Murder of Junko Furuta

Junko Furuta (古田 順子) was a 17-year-old Japanese high school student who was abducted, raped, tortured, and murdered. Her abuse was mainly perpetrated by four male teenagers, Hiroshi Miyano (18), Jō Ogura (17), Shinji Minato (16), and Yasushi Watanabe (17), and took place over a 40-day period starting on 25 November 1988. In Japan, the case is known as the "concrete-encased high school girl murder case" (女子高生コンクリート詰め殺人事件), as her body was discovered inside of a concrete-filled drum. The prison sentences served by the perpetrators ranged from seven to 20 years. The brutality of the case shocked Japan, and it is said to be the worst case of juvenile criminality in the country's post-war history.

Background
Furuta was born on 18 January 1971 and grew up in Misato, Saitama Prefecture, where she lived with her parents, older brother, and younger brother. At the time of her murder, she was a 17-year-old senior at Yashio-Minami High School, and worked a part-time job at a plastic molding factory from October 1988 to save up money for a planned graduation trip. Furuta also accepted a job at an electronics retailer, where she planned on working after graduation. Furuta was well-liked by her classmates and teachers, and had high grades and infrequent absences. According to her friends, she dreamed of becoming an idol singer.

The perpetrators of the crime were four male teenagers: Hiroshi Miyano (宮野裕史), Jō Ogura (小倉譲), Shinji Minato (湊伸治), and Yasushi Watanabe (渡邊恭史), who in court documents were referred to as "A", "B", "C", and "D", respectively. Two others, Tetsuo Nakamura and Koichi Ihara, were referred to as "G" and "L".

The four members of the group had all dropped out of high school in summer 1988, and became involved in organized crime as chinpira (low-ranking yakuza). They began using Minato's family home in Adachi, Tokyo, as a hangout. Beginning in October, they engaged in various crimes including theft (purse snatching and car theft), assault, and rape. On 8 November, the group abducted a 19-year-old woman in Adachi and gang raped her in a hotel there. On 27 December, during Furuta's confinement, the group abducted another 19-year-old woman in Adachi and gang raped her in a motel.

Kidnapping and abuse
On the evening of 25 November 1988, Miyano and Minato rode around Misato on their motorcycles with the intention of robbing and raping local women, and spotted Furuta, who was on her way home from her part-time job. Acting on Miyano's orders, Minato kicked Furuta off her bicycle and fled the scene. Miyano, under the pretense of witnessing the attack by coincidence, approached Furuta and offered to walk her home. Upon gaining her trust, Miyano took Furuta to a nearby warehouse and threatened her, claiming to be a member of the yakuza and saying that he would spare her life only if she followed his orders.

That night, Miyano took Furuta by taxi to a hotel in Adachi, where he raped her. He later called Minato's house and bragged to Ogura about the rape, after which Ogura told him not to let Furuta leave. In the early morning hours of 26 November, Miyano took Furuta to a park near the hotel, where Ogura, Minato, and Watanabe were waiting. They told her they knew where she lived, and that the yakuza would kill her family if she attempted to escape. Minato agreed to allow Furuta to be confined in a room on the second floor of his house in Adachi for the purpose of gang raping her. Furuta was held captive for the next 39 days.

On 27 November, Furuta's parents contacted the police about her disappearance. To discourage further investigation, the kidnappers forced Furuta to call her mother three times to convince her that she had run away but was safe and staying with friends. When Minato's parents were present at the house where she was being confined, Furuta was forced to act as his girlfriend. The group dropped this pretense when it became clear that Minato's parents would not report them to the police, and they later claimed that they did not intervene because they were afraid of their own son, who had been increasingly violent toward them.

On the night of 28 November, Miyano and the others, along with Nakamura and Ihara, gang raped Furuta, after which Miyano shaved her pubic hair with a razor and used a match to burn her genital area. In early December, angered by an escape attempt, the group repeatedly punched Furuta in the face, and Miyano burned her ankles with a lighter. They forced Furuta to dance to music while naked, masturbate in front of them, and stand on the balcony in the middle of the night with little clothing, and inserted objects into her vagina and anus, including a metal rod and a bottle. They also forced her to drink large amounts of alcohol, milk, and water; smoke two cigarettes at once; and inhale paint thinner fumes. In one attack in the middle of the month, Furuta was beaten by the group on the pretext that Miyano had stepped on a puddle of her spilled urine, after which he burned her thighs and hands several times with lighter fluid. From around this time, Furuta, unable to bear the repeated assaults, would sometimes plead to be killed by her captors.

By the end of December, Furuta was severely malnourished after being fed only small amounts of food and eventually only milk. Due to her injuries and burns, she had become unable to go to the downstairs toilet, and was thereafter confined to the floor of the room in a state of extreme physical and mental weakness. Her appearance had been drastically altered after repeated beatings, with her face becoming so swollen that it was difficult to make out her features, and her infected wounds had started to emit a foul odor.

Murder and investigation
On 4 January 1989, after losing money in a game of mahjong the night before, Miyano decided to take his anger out on Furuta. He ignited a candle and dripped hot wax on her face, placed two shortened candles on her eyelids, and forced her to drink her own urine. Furuta was lifted and kicked, fell onto a stereo unit, and began a fit of convulsions. To prevent them from being stained with blood, the group covered their hands in plastic bags before beating her with their fists and an iron exercise ball, and dropped the ball on her abdomen several times. Miyano poured lighter fluid on Furuta and set her on fire; she made weak attempts to put herself out, but eventually stopped moving. The assault lasted for about two hours, after which Furuta died at 10 a.m.

