The Concrete-Encased High School Girl Murder Case (Junko Furuta Case)
I wanted to share this infamous and horrific case that never left my mind ever since I heard of it. The main reason why is because of how there are so many spread misinformations and misconceptions on this case, but also to add some details about the case who are quite important however were always not mentioned on the internet, particularly on English-speaking websites. The other reason is to spread awareness on violent crimes against women and how much juvenile delinquency is a big problem yet often left not punished.
Today is the case of Junko Furuta, she was murdered on the 4th of January 1989, after having been kept captive and tortured for 40 days.
I’ll try to make this as accurate as possible because as much as popular this case is, most of the informations about the motive of the killers seem to be incorrect, so instead of basing the source of my informations from English-speaking websites, I’ll take it mostly with Japanese websites about the case through accurate translation with DeepL.
Trigger Warning: This case contains explicit description and grotesque mentions of torture, rape, captivity, false imprisonment, immorality, injustice and cold-blooded murder.
Junko Furuta (古田 順子) was born in Misato, in the Prefecture of Saitama on January the 18th of 1971. She had an older brother and a younger brother. As a teenage girl, she was studying in Yashio-Minami High School. (Photo down below)
She was a bright, loving and popular girl with many friends at school due to her kind personality. A good student with high grades and infrequent absences. She didn’t smoke, drink, nor do drugs unlike many of her peers. Junko also reportedly had dreams of becoming an idol singer.
She had a boyfriend going by the pseudonym of Kawamura, a 23 year old construction worker who accepted an interview to a magazine about the murder and shared his feelings of helplessness after the case.
Here’s something you might find a bit weird, Junko had just turned 17 while he was 23, as I prescribed earlier, an adult, but perhaps it wasn’t seen as socially immoral for a minor in Japan in the 80’s for a minor to date an adult six years older than them. The two met on Christmas 1987 through a mutual friend. They started dating the day before Valentine’s Day in 1988. In Japan, it is a custom for a woman or girl to give chocolate to the man/boy they like (though there is also chocolate given to coworkers called ‘obligation chocolate’), so Junko made Kawamura homemade chocolates (according to some sources, she loved to bake sweets). He gifted her an 18K gold necklace in return.
In the summer of that exact same year, Junko, Kawamura, and their friends went to the beach (Junko apparently loved going to the beach), where they took a famous photo about her together (link to photo) which I think was later cropped because you can only see her on it.
“A child with big and bright eyes” was Kawamura’s first impression of her according to an article.
On 23 November, Kawamura’s birthday (but for some reasons was instead misinterpreted as Junko’s birthday on some English-speaking websites), Junko knitted him a black sweater and the two went bowling. They had also plans on going skiing in the winter which devastatingly would never happen due to the unfortunate tragedy which would occur only two days later. When Kawamura found out about the incident in March 1989, he was understandably angry and devastated.
Link to Japanese article about him
After graduating from the high school four months later in March, she was supposed to start working for an electronics retailer company from April 1989.
On the 25th of November 1988 at around 8:30PM, she was cycling home after her part-time job at an plastic molding factory, it was Friday, the day people would be paid at work, she was looking forward to watching the last episode of her favourite TV drama, Tonbo which is named Dragonfly in English.
Now, about the perpetrators background:
Offender ‘A’ (Hiroshi Miyano), the leader of the four, was born in April 1970 as the first son of his parents. With both parents working and gaining income, the family was going well financially but dysfunctional due to conflict between the parents. Miyano started showing his aggressive nature since his primary school years by stealing, bullying and vandalism. He would often break into schools, beat teachers, vandalize properties, even one time broke one of his parents ribs for buying him the wrong food. As he became violent within the family, his father even went as far as to go to his school for advice. In his middle school years he passed the three years without causing much trouble; he became good at jūdō, devoted himself to it and left good records. He moved on to a high school which was famous for being good at jūdō. The practice was hard and he was bullied by his seniors. As a result, half a year later he left the jūdō club and another half a year later dropped out of school. He started to work to become a tiler, but around that time joined a motorcycle gang. Having committed several criminal offense such as causing bodily injury, unauthorized entry to buildings and theft, he was placed under probation. Having left the motorcycle gang, for a year or so he appeared settled. He worked hard as a tiler, pleasing his boss. He started living with his girlfriend who was according to some sources offender D (Yasushi Watanabe)‘s elder sister. Wanting to marry her, he started to save money. In May 1988 he obtained a driving license and was presented by his father with a brand new car in July. Since around August, however, he became dissatisfied of his low wages and stopped turning up for work. Getting to know a yakuza member through his former classmate, he started selling fake brand goods, working as a Tekiya, looking after a yakuza office etc. He also started inhaling paint thinner. His girlfriend however soon broke up with him because of his delinquent behaviour.
