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This is one of the most famous abduction cases in Japanese history, because it led to Japan's first reporting agreement (equivalent to a journalistic self-discipline norm) that prevented news reporting from irritating gangsters and endangering the safety of hostages.
The incident occurred a year before Japan first hosted the Tokyo Olympics (1964), during the post-war renaissance period, so the incident is also known as Japan's largest post-war abduction incident.
On Sunday, March 31, 1963 (Showa 38), around 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., a 4-year-old boy, Koshiyoshi Shihide (むらこしよしの Farming) was playing in a park near his home, and then disappeared.
A view of Iriya Minami Park at that time
Kiki's home is located in Iritani-cho, Taito-ku, Tokyo, and the nearby park is called Iriya Minami Park, and at first his parents couldn't find Yoshihito and thought he was lost, so they reported the case to the police, and the news media also reported it as a missing case.
On Monday, April 1, the police heard from witnesses that Ji Zhan had spoken to a man about 30 years old, and the police immediately suspected that the disappearance was actually a child abduction case, and immediately set up a search headquarters.
At 5:48 p.m. on Tuesday, April 2, a man broadcast a phone call to Ji Zhan's home and asked his family to prepare 500,000 yen (equivalent to 2 million yen now), so that the police determined that it was a case of abduction and extortion.
In order to avoid a repeat of the tragedy of the abduction and murder of Yashu children three years ago, the police asked the media to self-discipline and concluded a reporting agreement with the media, to the effect that the hostages should not be interviewed and reported arbitrarily until they were safely out of the kidnappers' control.
It was Wednesday, April 3 at 7:15 p.m. the gangsters called home again and said a word
I will pay your child back, please have cash ready. ”
At 10:18 p.m. on Thursday, April 4, the gangsters made another phone call to the family, this time asking for confirmation of the child's safety, so the gangsters spoke to the family again, because the call was extended by about 4 minutes, so the police successfully recorded the voice of the gangster. From that day until April 7, the gangsters made a total of nine phone calls, and because there was no telephone reverse tracking and positioning technology at that time, it was impossible to find the prisoner by line.
At 1:40 p.m. on Saturday, April 6, the gangsters made a phone call to their homes and said that "the child is sleeping, now take the money to the designated place"
At 5:30 a.m., the gangsters called again and said, "Take the cash to the public telephone booth next to Sumitomo Bank in front of Ueno Station, and don't contact the police." Ji Zhan's mother immediately arrived at the designated place, but she did not see the gangsters appear for a long time, so her mother had to leave a note and go back. The note reads:
I went back with cash, please contact me again.
After that, none of the gangsters showed up, nor did anyone take the note.
At 11:12 p.m., the gangsters called and said:
"There are police officers near the phone booth at Ueno Station this morning, so I can't get close, this time I will put the child's shoes as proof, please put the cash there, and I will tell you the location again."
At 1:25 p.m. on Sunday, April 7, the gangsters broadcast a phone call to the house, asking the mother to come alone and prepare cash, and the location designated by the gangsters was in a three-wheeled pickup truck at a car sales shop just 300 meters from Murakoshi's house.
The mother then set off immediately, in order to avoid irritating the gangsters, the mother prepared 500,000 yen of real money and put it properly in the envelope bag, when she came to the scene to find ji zhan's shoes there, so she put the envelope bag there and retrieved the shoes.
Ji Zhan's shoes
The gangsters saw the opportunity, took advantage of the fact that the police were not paying attention and took the cash in a very short time and successfully fled, and when the police were ready to lock the car, the gangsters were long gone. At the time, one of the ambushed policemen was guarding the area, and he recalled that a man in a suit had passed by him, and because he was anxious to catch the prisoner and only cared near the location where his mother had put the money, he did not stop him for questioning.
After that, the gangsters have not heard from him, and Ji Zhan has not returned.
On Saturday, April 13, two weeks after the incident, the Inspector General of Police, Yuan Yuanbingwei, shouted to the gangsters through the media, hoping that he would return the child to his mother, but still did not receive any response, and the incident still did not progress.
On Friday, April 19, the police decided to change to a public investigation, and at the same time, the contents of the gangster's phone call were published and the public was asked to provide relevant clues, and the police soon received more than 10,000 pieces of intelligence, but in the end, there was still no clue that could successfully help the police catch the gangster.
