They seek him here. They seek him there. Those Japanese cops seek him everywhere.
He’s the country’s prime pooper, the overlord of excrement,
and when he dumps his deuces on the streets, he’s gone in the flash of an eye.
The police were hot on his trail, but no sooner than they got a whiff of his identity,
the serial stool ditcher dropped another one and laughed as he scurried away into the crowds.
We kid you not viewers. Japan had a serial pooper on its hands which was becoming a big problem.
The country first heard about him in 2019 when the public looked in shock at their TV screens and
heard about a man that was mysteriously leaving poops outside buildings in busy parts of Tokyo.
Back then, the Tokyo authorities announced that someone had been dropping the kids
off not at the pool, but outside popular restaurants and shops in one of the city’s
busiest shopping districts. He left at least 10 piles of poop in quick succession and police
believed it was the work of the same person. That’s when he was given the name Mr. Poop or
“Unkoman” in Japanese. Sure, it sounds funny to you, but if you’ve ever been to Japan
you’ll know that manners, as well as a social contract people embrace to keep places clean,
is a big deal. The public was absolutely horrified when it heard about Unkoman.
Some of them were reminded of an earlier case in Osaka when a criminal pooper started wiping
his stuff on people in the street and either running away or escaping on a bicycle. The
poop police called him “The Thursday Man” due to his picking that day to commit his crimes.
That was 2011, but when Mr. Poop devastated Tokyo in 2019,
people were only too aware that the nightmare was starting again.
We’ll come back to the Osaka pooper later and even American Mr. (and Mrs) Poops, but first,
let’s investigate the scoundrel that tainted the streets of Tokyo with his glorious turds.
The area where this guy was working was called the Akihabara district. That’s where Kosaku
Nakajima had a model train store. One day while he was showing off his new Tomix 98406 JR Series,
someone took a huge dump right outside the store. Nakajima smelled something funny and
then he saw the pile. He ran up and down the street looking for the culprit, but how does one
ascertain who a recently relieved pooper is? Then the crafty crapper struck again. This
time outside a popular restaurant on Chuo-dori street. No sooner than that pile was cleaned up,
he struck again, and then again, and again, and again, all in the same area. It became obvious
that one wretch of a human was trying to dirty up a previously spotless area.
The cops were called, and the community got together to share CCTV clips.
The pooper was good, very good, but one video exposed at least a bit of him.
That clip showed a man pulling up a pair of black pants and running away carrying a blue backpack.
Police said the guy was probably in his 30s. Then, he struck again, leaving an enormous
dump outside a shop. It was still steaming when the owner first saw it, but it seemed
the poopetrator was nowhere to be seen. There was nothing the store owners could really do
besides keep an eye out for Mr. Poop, but they at least put signs up in their store windows warning
people that there was a possibility they might be affronted by a pile of human dung.
Today it remains an unsolved mystery. Mr. Poop never pooped again in that district, but the
question is, did he start up again somewhere else where surveillance wasn’t so great. After all,
when a person is overcome by such deranged urges, they don’t usually just get sane all of a
sudden...Well, they might, as you shall see. Then in 2021 in the city of Osaka,
one man started his very own dirty smear campaign. On the evening of July 29, a woman was walking
down the street in Suita City in Osaka Prefecture when she noticed that familiar smell: poop. She
thought at first it must be the sewers, but then the smell seemed to follow her.
After about 30 minutes she knew something was up. The stench was all around her as if she had
her very own poop shadow. Then she took off her backpack and to her utter astonishment,
it was covered in human feces. She went straight to the cops.
About a month later, the police arrested a 24-year old man in the same city. The arrest
was for assault and damage to property, but when the cops opened the guy’s bag,
they found a bottle full of watery poop. It was obvious that he’d used it for squirting feces
on people since it had a tube attached to it. We’re going to talk more about psychological
matters later, but the reason for his poop attacks was said to be stress.
The guy had just gotten a divorce and so it was thought that along with the stress
he also harbored some antipathy towards women. Japanese people took to web forums to air their
views and try to understand the pooper. One person just asked, “How did he get it in the bottle?”
Good question, but such practicalities are not our concern today. We want
to understand this phenomenon better. It’s a lot more common than you think.
On December 8, 2011, a woman was riding her bicycle in Osaka’s Higashinari Ward.
Suddenly, a man rode up beside her and leaned over to wipe poop on her. The guy rode away,
leaving the woman in shock. He did the same to another target just a few minutes later.
For weeks after, every Thursday, the same person rubbed poop on someone in the same district,
hence he got that name “The Thursday Man”. A Japanese professor explained, “He tends to
obtain his pleasure by acting within a fixed set of rules. That’s why it’s always on the same day.”
As for why he did it, a psychology professor at Meiji University said it was his way of
attaining intimacy with women. He obviously had mental problems and zero confidence,
so the only way he could really feel close to a woman was rubbing a part of him on her that
no one else would usually ever see. It doesn’t just happen in Japan.
Criminal poopers are everywhere. You’ve likely rubbed shoulders with one in your lifetime,
but you just didn’t know it. No way, you’re thinking, but that’s because
you’ve never heard of the “Bowel Movement Bandit.” In 2015, this man terrified the citizens of Akron,
Ohio, in the USA. For three years this guy had been covering cars with his own feces
and cops had no idea who he was. Then the parents of a young woman had had enough.