Offender B (Jō Ogura to later Jō Kamisaku) was born in May 1971. His parents were separated and divorced when he was a kid. He lived with his mother and sister the majority of time, spending only two months with his father when he was ten. Good at sports, he did not show any sign of being a troublemaker, until he suffered a complex fracture in his right foot while skiing in January 1986. Unable to carry on with sports, he became lazy with studies and was expelled from his high school in November 1987. Working as an apprentice of an electrician, he enrolled at night school, but soon lost interest and was absent from the classes. From about May 1988 he idled the time away. In July 1988 he drove a motorcycle without a license and was placed on probation.
Offender C (Shinji Minato) was born in December 1972. Both his parents worked at the same surgery; his father as a pharmacist and his mother as a nurse. He had an elder brother who was born in January 1972. While at the primary school, he started causing trouble with threatening behaviour and shoplifting. Moving on to the middle high school, his verbal and physical violence intensified. He also rebelled against his father. After graduating from the middle high school in March 1988 and starting his high school years in April, his behaviour worsened. He would not attend school, would not come home at night, mixed with bad company, was violent at home, and left his school in September. Since summer that year, Minato and his elder brother’s rooms became a hangout for a gang of hoodlums as his busy parents were often not at home. Faced with their own son’s violence, Minato‘s parents were ‘helpless’, described by reports. Minato was also placed under probation after driving a motorcycle without a license.
Offender D (Yasushi Watanabe) was born in December 1971. His parents separated when he was four, and divorced two years later. His father was killed in a traffic accident soon after. Watanabe was raised by his mother and elder sister. Although he had enrolled at a night school in April 1986, he stopped attending classes only a week later, and left school in September. In October 1986 he was placed under probation for domestic violence. In June 1987 and in March 1988, he was on file for minor criminal offences. He tried a few jobs but did not last long with any of them probably due to his incompetence and violent demeanour.
All four of them used to go to the same middle high school with A as the oldest, followed by Ogura and Watanabe in the grade below, and Minato another grade down. Minato‘s house had two rooms upstairs which were occupied by Minato and his elder brother. With both parents working and therefore often not at home, those two rooms became the hangout for a gang of youths since summer 1988, about which Minato‘s parents were at the end of their tether. Ogura was in the same grade as Minato’s brother, and started to hang out at Minato‘s that summer. In October 1988, Minato‘s older brother’s motorcycle was stolen and Miyano started to come to Minato‘s while helping his older brother search for his motorcycle. From then on, a small gang of teenage delinquents formed. Miyano was feared by the others, and under his leadership the gang behaved like yakuza. Ogura was second in command, and dominated the others in Miyano‘s absence. By the way, they often used the name yakuza as leverage to get away with violent crimes, but were not actually yakuza’s (although they had acquaintances who were low-ranking yakuza’s) and had no power, no name, no authority in the underground world. They were called yankees (juvenile delinquents), commonly found in Japan.
Kidnapping and Abduction:
In the evening of the 25th of November 1988, Hiroshi Miyano and Shinji Minato were wandering about on separate mopeds in Misato, the Prefecture of Saitama, with the purpose of snatching bags from or raping young women. Spotting Junko cycling home at around 8:30PM, Miyano told Minato to “kick that woman”. Minato did so and left the scene immediately. Junko fell to the side. They mentioned on a Japanese site that ‘she looked so scared’. Miyano then approached her saying, “That one’s crazy; I’ve been threatened by him with a knife a short time ago. You may still be in danger. Let me walk you home”.
