Although Japan retains the death penalty system, the scope of application and the number of death penalties are strictly controlled through judicial procedures, and there are very few cases in which the death penalty has been imposed in Japan. At that time, when everyone was discussing whether the murderer would be sentenced to death, many people mentioned the Japanese legal community's death penalty sentencing benchmark→ the Nagayama Standard, which originated from the "Nagayama Norio Murder Case" in 1968.
It is often said that there is no absolute good in this world, and there is no absolute evil, and Nagayama Nobuo is such a complex contradiction.
He is a cold-blooded serial murderer who can kill innocent strangers simply because of his desire for money and hatred for society; He is also the redeemer who donates all his royalties to poor child laborers around the world and sets up a children's fund to help children struggling in the whirlpool of poverty out of their predicament...
Norio Nagayama was born in June 1949 in Abashiri, Hokkaido, Japan, the son of an apple grower and a foot trader to a foot trader. Like many multi-child families of that era, Nagayama had eight children, and he ranked 7th among his siblings.
When Nagayama was 3 years old, the family moved from the suburbs to the center of the city, and it is said that with the work of Nagayama's parents, it should not be a problem to support the family's daily expenses at that time. Unfortunately, Nagayama's father was addicted to gambling, and later began to drink alcohol every day, without the heart to work and family, such a vicious circle, and in the end, his father did not even return home. In this way, the burden of supporting the family fell on the mother alone, and the eldest sister dropped out of school to take on the responsibilities of daily household chores and taking care of young siblings such as Yongshan, so she barely maintained the family's life.
However, when Nagayama Waseo was about to celebrate his 4th birthday, the eldest sister who took care of him was abandoned by her fiancé, had an abortion, caused mental problems, and was sent to the local mental hospital, and the balance of everything was broken again. The desperate mother chose to return to her mother's house in Aomori Prefecture in October of the same year, because she could not afford everyone's tickets, and in desperation, her mother ended up taking only 3 children. Unfortunately, Nobuo Nagayama was one of the 4 people left behind, and in order to live, the four brothers began to scavenging, even picking up the contents of the garbage can to eat, and sometimes for the sake of stuttering, the brother would beat him up.
This life lasted for nearly half a year, and the four brothers and sisters of Norio Nagayama were sent back to their mother by the Welfare Department. His mother continued to support his family by trading, and Nagayama entered the local elementary school in Aomori, but because he could not speak the local dialect, Nagayama was ostracized by his classmates. Throughout his elementary school years, in addition to being bullied by his classmates at school, Nagayama Norio would also suffer from the intensification of violent abuse from his second brother when he returned home. And because of the portrait of the father, the mother often projects resentment towards the father on him. In his childhood memories, only the ridicule of his classmates, the punches and kicks of his brother, and the indifference from his mother are only those of his classmates.
Instead of his eldest brother who was employed and left home, Nobuo Nagayama, who entered junior high school, began to send newspapers to supplement his family, and rarely appeared at school. In the first grade of junior high school, Nagayama received news of the death of his father, who had disappeared for a long time. At his father's funeral, the second brother once again mentioned their experience of being abandoned by their mother after his father left home. In the second year of junior high school, her mother left home again without informing the Yongshan brothers and sisters, which was also understood by Nobuo Nagayama as her mother abandoning herself again. Nagayama began to dislike himself and had suicidal thoughts, and his violent tendencies were beginning to show signs, often violently confronting his sister and niece who lived with him.
The self-abandoned Nagayama began to mingle with the bad boys, until a burglary, nagayama Nobuo, who had been robbed and stolen, was thrown out of the house by his mother and left for Tokyo to make a living. Just as he was determined to start over, the boss of the new job fired him by saying rumors that he had been involved in the theft. Yongshan, who lost his job for a time, was rejected by three families, and was taken in by his eldest brother but encountered cold words, and various encounters made him inferior, sensitive and suspicious.
When he committed another theft, he was imprisoned in the juvenile prison of Utsunomiya, and after his release, he went to Osaka. At this time, Nagayama Nobuo was deeply desperate, somewhat neurotic, and repeatedly failed suicide. In October 1968, he sneaked into the U.S. military quarters, stole a pistol, and embarked on the road of no return.
Decided to take revenge on society, Norio Nagayama had no goal, and he began to pull the trigger at innocent strangers. The teenager who had been shadowed by the devil for many years eventually became a devil, and the 19-year-old Nagayama Waseo was arrested and sentenced to death for murder.
Life in prison is boring and monotonous, but it is also a rare peace for Nobuo Nagayama, and in the long years of waiting for execution, Nagayama began to reflect and face his own life full of holes. Norio Nagayama, who had always been scornful of reading, began to study, practice words, and read a lot.
From the "notebook no. 1" used for excerpts, he later began to write poems and essays based on his own experiences as a child and teenager. Words became his spiritual sustenance, and also let him know how narrow and ignorant he was, so after three years in prison, the masterpiece "Tears of Ignorance", which tells his inner struggles, was born. In the book, he details his irreparable sins due to poverty and ignorance, as well as his own painful struggles and repentances, hoping to be redeemed and forgiven, and to make up for his sins.
When asked why he had this name, Nagayama replied that because of his ignorance, he did not understand his enemies at all, and innocent people died. As soon as "Tears of Ignorance" was published, it caused an uproar in the literary world and gained a large number of readers, and the title after The name of Nobuo Nagayama was a death row prisoner, and there was also a genius in prison. Norio Nagayama sent the royalties he received to the families of the four victims. A book fan was deeply moved by reading the book and began correspondence with Norio Nagayama, who traveled from the United States to Japan in 1980 to marry Norio Nagayama, who was in prison, and the letters between them were later collated and published.
Later, Nagayama Nobuo continued to create "Wooden Bridge", "Abandoned Child", "Is It Love? Is it none? The first novel, "Wooden Bridge", also won the 19th New Japan Literature Award, and overseas literary organizations sent letters inviting Norio Nagayama to join.
Nagayama sincerely repented in prison, out of love for talents, many writers and artists jointly wrote to intercede for him, coupled with Nagayama's wife has been working hard, Japan has never had a precedent for sentencing minors to death, because of this hope, Nagayama Norio and his defense lawyer appealed in 1981, hoping that the High Court would change The sentence to life imprisonment of Nagayama.
In 1990, japan's Supreme Court, after conducting a rigorous and rational analysis of the nature, motives, planning and social impact of Nobuo Nagayama's crime, finally decided to uphold the original death sentence.
There is no denying that Nobuo Nagayama is an excellent writer and a literary genius. But even this could not hide the fact that 4 innocent lives were buried in his hands. In August 1997, Norio Nagayama was hanged, and reports of Himo Nagayama were widely available on television and in the print media.
According to Norio Nagayama's will, his ashes were brought back to his hometown in Hokkaido by his ex-wife and scattered in the Sea of Okhotsk. With the help of lawyers, publishers and philanthropists, Nagayama Nobuo used the royalties and fees left by Nagayama Toshio to provide learning and living assistance to children as poor as he was, and to prevent them from making lifelong regrets because of ignorance.
In 1998, a year after Norio Nagayama's death, his unfinished legacy, the most famous novel, Hua, was officially published. The life of Norio Nagayama is undoubtedly a tragedy, but fortunately, he woke up at the end and did not waste the rest of the time.
Nan Huaijin, a master of traditional Chinese studies, once said that it is very difficult for a person to distinguish between true good and evil, and all good and evil in the world are relative. At least what Yongshan did in the end gave his sad life meaning in addition to sin.
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