Summer is Japan’s spooky season when people enjoy sharing ghostly tales, superstitions and scary urban legends for chilling goosebumps. Obon, in August, is particularly spooky because it is when the spirits of the deceased return to the world of the living. But some tales are not just stories. The country has its fair share of unsolved mysteries, from cold murder cases to disappearances that seem almost supernatural. Here are seven of the creepiest real-life mysteries from Japan.
1. The Setagaya Family Murder
Photo: Wikicommons Thirteen-friOn the night of December 30, 2000, four members of the Miyazawa family were brutally murdered in their Setagaya home by an unknown assailant. Father Mikio, mother Yasuko, and their eight-year-old daughter Niina were stabbed to death, while six-year-old Rei was strangled in his bed.
After committing the crimes, the perpetrator stayed in the family home for several hours. During this time, he used the computer, ate snacks from the refrigerator, treated his bloody wounds with a first aid kit, and took a nap on the living room sofa. Ten items of clothing and accessories were left behind, including one of the murder weapons. The scene was further debased by unflushed feces left in the toilet.
All of this gave investigators a staggering amount of evidence to analyze. Some clues pointed to a foreign suspect, such as a DNA profile suggesting the killer was mixed race and trace amounts of sand from the Nevada desert being found in his hip bag. But to this day, no suspect has been identified, nor has any clear motive been established for the slayings, which remain one of Japan’s most tragic and infamous true crime cases.
2. The Monster with 21 Faces
Photo: iStock 7maruKatsuhisa Ezaki, president of confectionary company Glico, was abducted naked from his home by two masked, armed men on the evening of March 18, 1984. Three days later, Ezaki escaped, but he could not provide the police with enough information to identify his captors.
What followed was a series of attacks against Glico by a group calling themselves the Monster with 21 Faces. They sent a series of taunting letters to the police. One letter, received on April 23, claimed that the Monster had laced $21 million worth of Glico’s candy products with potassium cyanide. They threatened to return these products to shop shelves. No poisoned products were ever found, but Glico suffered a loss of around $20 million.
The Monster later ‘forgave’ Glico and began enacting a similar campaign against three other food companies. This time, police found dozens of snacks laced with potassium cyanide in stores around Tokyo and western Japan. Thankfully, none were ever consumed. Though the police followed leads on several suspects, including one man caught on security camera, no one was ever charged with the crimes.
3. Inokashira Park Dismemberment Incident
Photo: iStock kanzilyouInokashira Park became the site of a grisly mystery on the morning of April 23, 1994. Here, twenty-seven dismembered body parts were found scattered across the park’s bins. The human remains, concealed in black plastic bags, had been cut into twenty-centimeter pieces. The killer used an electric saw, and the remains were completely drained of blood.
The victim was Seiichi Kawamura, a thirty-five-year-old architect in the area. One witness claimed to have seen two men assaulting Kawamura near his home on the night of the murder. However, there was no forensic evidence of such an attack. It has been theorized that an organized crime group killed Kawamura. This theory is based on the precision of the dismemberment and the fact that an industrial amount of water would have been necessary to wash the body of blood.
In 2015, a man known as K claimed he may have been the intended target of the murder after he had angered members of a foreign crime ring operating in the area. He said Kawamura had been mistaken for him before and could have fallen afoul of the gang in K’s place. Whether Kawamura was, in fact, the real target of the crime may never be known.
4. The Disappearance of Tiphane Véron
Photo: iStock/gionnixxxFrench tourist Tiphaine Véron went missing in Nikko on July 29, 2018, during a day of sightseeing. Phone records show she left her hotel around 11:40 a.m. Her phone switched off at 6:11 p.m. due to damage, possibly near the hotel. Because Tiphaine had epilepsy, police theorized she had an accident, possibly falling into the river behind her hotel or slipping on a remote forest hiking trail in Nikko.
The Véron family believes foul play was involved and criticizes Japanese police for not opening a criminal investigation. To reassure the family, police performed luminol tests in Tiphane’s hotel room. The luminol reacted with a large stain on a wall, though police recently stated it was not blood.
No trace of Tiphaine has been found since her disappearance. The Véron family, with the help of French authorities, continues their investigation, hoping for answers.
The Wednesday Strangler
Photo: Pixta ram87Between 1975 and 1989, in Saga Prefecture, seven girls and women were found dead. All but one disappeared on a Wednesday. The victims’ ages ranged from eleven to fifty, but various disturbing details linked their deaths.
Five of the victims were strangled. In the remaining two cases, the remains had skeletonized, making it impossible to determine the cause of death. All but one of the victims had their clothing removed, and all disappeared during the evening hours. The first two bodies, of a twelve-year-old girl and a nineteen-year-old woman, were found on the grounds of the same elementary school. The final three victims, all mature women, were discovered together at the foot of a cliff.
A twenty-six-year-old man confessed to the murders of the last three victims under interrogation but later recanted his confession. He was acquitted in court due to a lack of evidence and over-interrogation by the police. The killer (or killers) have never been identified.
6. The Akagi Shrine Housewife Disappearance
Photo: Pixta Mu-sanOn a rainy day in May 1988, a housewife set out to make an offering at Akagi Shrine in Gunma Prefecture and seemingly vanished into thin air. Noriko Shizuka was last seen by her daughter, standing eerily still on the shrine grounds. A few moments later, Noriko had disappeared. The incident appeared to be a real-life case of kamikakushi, or “to be hidden away by the gods.”
Noriko suffered from an inner ear condition. It caused dizziness and fainting, leading to concerns that she may have gotten lost in the shrine’s forest. Over the next ten days, a team of one hundred police officers and firefighters searched for her but found no sign of her. Search dogs tracked Noriko’s scent to the side of the road, suggesting someone may have taken her away in a car.
Adding confusion to the case, Noriko’s family received a series of strange, silent phone calls from someone in the Osaka area after her disappearance. Authorities could not determine if the calls were from someone connected to Noriko’s disappearance, a prank caller, or even Noriko herself. The real explanation behind this case of kamikakushi remains a mystery.
7. The Vending Machine Murders
Photo: iStock tunartIn 1985, twelve people across Japan died, and thirty-five more became seriously ill after consuming poisoned soft drinks from vending machines. Known as “the paraquat murders,” these incidents coincided with a buy one, get one free promotional campaign for the vitamin drink Oronamin C. Believing they had received a free drink with their purchase, victims unknowingly drank beverages laced with the herbicide paraquat dichloride and, in one case, diquat.
Authorities believe a single person committed the crimes, though some incidents may have been copycat murders. The police never established a motive for the random poisonings or identified any suspects before the trail went cold. This case is considered the deadliest product-tampering incident in history.
Do you have a theory about what happened in any of these cases? Let us know in the comments!
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