Place where Junko was knocked off her bicycle and abducted: 35°47'46.5"N 139°51'50.1"E
Gaining Junko’s trust, Miyano lured her into a nearby warehouse where he dropped his ‘good guy’ pretence and raped her, saying: “I’m his accomplice and we are both yakuza. If you obey me, I will spare your life. Let me have sex with you; if you scream you’re dead.” He then took her to a hotel by taxi where he raped her again. From the hotel Miyano rang Minato‘s home, their usual hangout, and told Ogura that he succeeded in raping the girl, actively bragging about it too. Ogura asked him to keep her in captivity so he and numerous other men could come to rape her. At around 0:30AM on the 26th of November, Miyano with Junko, Ogura, Minato and Watanabe met up in a park. After a talk between Miyano and Ogura, they decided to abduct and imprison her. They told her that they knew where she lived from her student notebook (which every student was expected to carry with them while in uniform) and that they would get yakuza members to kill all of her family if she tried to escape. She was taken to C‘s house in the Ayase district of Adachi, Tokyo, where she was easily overpowered and repeatedly gang-raped. Location of the home Unlike what some websites claim, she didn’t know her abductors beforehand, they had no grudge against her and there was nothing particular that made them do this. They were all school dropouts, serial gang rapists and juvenile delinquents. She was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time, literally just riding back home after finishing her part-time job.
On the 27th of November, Junko’s worried parents asked the police to search for her. However, the gang forced Junko to call her home three times between the end of November and the middle of December. She was made to tell her parents that she had run away from home, was safe with friends, and she wanted the police search to be stopped.
From then on, the four kept gang-raping her continuously, they also invited and sold her off to low-ranking members of the Yakuza called chimpira and many of their other friends, encouraging them to also take turns raping her. More than a hundred men are believed to have raped her over the course of her captivity. There were instances where she would be raped by 12 different men in a single day. The men who raped her also reportedly enjoyed urinating on her.
One time, Koichi Ihara, one of the men who was invited in the house to rape Junko and who was allegedly pressured by gang members into raping her, told his brother about the incident after he left the Minato household. His brother subsequently told their parents, who then contacted police. Two police officers were dispatched to the Minato household, however they were informed that there was no girl inside the house. The police officers declined an invitation to look around the house, believing the invitation was sufficient proof that there was no girl in the Minato house, they were supposed to visit the house regardless of what the residents told them, but they didn’t follow the procedure. Both officers faced considerable backlash from the Japanese community. If they had come inside the house and at least checked some clues, Junko probably would have survived and would still be alive now. The two officers were allegedly fired for failing to follow the procedure.
In early December, while the gang was asleep, Junko called the police, but was stopped by Miyano before she was able to say anything. The police called back right away, but Miyano said it was a mistake. Angered by her act, they started to becoming more and more torturous with her over time. She was repeatedly punched, kicked, struck by heavy objects, foreign objects inserted into her private parts such as broken bottles, an iron bar, scissors, roasting needles, grilled chicken skewers, a hot lit light bulb rubbed inside of her vagina until it exploded inside, had her skin burned with cigarettes and lighter fluids. They burned her eyelids with hot wax and cigarette lighters. They had fireworks forced up her anus and set them off multiple times, causing severe damages inside of her orifice. They had her left nipple ripped off with pliers and sewing needles pierced through her breasts. They also stopped feeding her. Due to both external and internal injuries and malnutrition, she could hardly walk and had to crawl downstairs to the bathroom, which took her about one whole hour. When she could no longer crawl to the bathroom, she was made to urinate into a cup and was forced to drink her own urine. They forced her to consume absurdly large amounts of alcohol and milk to the point of throwing up, as well as forcing her to smoke multiple cigarettes at once. Because of the unbearable violence and pain, Junko repeatedly begged them to kill her to end the suffering. Ignoring her pleas, they continued to torture her for days. They had heavy dumbbells dropped on her stomach while she was lying on the ground with her hands and feet tied, causing her to lose control of her bowel control. They made her stand up and beat her legs with bamboo sticks, golf clubs and many other diverse objects. They kept her hanging from the ceiling and used her body as a human punching bag, because of the intense attacks her nose was so swelled up with blood she could only breathe from her mouth. Putting her in a freezer for several hours which only infected her worsening injuries. They smashed her hands and fingernails with weights, making her unable to grip anything.
