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.