Wishing you good luck… The “true purpose” of the “ex-girlfriend” sex worker who made a man decide to kill a prostitute
From "I Liked You, I Had to Kill You

In every age, incidents involving relationships between men and women continue to occur. In the background of these cases, there are various forms of love that are unknown to others. The following is a partial excerpt from the book, “Encouraging Woman (Otsu City, Shiga Prefecture: Murder and Abandonment of a Dead Body of a Woman).
Body at a private house in Otsu
At 11:30 a.m. on July 13, 2003, a man turned himself in to the Shiga Prefectural Police Headquarters. He told the responding police officers that he had murdered a woman in Osaka and carried her to an abandoned house in Otsu. The police investigated a private house in Yayoi-machi, Otsu City, and found the body of a young woman wrapped in a futon bag in a Japanese-style room on the first floor. The body was identified as Alice Yamaoka (pseudonym/age 22 at the time), a resident of Suita City, Osaka Prefecture, based on the man’s statement. The man was later arrested on suspicion of murder.
The arrested man was Shinichi Tokuda (pseudonym, age 39 at the time), a company employee living in Ikoma City, Nara Prefecture. Tokuda was a customer at the brothel where Alice worked, and stated that he killed her because she treated him coldly. It seems that he was quite devoted to her.
It seemed to be the result of a pathetic man who did not know his place as a customer, but while the police arrested the man, they also arrested another person in connection with this case. The arrested person was Akari Takeda (pseudonym, 23 years old at the time), a sex store worker living in Setagaya-ku, Tokyo. She was charged with aiding and abetting a murder.
Encouraging Emails
The police believe that the email from Akari was a major factor in Tokuda’s decision to commit the crime, despite his hesitation just prior to the crime. What was the relationship between Akari and Tokuda?
They met at a brothel. The relationship lasted about two years, but when Tokuda was transferred in 2001 and left Tokyo, they saw each other less and less. However, they continued to see each other. In July 2003, when Akari met Tokuda in Tokyo, Tokuda told her that he had fallen in love with a woman he had met at a brothel in Osaka.
However, it seemed to be Tokuda’s one-sided love affair, and he consulted with Akari that his feelings for her were not reciprocated.
Although Akari was dating Tokuda, the relationship was not a deep one, and what started as a professional relationship seemed to be continuing on the sly. Tokuda confided to Akari that he was thinking of killing her and dying himself if his feelings for her were not understood.
Then, on July 13, Tokuda sent an urgent e-mail. Tokuda had apparently come to Alice’s home, but having been coldly dismissed, she knew that this love would never be fulfilled.
Akari told Tokuda, “I believe what I do is the right thing to do. It’s okay, take a deep breath and make yourself calm. Like Tokuda, I believe this is the only thing to do and that it is the best thing to do,” and “It’s strange to say this, but I wish you luck,” she replied.
This encouragement from Akari strengthened Tokuda’s will to kill, and he struck Alice multiple times in the head with a concealed hammer, then strangled her with his necktie, killing her. He then brought Alice’s body to an abandoned house he owned in Otsu City and turned himself in.
Question.
The prosecution sought 13 years in prison for Tokuda. He was later sentenced to 11 years.
Akari, on the other hand, was also charged with aiding and abetting a murder. Although this prosecution was quite unusual, the result was three years in prison and a four-year suspended sentence (including 150 days of detention), as opposed to the four-year sentence requested by the prosecution. The defense argued for acquittal on the grounds that Tokuda had been stalking Akari, and that she was afraid of him, who at the time had been relentlessly contacting her to discuss her problems.
Even though Tokuda’s request for advice was terrible, she could have ignored it, or she could have chosen to dissuade him from giving her advice. Despite this, for some reason, Akari was always giving Tokuda advice that pushed him away. This was despite the fact that she had never met Alice before. Akari said that she had never expected that her advice would lead to such a situation, but the prosecutor saw right through her. Akari was in debt to Tokuda.
Tokuda had told Akari, who was a prostitute, to quit such a job as soon as possible. From Akari’s point of view, Tokuda was an extremely annoying man. There are people who come to the sex industry and give sermons or tell people to wash their feet as soon as possible, as if they are thinking about the other person, but they are probably the most hated type of people. What kind of a man would say such a thing while he himself was feeling good there, while he was being served?
Regardless of how Akari saw it, Tokuda was an idiot for even lending money to a prostitute. The prosecutors noted that Tokuda had told Akari that he would kill Alice and die himself. Furthermore, they found that Akari was not merely advising Tokuda to take out the cash and other things that Alice-san had kept in her house after receiving the report of Alice-san’s murder, and that some degree of calculation was at work.
He may have said something about making it look like a robbery, and the prosecution argued that this was an attempt to use Tokuda to avoid paying off his own debts. The court acknowledged these as well. Even if Tokuda was the guilty party, he was responsible for strengthening his determination to commit the robbery, and the court said he could not escape strong criticism even though he was young.
However, the court also noted that Tokuda had brought this on himself, that the relationship between Tokuda and Akari was not brainwashed, that it was only about the relationship between Alice and Tokuda, and that Tokuda had promised that his parents would supervise him from now on.
Either he was just a fool, or
At the trial, Akari claimed that Tokuda owed her a debt, and that she had calculated that she could avoid paying it off if Tokuda would have a forced love affair with Alice-san.
Earlier, I wrote that there is no evidence of any “love” between Akari and Tokuda beyond that of a customer and a prostitute, but even so, the two were in a relationship. I am not sure to what extent this was the case, but I wonder how Akari perceived Tokuda’s infatuation with Alice and his unabashed crying to her about it. Alice and Akari are of the same generation. The fact that Ms. Alice had a large amount of cash while Akari was in debt to Tokuda, a customer, also gives some idea of their position as sex workers.
It seems that Akari was under the illusion that Tokuda was relying on her for advice. It is not clear whether there was any affection for Tokuda there. However, the situation in which she shares the “secret” with Tokuda that she intends to kill Alice-san and die herself is definitely an extraordinary and outrageously dramatic situation for Akari.
Not only does she keep silent despite knowing this fact, she responds to Tokuda’s hesitation about what to do by saying, “It is the right thing to do” and “I think I have no choice but to do it,” but is it because of her youth that she did not think about what that means?
There is a plausible reason that if Tokuda dies, or even if he does not die, he will be exempted from paying off the debt if he is arrested, but he is a prostitute and a customer. Even if there was a formal IOU, it still seems somewhat far-fetched as a reason. Does this also support the idea that they were simply young and shallow?
The reason for the suspended sentence is that it was Tokuda’s idea in the first place, and it was recognized that Tokuda was involved in the case because he asked for advice. It can also be said that I think this is what people mean when they say that a fool is sinful.
However, one can’t help but wonder if deep down in Akari’s heart she didn’t have other feelings for Tokuda. Did Akari feel nothing when she heard that Tokuda had been transferred to another place, and that he had found a woman there whom he loved so much that he wanted to kill her? And when she learned that the woman was a prostitute like herself, did it not make her heart flutter? Was the text message that Tokuda sent to the victim, as if to agitate her hesitation, really sent “only” to avoid repayment of the debt? I cannot help but feel that there is something deeper between the victim, Alice, and Tokuda than what had been there before. By the way, did Akari return the money to Tokuda after that?