The brutality of the attacks changed Junko’s appearance completely. Her badly beaten face was so swollen that her cheeks were as high as her nose. Her burned and infected skin produced body fluid with a bad smell. The gang no longer had sexual interest in her. To ‘fulfill their sexual desires’, at around 2:30AM on the 27th of December 1988, the four abducted a 19-year-old woman on her way home. They pushed her into A‘s car, threatened her with a knife, took her into a motel room and gang-raped her. Even before abducting Junko, Miyano, Ogura and Minato had committed a similar gang-rape on the 8th of November.
When January 1989 arrived, the gang talked about what to do with Junko’s body. “Kill and bury her?” “Let’s mince her body after killing.” “We can burn her in an oil drum.” “Fill the drum with concrete and throw it into the sea. The police would never find it.”
In the early hours of the 4th of January 1989, after losing a lot of money playing mahjong, heavily frustrated Miyano visited Watanabe‘s house. Ogura and Minato were also present. After playing computer games for a while, Miyano decided to vent his anger by going to Minato’s home to beat Junko where she laid, almost dead. The attack started at around 8AM. Junko was punched for multiple consecutive hours nonstop, violently kicked, had her face covered in hot wax with two short candles placed on her eyelids. She hardly responded. They made her stand and struck her face with swinging kicks. Defenceless Junko fell onto a stereo state and collapsed. She started a fit of convulsions.
The gang knew Junko might die, but did not stop. She bled from her nose and mouth, and bloody pus emerged from her burns. Blood spattered all over the room. Reluctant to get blood on his fists, Watanabe covered his hands with plastic bags and taped them around the wrists before punching Junko in the stomach and shoulders twenty or thirty times. Miyano, Ogura and Minato imitated Watanabe and covered their hands in bags. They took turns to punch and kick Junko in the face, stomach and thighs. They also struck Junko in the thighs many times with a heavy iron ball which was part of Minato‘s kick boxing exercise machine. Watanabe dropped the iron ball onto her stomach several times. Miyano repeatedly poured lighter fuel on her thighs, stomach, hands, feet and set it alight. Junko initially gestured as if trying to put it off, but gradually became unresponsive.
The gang taped around Junko’s ankles so that she could not escape and went out to a sauna. It is believed that she died in Minato‘s room some time during the last torture or the hours that followed.
The next day when Miyano, Ogura and Minato were at a florist run by yakuza, Minato‘s elder brother rang to tell that Junko appeared to be dead. Afraid of the murder being detected, the three gang members decided to get rid of Junko’s dead body. They wrapped her body in two blankets, pushed it into a large travel bag and taped around it. During her captivity, Furuta had mentioned to her captors several times that she regretted not being able to watch the finale episode of the show she liked, Tonbo (Dragonfly). So Miyano found the videotape of the episode and placed it in the travel bag. As he later explained, it was not because he pitied Furuta, but because he did not want her to return as a ghost and haunt him. From his former employer, Miyano borrowed a cement mixer and a truck and took them to his home. They fetched an oil drum which was used as a litter bin in the neighbourhood. They placed the travel bag which contained Junko’s body in the drum, threw in some concrete blocks, and filled up the drum with fresh concrete. The drum was taped into a large black litter bag. At around 8PM the drum was loaded onto the truck. They initially planned on dropping it into the sea, but on the way they passed an empty space near a development site and abandoned it here.
