Number 7 Lindsay Hawker After graduating with a first-class honors
degree from the University of Leeds, 22-year-old Lindsay Hawker, of Coventry, England, decided
to teach English for a year in Tokyo, starting in October of 2006.
On her train ride home from work, she met Tatsuya Ichihashi, aged 28.
He approached the young woman asking if she was his English teacher, which she wasn’t.
After Hawker got off the train, Ichihashi ran after her, as she cycled home, and asked
for a glass of water upon reaching her residence.
She felt sorry for him and agreed but, as a precaution, also introduced him to the two
female teachers with whom she was sharing her accommodation.
While there, Ichihashi drew a picture of Hawker which he signed with his name, telephone number
and e-mail address.
The pair agreed to a private English lesson and, on March the 24th of 2007, they met at
a café before taking a taxi to Ichihashi’s apartment.
Within a few days, Hawker was reported missing, after she’d failed to contact her family
or show up for her classes.
The authorities retraced her actions, leading up to the disappearance, and, on March the
26th, officers arrived outside of Ichihashi’s apartment building.
Ichihashi, a black belt martial artist obsessed with physical fitness, fled barefooted and
evaded capture by jumping from the stairwell and then running through the streets.
On the balcony of his apartment, the police found Hawker’s naked body in a bathtub,
buried in a mixture of compost soil and sand.
Ichihashi had abused the young woman and subjected her to a prolonged and brutal beating before
strangling her to death.
In spite of a massive manhunt and rewards offered for information leading to his capture,
he was on the run for over two years, a time during which he changed his appearance through
plastic surgery.
Ichihashi was finally arrested in November of 2009, in Osaka, as he was trying to get
to Okinawa.
He admitted to abusing and killing Hawker but, even though her family asked for the
death penalty, he was sentenced to life in prison, in 2011, as he didn’t have a criminal
record and it was deemed he could still be rehabilitated.
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Number 6 Joji Obara Joji Obara is one of Japan’s most notorious
criminals, having abused hundreds of women, two of whom he killed in what were cases of
international infamy.
Obara’s modus operandi involved drugging his victims then abducting and abusing them
while they were unconscious.
He preferred white women because they were viewed as a status symbol but his victims
hailed both from Japanese and Western backgrounds.
He documented his crimes, to which he referred as “conquest play”, and the police recovered
videotapes related to at least 400 attacks.
In 1992, Obara was responsible for the death of Carita Ridgway, aged 22, an Australian
model from Perth, who worked as a bar hostess in the Ginza area of Tokyo.
The hostess term was interpreted in the parameters of a modern geisha, with strict rules against
touching, the women being paid to engage in conversation, dance and light their patron’s
cigarettes as well as for singing karaoke or dancing.
Ridgway had accepted a lift by Obara.
He drugged her and she suffered chloroform-induced liver failure and complete loss of brain function
that ultimately led to her death.
Obara, using the alias Nishita, had taken her to an emergency room, claiming she’d
suffered food poisoning, and then fled.
On July the 1st of 2000, Tokyo hostess Lucie Blackman, a 21-year-old native of England,
disappeared after going on a paid date with a customer.
As the investigation progressed and gained media exposure, more women came forward and
Obara became a suspect.
Blackman’s body was found, in February of 2001, buried in a shallow grave in a seaside
cave, roughly 30 miles south of Tokyo.
It was discovered less than a mile from Obara’s apartment.
She’d been cut into ten pieces and placed inside separate bags with her head encased
in concrete.
The advanced state of decomposition made determining the cause of death impossible.
Obara was indicted for drugging, abusing and killing Blackman but maintained his innocence.
Prosecutors deemed the evidence to have been insufficient to charge him for the Blackman
killing but he was sentenced to life imprisonment for Ridgway’s manslaughter and abuse, which
was on videotape, as well as other cases of abuse.
Number 5 Shigeharu Shirai Yakuza is an umbrella term used to define
Japan’s most powerful criminal organizations that trace their origins to the age of the
Tokugawa shogunate, from the early 17th century to the latter half of the 19th century.
Originally operating as marginalized groups of peddlers and gamblers, the organizations
grew into billion-dollar enterprises operating on both sides of the law.
They adhere to a strict code of conduct and their rituals, often shrouded in mystery,
include full-body tattoos and cutting off the tip of a finger, typically the pinky,
to atone for an offense.
These aspects of the yakuza lifestyle, in 2018, became the basis for the arrest of a
former Yakuza boss who’d spent 14 years on the run.
In 2003, Shigeharu Shirai had allegedly gunned down the head of a rival faction and fled
Japan as the police called for his arrest.
He settled in Thailand, where he married a local woman and kept a low profile into his
early 70s.
Then, a Thai local, fascinated by Shirai’s appearance, snapped some photos of him as
he was playing a street-side game of checkers, with his back and chest tattoos as well as
his missing pinky in full view.
The photos went viral and reached Japanese law enforcement.
They then collaborated with Thai authorities for Shirai’s arrest and, according to police
spokesperson General Wirachai Songmetta “the suspect admitted that he was the leader of
the Yakuza sub-gang Kodo-kai”.
