A Former Prison Colleague Reveals the Shocking Realities of Real Pickup Academy Students

On August 6, ten passengers were cut with knives and seriously or lightly injured in a random stabbing incident on the Odakyu Odawara Line. Yusuke Tsushima (36), who was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, stated that he had a selfish grudge against women, saying, “About six years ago, I developed a feeling that I wanted to kill happy people, mainly women. On the other hand, his past as a “pick-up artist” has also been dug up.

He was arrested in 2018 for sexually assaulting a woman he had picked up by getting her intoxicated and making her unable to resist, and was later charged with quasi-forcible sexual intercourse with three women in their 20s.

Watabe denied the charges, but the Tokyo District Court in the first trial found that he had committed the assault and sentenced him to 13 years in prison. The defendant appealed, but in June this year, the Tokyo High Court upheld the judgment of the first instance and dismissed the appeal. The case is now being appealed to the Supreme Court.

One of the RNA students, Takuya Hanyu (then 33), a former company employee who was convicted of quasi-forcible sexual intercourse and group quasi-rape against two women and sentenced to seven years in prison in 2018, is currently serving time in a prison in the Kanto region.

Mr. A, a released prisoner who used to spend time in the same cell with Hanyu, spoke candidly about Hanyu’s shocking true face.

Elite consciousness

Hanyu was working as an employee of a consulting company until his arrest. Perhaps because of his elitist attitude, he tended to “attack people who were lower than him” even in prison, Mr. A said.

“The most amazing thing about him is his aggressiveness toward the weak. The moment he finds out that someone is weaker than him, such as an elderly inmate, he attacks them. In the case he committed, the victim was a woman, right? If you look at their strength, they are often weaker than themselves. There is a similarity there, and his aggression toward the weak has not been cured.

In 2018, not only Watabe but also more than a dozen other students who had learned how to pick up girls at the school were arrested one after another, and those who were later prosecuted were sentenced to prison. The RNA methods revealed in their trials were common. They would pick up women in the downtown area, have a drink at a bar, and then take them to a nearby hotel or to a room owned by RNA, commonly called a “house. He would play darts and card games with them, and if they lost, they would drink high alcohol such as vodka or Jaeger, and after intoxicating them, he would have sexual intercourse with them.

One of the victims kept winning at darts, so the students hurriedly switched to a card game and taught each other and their accomplices their cards by e-mail, forcing the woman to lose. It has also been revealed that they recorded the sexual acts on video and sent them to the RNA group line. This was in accordance with the president’s teaching of “leaving evidence of reconciliation. The House was located not only in Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, but also in Osaka.

Sexual intercourse with a woman was called “getting”, and if you picked up a woman and had intercourse with her on the same day, it was called “soku”, and the RNA had people compete to see how many “soku” they could get. The method that was established for this purpose was the criminal act of getting a woman intoxicated and making her unable to resist, and then having intercourse with her.

Hanyu, who used these methods to have intercourse with women, may have been conscious of the fact that the women “agreed” to be picked up by him, and he was heard to say disrespectfully to the women, ” Even the women who come here want to have fun.

It is said that Mr. A sometimes asked him about the crime he committed, and he said, “That was a crime.

“I wonder if that was a crime. If I had known it was a crime, I wouldn’t have done such a foolish thing. I’ve studied a lot of things, but I didn’t know enough about it.

Mr. A was surprised to hear this, but asked him how he was going to spend his time in prison, to which Hanyu replied, “Well, now that I’m here, I can’t help it. I think it’s a good time to study,” he replied with a laugh and no sign of guilt.

“I think it’s a good time to study. He said, “I don’t need to study to get this. Also, eating sweets inside is my motivation! I guess I’m too easy on myself. Do you think this kind of life in prison will change anything?　But there are many people like this being released into the world. So I can’t do anything about it, but I want people to know that this is the reality.

Ms. A also said that there was a tendency among those who committed sex crimes when they were transferred from the jail to the prison from the accused to the inmates. They would bring the same “pornographic books” that they had been bought or supplied with in jail.

“This was the case 100 percent of the time. They all bring erotic books. By the way, Hanyu was in uniform. He liked young girls. He also likes girls who look like cabaret girls. I knew he hadn’t changed,” he said.

Hanyu’s career as a former consultant was also put to good use in prison. When the inmates were gathered in the cafeteria, he was sometimes assigned to give an explanation to everyone.

He said, “When I tell them to finish in 10 minutes, they finish in exactly 10 minutes. I guess he’s good at presentations because he worked as a consultant. He was called Hanyu-sensei (Mr. Hanyu) when he gave presentations like that,” Mr. A recalled.

“He explained things like a cram school teacher would explain things to students. He would explain things like a cram school teacher would explain things to students, and his tone of voice was just like that, very high-handed. He was especially cold to the weaker people, saying things like, ‘If you can’t take care of yourself, you should just sit still.

If you can’t do your own thing, just stay put.

“I used to write letters to my family members who were allowed access to the outside. His handwriting was very small and uniform, which left a strong impression on me. From what I’ve seen, he doesn’t seem to be aware that what he’s doing is wrong. I also think that he has no patience. They don’t hold back when they get angry. They may be hysterical, or if something happens, their face may change, or they may attack. As long as he can’t fix that, there is a possibility that he will do something again.

I can’t help but hope that Ms. A’s prediction will not come true and that Hanyu will realize the magnitude of his crime while he is in prison.