The development site where they encased Junko’s body in concrete
Investigation and Arrestation:
On the 23rd of January 1989, Miyano and Ogura were arrested for the gang-rape of the 19-year-old woman in December. On the 29th of March, two police officers from the Ayase district (where Minato’s house was) came to interrogate them. Women’s underwear had been found at their addresses and the police suspected that they might have committed theft as well.
There had been murder of a mother and her 7-year-old son in Ayase district on the 16th of November the previous year, nine days before Junko’s abduction. As the case had not been solved (and remains unsolved even today), during the interrogation one officer lightly uttered a trick question to Miyano, thinking that he was a possible suspect, because of his serial offenses around the area. “You mustn’t kill someone, you know”. However Miyano thought that the officer was talking about Junko Furuta, thinking that Ogura in a separate room had already confessed. “I am sorry that we killed”, he told probably thinking that going along with it would make him have a lesser sentence. The officers were astounded as it wasn’t what they were talking about in the first place and they were surprised as Junko’s disappearance was initially deemed as a teenager runaway. They went to the empty space accordingly to the confession, where they found a drum with a strange smell. The 305kg drum was lifted onto a truck by a crane and taken to the police the following day.
Junko’s body was found in the drum, badly decomposed and disfigured as she had been dead for almost three months. Edema all over her body. Malnutrition. Facial features unrecognizable due to severe disfigurement. It had to be identified by fingerprints. On the 1st of April Minato was arrested for another rape case and was rearrested for the murder of Junko Furuta. The arrest of Watanabe and two other accomplices (Tetsuo Nakamura and Koichi Ihara) followed after the two’s sperm DNA was found inside of her.
The location where her body was found has been developed since and is now a Wakasu park.
Using the fingerprints, it was revealed that the body belonged to Junko Furuta. The autopsy found so much disturbing evidence of abuse. It was revealed that Junko Furuta was pregnant at the time of her death because of the repeated rapes. Her brain shrank and reduced in size due to the dire circumstances of Junko’s final days.
DNA found on and inside Junko’s body led the police to several other accomplices, including Tetsuo Nakamura and Koichi Ihara, as mentioned earlier.
The autopsy found cigarettes, broken glasses, fireworks and many other deadly objects inside her vagina.
Junko Furuta’s funeral was held on the 2nd of April 1989. Had she not been murdered, the following day – Monday the 3rd of April – would have been her start at her job at the electronics retailer.
One of Junko’s friends’ memorial address:
‘Jun-chan, welcome back. I have never imagined that we would see you again in this way. You must have been in so much pain… so much suffering… The happi we all made for the school festival looked really good on you. We will never forget you. I have heard that the headmaster has presented you with a graduation certificate. So we graduated together – all of us. Jun-chan, there is no more pain, no more suffering. Please rest in peace.’
Junko’s future boss presented her parents with the uniform she was to wear at work. It was placed inside her coffin. At the graduation, Junko’s school principal presented her with a school diploma like all the other students in commemoration, which was given to her parents.
Despite the shockingly brutal nature of the crime, the identities of the four perpetrators were protected due to all of them being minors at the time of the crime. Some media however published their names. On the 12th of July 1991, after overturning the original terms, Tokyo High Court sentenced them as follows.
A (Hiroshi Miyano to later on Hiroshi Yokoyama) : 17 years imprisonment which was later increased to 20 years imprisonment, because the judge was angered by the audacity of the culprit, who was trying to appeal to his already way too lenient sentence even after the severity of the crime he committed. (In my opinion, even the death penalty isn’t enough for these demons, they deserve the worst torture possible)
A‘s mother sent money (50 million yen≒USD425k) to Junko’s parents after selling their family home after they filed a civil lawsuit against them due to the unbelievable injustice of the crime. A was released in summer 2009.
B (Jō Ogura to later Jō Kamisaku) : Indefinite 5 to 10 year term imprisonment.
In court it was revealed that Ogura‘s father started saving money for compensation to Junko’s parents, despite Junko’s parents’ refusal to accept it. Sources of information in more recent years states that Ogura‘s father’s savings, originally meant for Junko’s parents, had been consumed by Ogura for frivolous luxuries. Ogura was released in August 1999.