Number 4 Yuka Takaoka 21-year-old Yuka Takaoka became a social media
sensation following the events of May the 23rd of 2019, when she stabbed her boyfriend
because of jealous rage.
While working as the manager of a hostess club, she’d met Phoenix Luna, a bar host
himself.
In their respective job capacities they were expected to boost sales by flirting with patrons
and encouraging them to keep drinking.
Takaoka and Luna had moved in together in an apartment in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Within three days of the move, an argument broke out between them after Takaoka had found
another woman’s photo on Luna’s phone.
It ended with her stabbing him twice and slashing his abdomen open.
A since-viral photo would show Takaoka sitting on the floor, next to his bleeding body, as
she was being questioned by a police officer.
She was calmly smoking a cigarette while talking to someone on the phone.
Another viral photo showed her smiling in the back of a police car.
Users on multiple social media platforms became fascinated and infatuated with Takaoka, likening
her to an anime character while speculating on her jealous and obsessive nature.
Some even created fan art inspired by her and the attack while others claimed she was
“too beautiful” to be a suspect.
Takaoka was charged with attempted murder but Luna, who subsequently recovered from
his injuries, claimed he held no grudge and even credited the attack with boosting his
popularity at the club where he worked.
Number 3 Assassination of Iccho Itoh On April the 17th of 2007, while campaigning
for re-election to his fourth term as mayor of Nagasaki, politician Iccho Itoh was assassinated
by a leading member of the Suishin-kai yakuza.
The group was associated with Yamaguchi-gumi, the country’s largest and most powerful
yakuza syndicate.
As he was getting out of the car, in front of his campaign office near Nagasaki Station,
Itoh was gunned down at point blank range by Tetsuya Shiroo.
He was rushed to a hospital and into surgery but eventually succumbed to blood loss.
Shiroo was quickly subdued by law enforcement and consequently sentenced to life in prison.
It was reported that Shiroo had shot Itoh out of a personal grudge after the city had
refused to compensate him for a car accident.
In 2003, while the victim was mayor, the yakuza boss had damaged his car driving in a hole
dug for public works but his insurance claim was denied.
However, there were also reports that Shiroo had assassinated Itoh because a construction
company affiliated with his organization had been denied a contract.
The high-profile shooting hadn’t been sanctioned by the Yamaguchi-gumi or by other Suishin-kai
leaders.
The groups detested the scrutiny it brought on them with the latter voluntarily disbanding
following the assassination.
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Number 2 Kyoto Animation Arson Attack One of the deadliest massacres to have occurred
in Japan since the end of World War II was the arson attack at Kyoto Animation’s Studio
1, on July the 18th of 2019.
The perpetrator was 41-year-old Shinji Aoba who’d accused the studio of plagiarizing
his novels.
He entered the building, in the Fushimi ward of Kyoto, with 11 gallons of gasoline which
he’s believed to have carried inside on a platform trolley.
Aoba then doused the area and some of the workers inside with the highly flammable liquid
reportedly shouting “Die!” as he set them alight.
The blaze spread rapidly trapping many inside the building while others rushed into the
streets engulfed in flames.
Since it was classified as a small office building, the studio didn’t have sprinklers
or fire hydrants.
Most of the victims were consumed by flames, rather than carbon monoxide poisoning, and
some were so badly burnt that they could only be identified through DNA testing.
36 people died in the inferno, either directly or as a result of it, while 33 others were
injured.
Aoba had also set himself on fire but didn’t perish in the attack, as he’d originally
intended.
The police apprehended him in the street, a few hundred feet from the studio, where
he’d collapsed with life-threatening burns.
He took responsibility for the attack, offering baseless claims of plagiarism as motivation.
After recovering and receiving treatment for his burns, he was formally indicted for murder
and other charges on December the 16th of 2020.
Aoba suffered from an unspecified mental illness and it could be taken into consideration towards
him being given life imprisonment instead of the capital punishment.
Number 1 Satoru Nomura As the fifth president of the Fukuoka Prefecture-based
yakuza group Kudo-kai, Satoru Nomura led one of the most violent organizations in the country.
Unlike other syndicates, the Kudo-kai was designated a “particularly nefarious group”
for its lack of hesitation in attacking civilians by gunning them down or bombing their homes.
At the height of his power, in 2008, Nomura had around 1,200 members under his command.
However, the longstanding campaign led by law enforcement against his reign of terror
reached an unprecedented conclusion on August the 24th of 2021.
On that date, Nomura, a man in his early 70s, became the first senior yakuza member to be
sentenced to death.
Throughout his extensive criminal activity, Nomura was arrested in connection to the murder
of Kunihiro Kajiwara, a former fishermen’s union leader.
He was also arrested for ordering an attack in which a former police inspector probing
the Kudo-kai was shot in the leg.
Additionally, he was held responsible for the stabbing and attempted murder of a nurse
at a cosmetic surgery clinic, after he was reportedly displeased with her attitude and
result of his operation.
Nomura was also charged, on May the 22nd of 2015, for the stabbing and attempted murder
of a dentist.
According to updates on the case, Nomura was appealing the death sentence after he’d
reportedly issued a public threat to the presiding judge, claiming that he’d regret sending
him to the gallows.
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