There are groups being formed on the social networking site Mixi.jp and other places in support of Tatsuya Ichihashi, accused murderer of Lindsay Hawker. The one description for the one on Mixi says that they believe he is innocent, and love him because he’s so good looking. Some fans have even put their pictures on…
Tatsuya Ichihashi was finally arrested at a ferry port in Osaka. An alert traveler at the port contacted authorities to tell them a person matching Ichihashi’s description was preparing to take a ferry bound for Okinawa. When police arrived on the scene, he admitted who he was without a struggle. Ichihashi had been on the…
Recently photos of Tatsuya Ichihashi have surfaced showing what he looked like after having plastic surgery in Tokyo. There are rumors on the net that he has been working as a male prostitute, or somewhere in the gay red light districts of Tokyo. Because of this, and the size of the community, many people think…
I thought my next update about this case would be some months down the line, however even at this early date the case has been settled. The victim has agreed to an undisclosed financial settlement with the six men sh accused of rape. The settlement seems to imply that the six Kyoto University of Education…
In a previous post I wrote about six Kyoto University of Education students who raped a girl at a party in February. The university never reported the incident to police until June. There were some pretty outrageous moral violations by the school, such things as refusing to report the incident to authorities, and the fact…
By now, I assume that the big gang rape incident at prestigious Kyoto University (link goes to news story in Japanese) is international news, and I would not like to go into the details of the incident. However, of interest to students of the media and society in Japan are the reasons that Kyoto University…
I could have been way more creative with the title there, but this is the kind of story that people like to read. I’ll be very simple with it although I’m sure the story is much deeper than this… (it may not be though… it may just be the case of a bosozoku tough guy…
I really am looking for positive news to write about but this kind of randomly violent crime just keeps jumping out at me. If you’ve been to Osaka, you probably know the big Hep Five mall (with the big Ferris Wheel on top). At the North entrance to Hep Five, two guys approached a girl…
Another pop execution in Japan where the usual modus operandi is to execute first and notify the media later. The next of kin for the executed is also notified AFTER the execution and asked to come and take care of the remains and any funeral rites involved. Japan executed 15 in 2008, and has come…
I’ve been waiting for this story to hit national headlines because it’s been a big deal here in Kansai, but it’s another story that would be international news if it happened anywhere else. Here it’s local. I’ll give the story chronologically, and succinctly. A woman’s body was found in a cooler box at a moving…
The trial for the Junichi Yamamoto (formerly Tokitsukaze), head of the Sumo stable that ordered the “discipline” that resulted in the death of sixteen year old Sumo wrestler Takashi Saito is yet to be held. The three senior member of the stable that carried out the beatings that caused the death have been sentenced to…
A man (packing knives) parked his car near a police station and, when approached by a security guard confessed to the killings. Details have not yet been released, although the alternative news media sources (sometimes unreliablle, but often more reliable than some major news sources) are reporting that the man claimed his pet cat was…