C (Nobuharu Minato to later on Shinji Minato) : Indefinite 5 – 9 year term imprisonment.
D (Yasushi Watanabe) : Indefinite 5 – 7 year term in juvenile detention center.
Perpetrators Whereabouts:
In January 2013, A was re-arrested for fraud, but remained silent during interrogation. Due to insufficient evidence he was released without charge.
Here is a text which talks about information of his whereabouts after his release.
Yellow text in the bottom right corner: “His favorite saying was “I stuck it in her mouth so far that she threw up".
White text on the bottom: “When I heard the rumor, I couldn’t believe it. So I asked him over a drink. The stuff about you being one of the perpetrators of the concrete-encased high school girl murder case (Murder of Junko Furuta) is a lie, right? His facial expression suddenly stopped and turned pale. This happened in August of this year. The next day, I stopped receiving any contact from [Miyano], even though I had been spending almost every day with him.”
The photographer, mister M, said this with suspicion. M presented a photo where there was a shirtless man sitting on a bench throwing a peace sign.
“That man (Miyano) called himself “K". We met around 3 years ago. I joined a gym in Western Tokyo where I was commuting. He felt like a big brother to me, and invited me to hang out with him. This picture (panel 3 with the three guys in suits with Miyano (K)’s face blacked out and the two guys around him with pixelated faces) was taken at a barbecue we had earlier this summer. It was a time when I really didn’t know about the murder incident…”
The end of 1988 marked the murder of Junko Furuta. The murder case, which is described as the “deeds of savages hiding under their masks,” is well known more than 20 years later. However, after having been released from prison in 2009, what became of [Miyano] was largely unknown.
“I could have never envisioned myself being so close to such a brutal criminal. But in retrospect, realizing he was one of the main perpetrators [of Furuta’s murder] isn’t that surprising. He was always talking about Judo (martial arts) or sex, and would brag about how when having sex with women how he “stuck it in her mouth so far that she threw up". He also talked about how much he liked choking women during sex. He is also 43 years old, and that is certainly his face right there. Friends of mine who have also met K would send me photos of [Miyano] and say that this is unquestionably the same person.”
The photo [of Miyano] released at the time of the murder incident [in 1989] certainly bears a striking resemblance to the photo [of K] taken in August earlier in the summer. His well-featured nose, the so-called “gyoza ears" so prevalent in Judo practitioners, and his symmetrical hairline. “A hairline is like a fingerprint in that it is unique to each individual.” Like a plastic surgeon, even if 30 years have passed, such a coincidence is further deepened.
“And that’s not all. [Miyano] was said to have been arrested for fraud in January, and around the same time [Miyano] was arrested, K suddenly disappeared for 2 weeks. Because it was around New Years, I thought we should all go out drinking together, so I tried calling [K] but I couldn’t get a hold of him. Later, when I asked [K] about where he had been, he claimed that he got in trouble with a rental car and so he was brought to the Akasaka Police Station, but looking back in retrospect there’s no way that could’ve been true. The reason why is because K told me directly that he knew a lot of people engaging in a group wire fraud scandal.”
There is even more evidence that [Miyano] is K.
In the spring of this year, a reporter from a certain weekly publication called the gym that M was a member of asking for information about [Miyano]. This became a topic of gossip among the other gym members. In fact, the reporter actually came to the gym to cover something.
“But at that time I wasn’t really paying attention. The person who told me that K was actually [Miyano] was a guy who served 12 years in Chiba Prison. This guy told me that he had met K in Chiba Prison and was like his underling. [Miyano] got 20 years in Chiba Prison too, right? That guy let loose a secret while drinking and said “brother, the media is still chasing you for the [Murder of Junko Furuta]. Must be rough, huh?””
When M last met K, K was driving around in a BMW, he had a Hermès wallet, a gold Daytona luxury wristwatch, and overall seemed to be doing well. He is engaging in [fraudulent] multi-level marketing, and there are plenty of LINE messages from him nagging at his friends to engage in fraudulent activities.
