<figure id="attachment_437282" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-437282" style="width: 2827px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="1830e1df"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/08/09d280713b99077f0f53d70f62165335.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-437282" class="wp-caption-text">The site where A&#8217;s body was dumped. The message &#8220;We found the murderer. (January 2005).</figcaption></figure>
<p> What did &#8220;FRIDAY&#8221; report 10, 20, and 30 years ago? In &#8220;Playback Friday,&#8221; we revisit topics that were popular at the time. In this issue, we will introduce a <span class="strongInContent">piece that</span> appeared in the August 19 and 26, 2005 issues 20 years ago, titled <span class="strongInContent">&#8220;Does That Devilish Pedophile Man Ever Show Remorse?</span></p>
<p> On November 17, 2004, a first grade elementary school girl, A, was kidnapped and found dead in the middle of the night in Nara City. The public was shaken when the devilish deeds of X (36 at the time), a newspaper salesman who was arrested at the time of the crime, came to light. In the book of impressions that X wrote while in prison, he revealed a surprising side of himself (All ages and titles are current at the time. The descriptions in parentheses are quotations from past articles.)</p>
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<h3><span class="strongInContent"> Well, it&#8217;s not something a human being would do.</span></h3>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> Tears in the eyes of the devil, I suppose.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> I couldn&#8217;t stop crying when I thought about &#8230;&#8230; if I had lived my life in such a way that I could face up to my physical disability without fear like she did.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> X, 38, a kidnapper and murderer of a first-grade girl in Nara, wrote this book report in jail. What happened to the mind of this pedophile who showed not a trace of remorse after his arrest?</span></p>
<p> The incident was truly the work of a &#8220;devil. On November 17, 2004, X kidnapped A (then 7 years old), who was on her way home from school, <span class="strongInContent">and told her that he would take her home.</span> He took her to his home, indecently assaulted her, and then murdered her in the bathroom. He then took pictures of her body and sent them to her parents.</p>
<p> After that, he continued to send e-mails to the parents, terrorizing them with messages <span class="strongInContent">such as, &#8220;My sister is next,&#8221;</span> while showing off the pictures of A&#8217;s body at his favorite snack bar. This led to his arrest on eight charges, including kidnapping for indecent purposes, murder, and destruction of a corpse.</p>
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<p> And that&#8217;s not all. During an interrogation at the Nara Prefectural Police Department, he made a statement that was even more egregious than we had imagined.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> He said, &#8220;I have no regrets,&#8221; and &#8220;I was satisfied to see the fuss that was made. I have no desire to apologize to my parents.&#8221; &#8220;I don&#8217;t think I will ever commit the same crime again. I want to be executed as soon as possible and say goodbye to this world.&#8221; &#8220;I want to leave my name in the world.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> At his trial, when asked what he planned to do if his offer was rejected, he replied, &#8220;I am thinking of targeting the next child,&#8221; and then summed up his heinous act as if it were something else, saying, &#8220;Well, it&#8217;s not something a human being would do, is it?</span></p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" What was the content of the book that made X weep?"></div>
<h3><span class="strongInContent">Crying&#8221; over a documentary about people with handicaps</span></h3>
<p> It is said that X cried while in prison. It was because he read a book titled &#8220;I&#8217;m glad I met you&#8221; (Sangokan), which was given to him by his lawyer in May 2005. X had a slight disability in his left eye, which he said had given him a complex about his life. At the recommendation of his lawyer, he wrote the following statement. The following comment was also written in the book, which completely changed his attitude at the subsequent trial.</p>
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<p><span class="strongInContent"> &#8220;Why is it that people of the same color blood can be &#8220;discriminated&#8221; against each other?　I wonder why people of the same color blood would discriminate against each other, and I myself recall with regret the times when I was subjected to discriminatory language regarding my physical defect (regarding my left eye).&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> His testimony changed dramatically at the fifth hearing on July 4, when he told the judge that he had been discriminated against because of his physical defect (regarding his left eye). He told the judge, &#8220;</span><span class="strongInContent"> （When questioned again by the defense, he said, &#8220;Every day in the detention center, before going to bed, I pray with my hands together for the girl.</span></p>
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<p> The attorney for the defendant said the following.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> 《 &#8220;X still has the feeling of crying when he is moved by reading a book. He has not yet reached the point where his personality has been devastated. I think there is still a possibility of rehabilitation. In order to clarify the case, it is necessary to go into the unfortunate background that created his abnormal personality.&#8221;</span></p>
<p> At the fifth trial, it was decided to conduct an emotional evaluation, which the defense had requested, and X was to be subjected to psychological analysis through tests and interviews with psychiatrists. How did the psychiatrists analyze the tears shed by the &#8220;demon&#8221;?</p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" The results are available at ......"></div>
<h3><span class="strongInContent">The &#8220;Truth&#8221; as Confessed in the Emotional Examination</span></h3>
<p> The results of the presentence report submitted to the Nara District Court in February 2006 diagnosed X as having &#8220;antisocial personality disorder&#8221; and &#8220;pedophilia. During the course of this evaluation, X confessed to the expert witness and his lawyer, denying the murder <span class="strongInContent">, saying, &#8220;I tried to mischief A-chan by giving her sleeping pills (Halcion), but she drowned in the bathtub</span>.</p>
<p> However, based on the findings of the doctor who performed the autopsy, the district court concluded that X&#8217;s allegations <span class="strongInContent">&#8220;must be said to be false in order to reduce or exempt his own criminal responsibility</span>. Although X said that the reason he changed his statement was <span class="strongInContent">&#8220;not to try to lessen his guilt</span>,&#8221; he did not give a detailed reason, which led the court to conclude that he <span class="strongInContent">was &#8220;not remorseful</span>.</p>
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<p> In September &#8217;06, X was sentenced to death. His defense attorney appealed, but X himself withdrew the appeal, and on October 11, 2006, his death sentence was finalized. The sentence was carried out on February 21, 2001.</p>
<p> It seems that X&#8217;s claim that <span class="strongInContent">&#8220;A&#8221; drowned</span> was the &#8220;truth&#8221; he had been harboring inside himself for a long time. Hiroyuki Shinoda, editor-in-chief of the magazine &#8220;Sou,&#8221; to which X contributed his memoirs from June to December, wrote the following in the April &#8217;13 issue of the magazine after X&#8217;s execution.</p>
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<p><span class="strongInContent"> After his arrest and during the trial, he has accepted the investigators&#8217; claims almost verbatim and insisted that he wanted the death penalty. But on the other hand, he was driven and shaken by the desire to tell the truth.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> X decided to tell the truth and called his defense attorney from Nara, saying, &#8216;I have something important to tell you. He also confided the same story to the psychiatrist who was in charge of his evaluation at the time. However, the defense attorney apparently did not believe the defendant&#8217;s story, which turned the trial upside down from the very beginning, when the defendant had admitted guilt and was seeking an expert opinion on extenuating circumstances. Caught in his disappointment, he decided not to make his case in court anymore.</span></p>
<p> Whether his &#8220;truth&#8221; was true or not is no longer known. But the tears he shed when he read the book may have been real.</p>

