.

When he assaulted A in January, I thought, ‘This is really serious. However, that was the only time, ever, that X-kun hit A. X-kun seemed to be sorry and said, ‘From now on, I will not drink in front of you guys (junior staff). After that, the two continued to play together normally, with A also continuing to treat him the same way as before, saying, ‘X-kun, X-kun.

However, the situation changed when another group from S Junior High School got involved, and although A-kun and A-kun “hung out whenever they met in town,” this group found A-kun in late January with bruises on his face, and five or six of them grabbed him and made him apologize in a way that made him get down on his knees. This was not something that Mr. A wanted to do.

It didn’t stop there: a group of people, mainly alumni of S Junior High School, who were different from those who made X get down on his knees, stormed into his house. They had previously “confronted” X. X’s mother told them she was not at home, but they pushed and prodded her for nearly an hour, eventually leading to the police being called.

X had been under severe pressure just prior to the incident when he learned that he was being stalked by a group of S Junior High School alumni who had been angry with him in the past. According to the boy mentioned above, he had locked himself in his house and was frightened.

“A group of S Junior High School students were trying to lure Mr. X out of the house using his friends’ LINE. So, one after another, X-kun started blocking the LINEs of his friends around him. So, recently, I was not in touch with him at all. I think the reason X-kun was resentful of A, saying that he had been ‘tipped off,’ was because he felt that ‘I apologized to him once, but why?

Then, at 2:00 a.m. on February 20. Drunk on alcohol, which he had sworn not to drink, X assaulted A-kun. This gradually “escalated” (X’s statement) and led to the murder.

X told the interrogator that he had done something to A that could never be undone.

The “search for the culprit” conducted actively on the Internet

The trial for X, Y, and Z began in February 2004, and X, the main culprit, was sentenced to an indeterminate term of between 9 and 13 years in prison for murder. One was released from prison, but the other two are still in prison.

The case was a juvenile crime, and the fact that the names of the three juvenile suspects were not reported at the time of the incident in ’15 was controversial. This later led to a move to revise the Juvenile Law. On the other hand, the “search for the culprit” was actively conducted on the Internet, and the frequent exposure of the mugshots, addresses, and family structures of unrelated persons, without any real identification, became a problem.

X, Y, Z, and A, who were involved in this case, were not so-called “juvenile delinquents,” but rather boys who could not fully become serious delinquents. They were not so-called “juvenile delinquents,” but rather boys who were not fully delinquent. They were all having difficulties at home or at school, and had met each other while spending time in the nightlife district. The incident may have been a tragedy that occurred as a result of a slight misunderstanding that led to a misunderstanding in the community.