It cannot be said that he was made to pay for his crimes after serving only 20 years in prison. To kill that girl in such a sorrowful and gloomy manner, and not even apologize or explain his actions to [Junko’s] bereaved family. This magazine intends to pursue more information [relating to Miyano].
Reading this, we can notice that he is trying to make others not see his identity as the culprit of the Junko Furuta murder. There’s also another article I’ve found about him after his release:
“It wasn’t just in the gym. He (Miyano) would have both his juniors and his friends call him “K" in private, and would even have his name recorded as K in matches (Judo/Kickboxing). He even wrote his name as simply “K" on his resumé, which I got to see.”
This is what our informant, who was treated and cherished like a younger brother by Miyano, had to say. During the summer, [our informant] happened to overhear that K was actually [Miyano]; when [our informant] questioned [Miyano], [Miyano’s] face turned pale and abruptly cut all contact with [our informant].
So what has K been up to since then?
First, his whereabouts. No matter how nice and friendly [our informant] has tried acting towards K [after discovering his identity], K has refused to so much as let him enter his house.
“[Miyano] will dodge the question by saying that his house is too cluttered, and he won’t even come to hang out with me when I suggest we can meet somewhere other than his house. However, I do know where he lives. He was living in a small town by the riverbank of the Tama River. At least, that’s were he was living until August. That address is the one that was written on his resumé, and he would pick up the phone whenever I called the number associated with that address.”
This “small town by the riverbank of the Tama River” is not a very well-known place, and is just a residential area you’d find in any suburb with a few shopping districts around the train station. When we went to the exact address, we found it to be a still new apartment building. [Miyano’s] apartment nameplate wasn’t anywhere to be found, but there’s no mistaking that he’s here. However, when ringing [Miyano’s] doorbell or banging on his door, no one came out.
There is still one clue we have to ascertain [Miyano’s] whereabouts: Ikebukuro. It is said that [Miyano] frequently comes to Ikebukuro to go drinking.
“K often said that many of his juniors are there. When [Miyano] was arrested by the police in January, those involved in Ikebukuro were paying money.”
[Miyano] was arrested in January for wire fraud. We got to see the exact location in Ikebukuro where K and the Ikebukuro group were meeting. However, when we questioned the Ikebukuro group [about Miyano], they all refused to tell us anything.
“Well, I don’t know. Because I don’t know what kind of relationship it is, I won’t say anything,” said one of the former scam group members.
[Miyano] has disappeared yet again. This time we got to see what deep, dark connections he has.
In both of these articles, we see that Miyano tries his best to hide what he has done from others, which makes this even more infuriating than it already is.
Offender B (Jō Ogura to later Jō Kamisaku) is said to have learned some IT (Information Technology) skills while in prison and worked at some kind of firm after his release from prison, but got fired because the people around him knew of his involvement in Furuta’s murder and serious criminal past. He later joined a gang, where he was reported to have said the following:
“When I was a boy, I went to jail for 10 years. I had put a girl in confinement, and one day when I came back to the house from when I went out to play, the girl was dead. So I lit a cigarette and put it next to her nose, and the smoke didn’t move at all. That’s how I knew she was dead,” Ogura bragged while laughing.
A year after this quote (2004), Ogura would go onto kidnap and beat one of the gang members he bragged about this to in what is known in Japanese as the 三郷市逮捕監禁致傷事件. At 2:00 in the morning on May 19th, 2004, Ogura severely beat one of the members of his gang on the street named Takatoshi Isono and threatened him with a bat. He then kidnapped the man and drove him 40 minutes away from Adachi to Misato where he said the following while beating the man for four consecutive hours: “You’re the one who took my woman. I’ll kill you. I have killed before.” It is mentioned that the man Ogura assaulted was involved with his girlfriend.
It’s almost as if he perceives his past murder as a badge of honor. So he clearly hasn’t learned anything or shown any sign of remorse, not like it would change anything.
Some sources of information report that B‘s mother vandalized Junko’s grave “because she ruined her son’s life”.
