The scene of the crime. Tadashi Asano was sitting on his knees next to his wife, who was lying on the ground with a kitchen knife stuck in her chest.“What do you want for dinner?” “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.