On Thursday, April 25, the Shimodani North Bureau's Search Headquarters made an exception and began broadcasting recordings of threatening phone calls through radio and television stations under the title "The Voice of Prisoners" in the hope that the public would recognize the voice, and by noon, more than 220 pieces of information had been sent in, but the prisoners could not be caught.
They then commissioned Takao Suzuki, a technical officer at the National Police Agency's Scientific Police Research Institute, to do a voiceprint appraisal, but because the technology at that time was not yet proficient, it was still fruitless.
A Japanese linguist, Kazuhiko Kaneda, after listening to the "voice of the prisoner", found that when the gangsters said "Ao" and "Sanbanmu", his accent and nasal voice belonged to the south of Okuba, so he speculated that the gangsters may have been from Miyagi Prefecture, Fukushima Prefecture, Yamagata Prefecture or Ibaraki Prefecture and Tochigi Prefecture, narrowing the scope of the search.
Later, on October 21, 1963, a linguist who was a lecturer at to the Faculty of Literature at Tohoku University, published in the news that "the gangsters are from the South-Tohoku and Kita-Kanto areas south of Koriyama City", and finally locked the place of origin of the prisoners.
In May 1963, a Japanese radio reporter discovered that the "prisoner's voice" resembled a guest named Ohara (30 years old) in his frequent izakaya, so he sneaked in to talk to Obara and successfully recorded Obara's voice, and later the Metropolitan Police Department commissioned Akiyama kazumi of Tokyo Chinese University to do a voice identification, and found that the prisoner's voice matched Obara's voice, thus locking the suspect.
Voiceprint identification at the time
However, Obara said that he was in his hometown in Fukushima Prefecture between March 27 and April 3, 1963, and although his voices were similar, they did not all use the same vocabulary, so it could not be concluded that they were the same person.
More importantly, the police found through the lie detector that Obara did not lie, coupled with the inconvenience of one leg of Kohara, it was difficult to quickly withdraw cash and escape at the scene, so it was finally found that Obara was not guilty.
Two years later, on March 11, 1965, the Search Headquarters of the Japanese Metropolitan Police Department's Search Division announced its dissolution and reorganized the special search squad related to the Jizhan incident to investigate through a manner similar to the FBI.
Eventually, they discovered that there was something wrong with Obara's alibi, the most favorable of which was that Obara had said that he had seen the Nippori fire on the train, and that the fire had occurred on April 2 in Nipporicho, Tokyo, which was tantamount to indirectly admitting that the alibi was false.
Coupled with the fact that the police investigation in Fukushima Prefecture found that the last eyewitness to see Obara was on March 30, and other indications confirm that Obara only stayed in Fukushima Prefecture until March 30, the possibility that Obara abducted Yoshizune on March 31 can be established.
Under the problem of the police constantly breaking through the flaws of the alibi, Obara was unable to justify himself, and finally admitted to the crime, and on July 4, the police arrested him on suspicion of kidnapping for money and intimidation.
Afterwards, Obara said that he was short of money and decided to commit a crime after watching the trailer for the movie "Heaven and Hell" directed by Akira Kurozawa and thinking that he could kidnap children. He thought that Ji Zhan should be a rich man in beautiful clothes, so he went up to chat with him and praised the water cannon toy he was holding, and then abducted him.
He said that he had killed Ji Zhan on the day of the abduction.
The reason for the killing was that Ji Zhan knew that his foot was inconvenient, and he was afraid that if he returned the child to his mother, he would soon be locked, so he decided to kill Ji Zhan directly and buried him in the Yuantong Temple.
Neither his mother nor the police knew that ji zhan was already dead when he called home to ask for ransom.
On July 5, the police found the white bones of Ji Zhan in Yuantong Temple, and the case was officially solved, and Yuantong Temple erected a monument for Ji Zhan to commemorate his young deceased.
On March 17, 1966, the Tokyo District Court sentenced Ohara to death, and although the defense continued to appeal on the grounds that Obara had not committed a crime, on October 13, 1967, the Supreme Court rejected the complaint and pronounced the death penalty, and Ohara was executed at Miyagi Prison on December 23, 1971, at the age of 38.
Welcome to the other "Japan Strange Talk" series, you can directly click "Learn More" in the lower left corner, or: Setagaya Massacre: The Last Unresolved Case of the 20th Century, the Japanese Sanchome Murders