Less than 24 hours after her death, Minato's brother called to tell him that Furuta appeared to be dead. Afraid that their crime would be discovered, the group wrapped Furuta's body in a blanket and placed it in a large travel bag, then put the bag in a metal drum and filled it with wet concrete. At around 8:00 p.m. on 5 January, the group drove to a vacant lot near a construction site on the island of Wakasu in Kōtō, Tokyo, and dumped the drum there.

In early 1989, Miyano and Ogura were arrested for their kidnapping and gang rape of a 19-year-old woman in December 1988. When police interrogated Miyano, he falsely believed that Ogura had already confessed to Furuta's murder and that the police were aware of his culpability, so he told them where to find her body. The police were initially puzzled by his confession, as they were questioning him about the murder of a different woman and her seven-year-old son which had occurred nine days prior to Furuta's abduction, a case which remains unsolved. The drum containing Furuta's body was recovered on 29 March, and she was identified via fingerprints. Minato, Watanabe, Minato's brother, Nakamura, and Ihara were also arrested.

Trial and reaction
The identities of the defendants were sealed by the court, as they were all juveniles under the age of 20. Journalists from the Shūkan Bunshun tabloid uncovered their identities and published them, arguing that the accused did not deserve to have their right to anonymity upheld, given the severity of the crime. In July 1990, all were found guilty and sentenced by the Tokyo District Court for abduction for the purpose of sexual assault, confinement, rape, assault, murder, and abandonment of a corpse. All four appealed; in July 1991, three were re-sentenced to longer terms by the Tokyo High Court.


 * Hiroshi Miyano was originally sentenced to 17 years in prison, and re-sentenced to 20 years, the longest sentence typically given in Japan short of life imprisonment, which had been sought by the prosecution. Miyano's parents sold their family home and paid Furuta's parents ¥50 million (about US$350,000; $ today) in compensation, which their son's defense presented as a mitigating circumstance. A court-ordered psychological evaluation at the trial established that Miyano had a learning disability that "did not impair his brain function, but delayed his emotional development". After his release in 2009, he changed his last name to "Yokoyama". He reportedly boasted about his yakuza connections and involvement in pyramid schemes. In 2013, Miyano was arrested on suspicion of bank fraud and placing scam telephone calls, but remained silent and was not charged.


 * Jō Ogura was sentenced to five to ten years in prison. He was released in 1999, and changed his last name to "Kamisaku". He worked in IT jobs after his release, but turned to organized crime after his past became known to those around him. In 2004, Ogura was arrested for assaulting Takatoshi Isono, an acquaintance whom he thought his girlfriend was involved with. Ogura shoved Isono into the trunk of his car and drove him to his mother's bar in Misato, where he assaulted him for four hours. Ogura was sentenced to four years in prison for the crime, and was released in 2009.


 * Shinji Minato was originally sentenced to five to six years in prison, and re-sentenced to five to nine years. His parents and brother were not charged. After his release in 1998, Minato moved in with his mother. In 2018, Minato (then unemployed) was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after striking a 32-year-old man in the shoulder with a metal baton and slashing his neck with a knife on a street in Kawaguchi, Saitama, during a dispute over a vehicle parking spot. In 2019, Minato was sentenced to one year and six months in prison, suspended with probation for three years.


 * Yasushi Watanabe was originally sentenced to three to four years in prison, and re-sentenced to five to seven years. He further appealed the verdict to the Supreme Court of Japan, but his appeal was denied in July 1992. He was released in 1996, and left his hometown to live with his mother.

From the time the case was first reported in the media, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, the investigating body, received many calls and letters from the general public demanding that the perpetrators be severely punished, including by life imprisonment or with the death penalty. The Tokyo Public Prosecutors Office, which had sought life imprisonment for Miyano during the trial, was criticized for not seeking life sentences for the other perpetrators, nor seeking the death penalty. The Tokyo District Court also received numerous calls and letters which criticized the perceived lightness of its sentencing, though a majority of legal professionals surveyed by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper said that the sentences were appropriate based on precedent.

In the trial for the 1988 "Nagoya couple murder case" (名古屋アベック殺人事件), the Nagoya District Court sentenced the main defendant, a 19-year-old boy, to death in June 1989, and a second defendant, a 17-year-old boy, to life imprisonment; this case drew comparisons to the Furuta case. Hiroshi Itakura, a professor of law at Nihon University, commented that the difference in sentencing was explained by the difference in the number of victims (two in the Nagoya case, versus one in the Furuta case): under the 永山基準, the legal standard used in Japan for the death penalty, one murder victim means life imprisonment or less is given, while two victims is considered a borderline case. Itakura also stated that the prosecution in the Nagoya case had demonstrated clear intent and premeditation, while in the Furuta case, the intent to murder was more unclear.

Aftermath
Furuta's funeral was held on 2 April 1989. During the ceremony, one of her friends delivered a eulogy written by her high school classmates which stated: "Jun-chan, welcome back. I never dreamed we would meet again like this. You were subjected to such cruelty, weren't you? You went through so much, didn't you? I'm upset with myself that I went on living, unaware of what was happening. You were always so gentle and cheerful, Jun-chan. The happi we made for the cultural festival looked wonderful on you. I'll never forget that. We will absolutely not let Jun-chan's death be in vain. As we step into adulthood, we'll strive for a world where such heinous crimes no longer exist. We'll do our best, keeping Jun-chan in our hearts and pushing forward. The principal even brought your diploma. Thanks to this, all 47 of us in Class 3-8 were able to graduate. Jun-chan... there's no more pain or suffering now. Rest peacefully. Farewell, Jun-chan."

Furuta's intended future employer presented her parents with the uniform she would have worn in her position, and it was placed in her casket. At her graduation, the principal presented her parents with her diploma. The location on Wakasu where her body was discovered is now an industrial zone.