Professional in Criminal Psychology Murders His Wife
Part I. The horrific scene of the stabbing and the horrifying motive: "I became aware that I was in a struggle to kill or be killed."
“Fried chicken.”
“I see. Then I’ll go buy some.”
That was the last conversation between Asano and his wife.
March 16, 2020, 18:02. Her wife, Houyo Asano, was murdered near the Saitama Prefectural Office, a Kokusai Kogyo bus stop on Route 463 in Takasago 3-chome, Saitama City. The man who committed the crime was her husband, Tadashi Asano. At the time of his arrest, Tadashi was an associate professor at the Faculty of Human Sciences of Bunkyo University.
Shortly before 18:00 on the day of the murder, Tadashi took a bus from JR Urawa Station and arrived at the murder scene. The Saitama Juvenile Disciplinary Center, where Houyo works, closes at 5:30 p.m. “My wife lives with her three children,” he said. Tadashi predicted that his wife would go back to the Ministry of Justice dormitory where they lived with their three children, and then go shopping for dinner. After the opening exchange with his second daughter, Houyo pedaled his bicycle to Parco in front of the east exit of Urawa Station. The purpose was to buy some side dishes for dinner, including fried chicken, at Yaoko on the first basement floor. Tadashi was waiting in front of the bus stop, and when he recognized Houyo, he put his hand on the back of the bicycle and knocked his wife down. He then took a 17-centimeter-long kitchen knife with a blade he had purchased 10 days earlier from a backpack he was carrying on his back and stabbed her multiple times in the left front chest.
Tadashi was sitting upright next to his injured wife when police and ambulances arrived on the scene. Houyo was transported to Saitama Red Cross Hospital with the knife lodged in her chest. The wound in her chest is 6.5 cm. The blade had passed through the aorta over her heart and reached her esophagus. She then died of blood loss. She was only 53 years old.
Her second daughter, who entered high school in 2019, was “voiced” in the deliberations held on May 17, 2022 at Saitama District Court, Building A, Courtroom 201. It had been two years and two months since she encountered the murder of her own mother at the hands of her father, and it was poignant to see her, now 18 years old, responding to questions from the prosecution and the defense with poise.
On his days off, he spent time in Karuizawa, Guam, Odaiba, and Mt. Takao.
Tadashi, born in Gifu Prefecture on June 25, 1968, was awaiting sentencing after being charged with murder and violating the Firearms and Swords Possession Control Law. His father was a post office worker, his mother a housewife, and he was the second son after his four-year-old brother. According to his mother, Tadashi was an unruly child. He began to study in the third grade of elementary school and excelled both academically and athletically. In junior high school, he played volleyball, but after entering Gifu Prefectural High School, he devoted himself to his studies and was accepted into the Faculty of Social Sciences at Hitotsubashi University as an active student. His mother described her son in court as a “hard worker.
In his first year at Hitotsubashi University, Tadashi began to think that he would like to teach at the university in the future. He joined a seminar of a teacher working at a health center and began to study psychology in earnest. However, it took him six years to graduate from university due to his passion for mahjong. Although he failed the entrance exam to a graduate school with a doctoral program, he went on to obtain a master’s degree from Yokohama National University. While working with children with developmental disabilities and their parents, he passed the first-class national civil service examination and joined the Ministry of Justice in 1995. As a bureaucrat, he began working with offenders in juvenile classification homes and prisons. He worked together with the prisoners, helping them on how to be rehabilitated back into society.
He and his colleague, Houyo, took a training course together in their second year, which led to their love, and they married in 1998. Their first daughter was born that year. Asano and his wife lived separately at the juvenile classification home where he worked and at the government building of the juvenile reformatory, but they began to live together at the Nerima government building after taking a childcare leave. On holidays, the three of them went to Karuizawa, Guam, Odaiba, Mt. Takao, and other places. Tadashi recalls this period as “enjoying working with psychology”.
In 2003, he said, “I wanted to broaden my horizons and study more. I want to become a university teacher.” Tadashi decided to study at the graduate school of Southern Illinois University in the United States. He describes his days studying psychology professionally in a foreign country as really enjoyable. “It was the most enjoyable time of my life. I wrote a letter of gratitude to my wife for allowing me to pursue the path I loved,” he recalls.
During this study abroad period, their second daughter was born in Japan. Houyo gave birth back home. After returning to Japan, Tadashi began looking for a job at the university while working at the Chiba Penitentiary. There were times he failed in the application process and in the interview process, but in 2007, he became a full-time lecturer at Bunkyo University. The documents he submitted at that time were corrected by Houyo. At Bunkyo University, built in Koshigaya City, Saitama Prefecture, he took classes such as psychological testing and taught the psychology of criminals. At the time, his wife was living in a government housing complex in Komae City, Tokyo. It takes about 90 minutes one way from Komae to Koshigaya, where Bunkyo University is located. The couple began discussing whether to raise their two daughters at the Justice Ministry’s official residence in Komae or whether Tadashi could buy an apartment and have them grow up in Koshigaya. Finally, the government housing became too cramped.