The guy had chosen the daughter’s car on a few occasions, which you can imagine is
not what she wanted to wake up to in the morning. That’s why the parents set up a
camera closer to the car so the next time this defiler of driveways came around and
did his thing, he’d be caught in the act. It worked, because the pooper did come back.
He just couldn’t stop himself. And when he pooped this time, he was a sitting duck.
That was a few years ago. Someone wrote on Facebook, “Did they ever
catch this guy?” There was no reply to that. They never did catch him, but what we want to know
is what drove this serial pooper to commit his crimes? Police said it wasn’t because he had a
beef with someone. It was something more to do with mental illness, just like in Japan.
In 2018, the BBC asked the question, “Serial poopers: What makes people poo in public places?”
Believe it or not, the Beeb said what happened in Japan and what happened in Ohio
is way more common than people think. The article mentioned the notorious
Brisbane pooper, an Australian guy who pooped on the same public pathway 30 times before he was
finally caught. In the end, it was residents that stopped him after setting up cameras.
The guy was 64 years old. He’d recently retired from a high-paying corporate job. He was
someone’s father. He was a loving grandfather. He even sat on the Brisbane City Council Board.
We will forgive you for being confused right now. That’s not what you’d expected
to hear about a delinquent doo-doo discharger. A clinical forensic psychologist at Birmingham
City tried to explain why a successful guy like this would go on such a slime
spree. He said it usually boils down to a few things. They include storing up a lot of rage,
having anxiety issues, just being ill, and the obvious, someone wanting to send a strong message.
But the message thing would mean having an enemy and no one we’ve talked about today had one
single enemy, unless that enemy was society itself or the opposite sex. In these cases,
the reason is rage more than sending a message. Interestingly, the professor said:
“I've worked on cases where burglars have crapped in the house - and I always ask the
police whether it's soft or hard. They look at me like I'm absolutely mad. And I say,
if it's soft, then it's somebody who's anxious, so you get a kid who goes and craps on the
bed. And if it's really hard stool then it's an indication of somebody who's angry and bitter.”
For some people, when you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go. Sometimes when a person’s stomach is
hurting or they suffer from certain diseases there is absolutely nothing they can do,
which is unfortunate in this day and age when everyone is a walking viral video maker.
We’ll come back to the meaning of this public menace, but first,
let’s now tell you another story. This person became known as “The Mad Pooper”
after she left poops everywhere in 2017 in Colorado Springs,
Colorado. She was a jogger who on her daily run would poop on pathways and outside houses.
People at first thought it must have been because of a medical issue, but really,
did she have to just poop in the street when there were public bathrooms around?
Maybe she did have a health problem, but some people said it was more likely
a psychological thing. Like the others in this show, she couldn’t stop herself.
“This is intentional,” a victim of her poop told The Washington Post. He said it was more than just
having bowel issues. There were public bathrooms really close to where she did her damage.
She changed her route now and again, one time pooping close to a Walgreens drugstore
and many times using people’s back gardens. Residents then left her notes where they thought
she might do her next hit. She ended up pooping close to those notes. This woman was unstoppable,
a far more dangerous defecator than Tokyo’s Mr. Poop. The magazine Runner’s World then
left her a message that read, “As runners, we understand having a sudden emergency now
and then. But when it becomes a habit, you need to change up your regimen.”
And then just like that, she was gone. Her poops no longer stained the pathways of Colorado
Springs. She just gave up. But that left us, the innocent public, never getting any closure.
What was it with this jogger? What had driven her to paint the streets brown?
This is what a leading expert on the matter concluded:
“The mad pooper's abnormal impulse may or may not be exhibitionism.
She might instead feel an overwhelming urge to experience the sensation of a bowel movement
out in the open air. Or to flaunt social rules, break the law, and get away with it.”
So, she raged against the machine. It’s a fitting analysis, especially in Japan where the machine
parts are continually stressed and often work themselves into a state of frenzied stress.
Pooping against the machine. That seems plausible. Such rage-based pooping was likely why New
Zealand’s “Brown Bomber” fired off six poops in six weeks at a swimming pool in
the Splash Palace Aquatic Centre. No one was ever caught. No doubt the “Portland Pooper” in
2015 felt justified in pinching off dookies in public because he too was enraged by something.
Again, these kinds of serial poopers are a different breed to one-off street spoilers
who might have just had a spicy Indian curry the night before or had a beef with
a neighbor. If it’s more than a few poops with no specific target, the poop is pathological.
The psychologist talking to the BBC said, “I mean, somebody who defecates
in public has mental health issues. It's as simple as that. If you're socialized,
that's the last thing that you would do.” Thankfully, in every case that we can see,
once the pooper gets it out of their system…we mean the rage, not the poop. Ok,
we mean both…Once the pooper gets it out of their system, it seems they give up after a while. Sure,
the social media posts and videos may force them to stop spreading their DNA on the street,
but it’s likely after a few rogue poops they do feel some relief.
Veni, vidi, defecare; I came, I saw, I pooped. Job done. What a relief.
Now you need to watch “How Much Do You Poop In A Lifetime?” Or,
give yourself nightmares with “Scariest Things That Can Come Out Of Your Toilet.”