A warning against romance scams: Kawagoe City, Saitama Prefecture, now a “large apartment complex” where the Miyazaki Tsutomu incident took place.
Fading “memory of the incident
About 20 minutes by bus from Kawagoe Station. After passing through a peaceful farmland area, you will come across a large apartment complex called “K,” which is said to be an isolated island on land.
It is one of the largest apartment complexes in Saitama, with approximately 1,450 households living in its 33 buildings, and is also known as the site of four incidents that occurred between 1988 and 1989: the Tokyo-Saitama serial kidnapping and murder of young girls.
In December 1988, Tsutomu Miyazaki, who was later sentenced to death, took a 4-year-old girl, C, who lived in “K,” in his car, stripped her naked, and took pictures of her. The body was dumped in a mountain forest. This is the “third case” in the series of Miyazaki Tsutomu cases. At the time, the apartment complex was in an uproar as if it had been poked with a beehive. One male resident recalls, “The police, the media, and the horsemen were all over the place.
The police, the media, and onlookers were all over the place. Such a state of affairs continued for several months. Even now, I still see people offering flowers.
According to an elderly woman who was friends with the C family and lived in the same building, the victim’s family moved out not long after the incident. According to the elderly woman, who lived in the same building as the victim’s family, the victim’s family moved out not long after the incident.
Whenever a child was lost or could not be found in the complex, the residents would work together to search for the child. Even though they cared so much about the children, no one would mention the incident to the members of the residents’ association or to their acquaintances. They tried not to mention it.
With a supermarket, dry cleaners, barbershop, and restaurants all located in the complex, the residents are able to meet their daily needs on the premises. There is also a kindergarten, and one can see a few of the child-rearing generation playing with their children in the park. There are also many foreign residents. A woman who has been running the store since the incident said, “The number of residents who don’t know about the incident is increasing.
A woman who has been running a shop since the incident said, “The number of residents who don’t know about the incident has increased. There is also a great increase in the number of foreign residents. It has transformed into a multinational complex over the past 10 years, with residents from the U.S., Russia, blacks, China, Korea, and other countries. Although it is not well known, there are still many incidents in the complex.
Last fall, one of the residents jumped to his death in one of the buildings. I was speechless when I happened to see him fall to the roof of the entrance. Since most of the residents are now elderly and live alone, everyone turns a blind eye when incidents occur. The management association does not willingly give notice either. They don’t want it to get publicity, and they don’t want to cause a stir.