In 2015, Tadashi was promoted to associate professor. He says, “The most important thing when dealing with students is to listen carefully and understand what they are thinking. As long as you pay attention to that, there will be no problems,” was his theory. Every morning Tadashi was in charge of taking the three girls to daycare in Komae. His wife would leave the house five minutes after waking up to go to work. She often returned home after 10:00 p.m., so she was always busy with her work. In addition, she had to be on duty twice a week, which meant that she had no time to take the children out to play. Tadashi thought about buying an apartment in Koshigaya, but his wife insisted on a single-family house, and they ended up staying in the government housing.
A “Criminology Professional” Falls Down
In April 2019, Houyo was transferred to Saitama Juvenile Discrimination Center and moved into a three-bedroom government housing in Urawa. At that time, Tadashi complained to his wife that her father’s luggage was too much, and they argued. Tadashi says, “After that, my wife stopped talking to me at all, and when I asked her for help, she would only say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ The following month, I wrote her a letter of apology, but she didn’t respond at all, and I didn’t know why she was angry.”
Tadashi wrote several more letters of apology to his wife. However, she still did not speak to him, and in August of the same year, he began to think about divorce. He also consulted a lawyer. Tadashi told the court, “I have sent out all the letters apologizing.”
The next daughter, who became a high school student in the same year, went to a school about 80 minutes away by train. Tadashi and his second daughter moved to an apartment near Noborito Station in Tama-ku, Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture, which is convenient for commuting to school, and started a new life in September. Tadashi leaves home before his daughter’s school hours to go to Bunkyo University. His second daughter focuses on her part-time job, coming home late and hardly speaking to him. Tadashi recalls his life in Noborito, “I was disappointed that my second daughter did not seem to be thinking about her future.”
Tadashi is tired of the 90-minute commute to Koshigaya, and he fears that he will not be able to get along with his second daughter, and that his wife will take some kind of action against him. In October, he began visiting the Jikei Hospital No. 3 and began to contemplate suicide.
He began to contemplate suicide.
At the same time, Tadashi began to feel that his wife was trying to make his relationship with his second daughter worse by having her work part-time, and that she was trying to put him in a difficult situation. One day, Tadashi finds a grain of medicine prescribed at the Jikei No. 3 Hospital on the carpet at home. He says, “My second daughter is trying to drive me to suicide. It’s my wife’s idea” and “We know you are depressed and this is an act of flaunting it.”. He also forgot his smartphone, went to college, and found it on his own desk when he returned home. Tadashi, who had been searching the Internet for the keyword “suicide,” felt eerie, wondering if his thoughts were known.
In November, Tadashi was diagnosed at the Jikei No. 3 Hospital, where he told them that he was feeling a strong desire to die and attempted to hang himself by hooking towels and belts to a hanger pole in the closet. Around this time, he notices that his second daughter is leaving all the doors open in the house, and his wife would say, “You are trying to kill yourself, aren’t you? I know. Then go on, die.” He felt fear and anger toward his wife and second daughter, who wanted him dead.
When asked in court about her father’s condition in Noborito, the second daughter often replied, “I was so busy with my own affairs that I don’t remember.” However, she did remember a conversation on February 11, 2020, the day she and her father left their apartment in Noborito and moved to Koshigaya. “As soon as we arrived at our new apartment, “When are you leaving?” Tadashi asked. I said, “‘It’s not very nice to talk like that! Don’t you want me here?” I was so sad that I ran out of the apartment and went to Urawa,” she testified.
On March 4, Tadashi found in the mailbox of Noborito’s apartment a duplicate key that his second daughter had made without telling him. Tadashi explained his feelings at the time as follows.
“She did it without my permission. I felt angry that she lied to me. I felt as if my second daughter was making fun of me and taking pride in her victory. I thought about stabbing them all at once, my wife and my second daughter together. I have to decide whether to kill, or to be killed.”
When asked by the prosecutor about her mother’s character, the second daughter replied, “She is a serious person with a strong work ethic. I couldn’t have any filial piety,” she responded. “I am too afraid to say anything about his punishment.” (Honorifics omitted. To be continued.)
Interview and text by： Soichi Hayashi
Born in 1969. Passed the professional boxing test as a junior lightweight, but suffered an injury to his left elbow. After working as a reporter for a weekly magazine, he became a nonfiction writer and educator, teaching at a public high school in the U.S. He graduated from the Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, the University of Tokyo, in 2014. He is the author of "Minority Fist," "America Lower Level Education Site," and "America Problem Child Regeneration Classroom" (all Kobunsha e-books), "God's Ring," "The Door to the World: Forward! Samurai Blue" and "Hohoite to Nurture Coaching" (all published by Kodansha).