<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" X&#39;s comment: I couldn&#39;t stop crying."></div>
<figure id="attachment_437283" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-437283" style="width: 2192px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="65f24989"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/08/00d1c438e503025231e9bb3aaffc5a8b.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-437283" class="wp-caption-text">X&#8217;s &#8220;Book Report. It describes two episodes in &#8220;I&#8217;m so glad I met you. Both of them say, &#8220;I couldn&#8217;t stop crying&#8221; (from the August 19 and 26, &#8217;05 issues).</figcaption></figure>
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<figure id="attachment_437284" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-437284" style="width: 2158px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="eafee527"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/08/9749dd0d53cfa7a8c41ae773712aab86.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-437284" class="wp-caption-text"> The same comment on &#8220;I&#8217;m glad I met you. Passionate thoughts about discrimination were written (from the August 19 and 26, &#8217;05 issues).</figcaption></figure>
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<figure id="attachment_437285" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-437285" style="width: 1913px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="b98a0fcc"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/08/ee5d4e725499ffca1ded4c87a0f084e2.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-437285" class="wp-caption-text"> X at the actual inspection of his apartment (January &#8217;05)</figcaption></figure>
<figure id="attachment_437287" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-437287" style="width: 446px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="d090070d"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/08/17f8b3a3058368a8278deed6352e67e8.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-437287" class="wp-caption-text"> Also at the actual inspection. X&#8217;s petite body looked as if it would be crushed when surrounded by investigators (January &#8217;05).</figcaption></figure>


 Shigeki Sato (1st, 4th), Kenji Natsume (5th)

 In this issue of Playback, we look back at what we reported 10, 20, and 30 years ago. X was arrested in December 2004 for the murder of a girl in Nara, Japan, and this magazine reported on a surprising side of him while he was in custody at the time.

Playback ’05] The “Authenticity” of the Tears Shed by the Murderer of a Girl in the First Elementary School in Nara, Japan

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