Offender C (Nobuharu Minato to later on Shinji Minato) for the most part, went off the radar following Furuta’s murder. He married a Romanian woman in 2006 although they soon had a divorce in which the wife took custody of their kid. However, on August 19th, 2018, Minato repeatedly beat a man on the shoulders with a baton and stabbed the man’s neck with a knife. After getting arrested for this, he had the following to say about his former sentence for Furuta’s murder case:
“Prison is nothing but hardships, and is not an environment where I can confront my past crimes. Even after being released from prison, society is just too difficult, so of course I couldn’t face my past crimes.”
Here’s another quote from Minato from the same source:
“In various articles [written about me], they say that I am beyond rehabilitation. These people have never met or spoken with me, so they have no idea how I’ve been living my life, so why do they arbitrarily write these things [about me]? Idiots.”
Offender D is the main culprit with the least information I could find about his whereabouts, probably because he was the only one who didn’t re-offend after his release and kept off the radar. He seems to be living with his mother after release. According to the Japanese Wikipedia page, which states the following:
[Watanabe] was released from detention in 1996 and became a hikikomori. In January of 2001, Eisuke Inoue, a reporter from the Mainichi Shinbun, contacted Watanabe’s mother and began interviewing them in the spring. On April 8th, 2001, the contents of the interviews were published in an article. The article was met the both sympathy for Watanabe as well as harsh criticism, with people arguing that the material was “too sympathetic to the perpetrator” or “rubbing the feelings of the victim’s bereaved family the wrong way”. In turn, Inoue said that “the pain the victim’s family was going through was beyond his imagination. I looked through the court records and reports on the case as much as I could, but somehow disregarded how brutal the case was, and am still bewildered by it even after finishing the interviews. Having read my readers’ criticisms, I better understand the difficulty of compensating for one’s crimes.” Has also not worked since release.
This case is arguably one of, if not the most popular true crime case that has happened in Japan, with so many articles and media coverage made about it. At least three books have been written about the crime. Two low-budget exploitative snuff films, have been made about the incident. The first one, Joshikōsei konkurīto-zume satsujin-jiken (The Concrete-Encased High School Murder Case) was directed by Katsuya Matsumura in 1995. The second one which followed was Shonen no Hanzai (Juvenile Crime) directed by Gunji Kawasaki in 1997. The case was also the inspiration for the film Konkurito (Concrete) in 2004, where Furuta’s name was changed into Misaki. Two mangas have been based upon the case, the first one is Shin Gendai Ryoukiden: Modern Stories of the Bizarre, made by Uziga Waita (an infamous eroguro mangaka), published in 2000, the second one is the mainstream manga 17-sai by Seiji Fuji published in 2004–2005. The volume 3 of the manga Reversible Man, written by D. Natakani, is allegedly greatly inspired by this case. Songs have also been made, based or inspired upon this case such as 44 Days by Mr.Kitty, Junko Furuta by Danilla and Taino PV by The Gazette (although this one hasn’t been confirmed but many speculate it is due to the similarities). The track list of Swerslvt’s album Don’t Be Afraid Of Dying is an acrostic of “Junko Furuta”, as a tribute to her.
Due to this event, Japanese people especially at the time were concerned about a ‘US-influenced epidemic of violent crime’ which they called the “American Disease”.
Also, the case brought national attention to the adjudication and rehabilitation of juvenile offenders, especially in the context of youth tried as adults, and created a media sensation.
Note & My Point of View (about this case)
Honestly these four demons deserve worse than a simple death. They deserve a slow, painful one. For this case, I absolutely support capital punishment. These demons don’t deserve any human rights whatsoever. That also counts for these hundred boys and men who participated in the rapes. I don’t know what should I be more disgusted of, what these four abominable demon seeds did or the fact that so many guys participated in this, and they all were enjoying it?? I think the worst thing in this case is the bystander apathy, the fact that more than 100 people knew what was happening, did nothing about it and were enjoying participating in her suffering. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth should be applied in this case. All of those pieces of trash should have been executed the first day they were convicted.
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