Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Japan Times Weekly
Nov. 4, 1995
Vol. 35, No. 44
Pgs. 8-9
Scene of the crime: A six-story building, called "Rock Cave Heim,"
located directly in front of the east exit of Higashi-Murayama station on
the Seibu Shinjuku Line.
Date and estimated time: Sept. 1, 10 p.m. According to the police
report, a resident on the 5th floor heard a woman's shriek. Then a
thump. Five minutes later, a part-time employee of the Mossburger
fastfood outlet located on the 1st floor carried a trash bag to the rear of
the building. She heard a rustling sound from the area, saw something
move, became alarmed and went back inside the building.
About 30 minutes later, the burger-joint manager tossed some empty
cardboard boxes in the garbage bin and found a woman's body between
the wall of the building and the parking-lot fence. She was still alive "Did
you fall?" the manager asked. "No," moaned the woman, who feebly
shook her head. "Does it hurt? Are you all right?" asked the manger. "I'm
all right," she said.
Blood streamed down her legs below the knees of her navy pantsuit; a
pool of blood 50 cm across smeared the ground. She was not wearing
shoes. The fence, beneath the emergency stairs, was crushed out of
shape. "Do you want me to call an ambulance for you'?" was the last
question the manager asked the woman, and her answer was, "No.
that's O.K."
When an officer arrived from the nearest police box, she was suddenly
seized by great pain, and was unable to answer his questions. An
ambulance arrived at 10:55 p.m., and carried her to the National
Defense Medical College in Tokorozawa City. An hour later, she was
dead. The Jane Doe was later identified as Akiyo Asaki, 50, a member
of the Higashi-Murayama City Assembly.
One of the officers at the Higashi-Murayama Police Station was reported
to have called a funeral home to remove her body, about two hours
before informing her family of her death.
"When I learned about the incident, first thing that came to my mind was
that my mother had been murdered," says Asaki's daughter Naoko, 28.
"For the past couple of years she has experienced threats and
harrassments from someone." The daughter explained that
assemblywoman Asaki was scheduled to depart to Kochi Prefecture the
following morning to participate in a symposium on religion and politics.
"It is impossible that she could have committed suicide, or could have
accidentally fallen from the top of the building," said the daughter. "She
had no reason to go up there alone." An autopsy was conducted, at the
family's request, on the following day. The causes of her death were
determined as a shock from lung damage due to multiple rib fractures.
Akiyo Asaki had been a member of the Higashi-Murayama City
Assembly since 1987, and in the last two elections she was elected with
the largest number of votes cast for any candidate. She was actively
involved in a political-reform plan within the assembly. She was also an
outspoken leader of an anti-Soka Gakkai/anti-Komeito movement. In
the 27-member city assembly, Komeito together with LDP are the
dominant forces, holding 6 seats and 10 seats respectively. In assembly
sessions, Asaki repeatedly pointed out that there have been far too
many Soka Gakkai members hired as city employees, a situation that
led to favoritism in employment and public-enterprise projects.
Asaki was a leader of Kusa-no-ne shimin no kai (The Grass-root
Citizens' Group), along with fellow assembly member Hozumi Yano, 47.
They published the newspaper Higashi-Murayama Shimin Shimbun.
Yano recounted to police his suspicions of foul play on the day of her
death. Asaki parted with her colleague Yano at 6:55 p.m., leaving the
Kusa-no-ne office near Higashi-Murayama station. She was seen by an
acquaintance heading for her house, just a 5-minute walk from the
office.
At about 8:30 p.m., a neighbor saw Asaki returning toward the office.
Yano returned to the office at 8:55 p.m. The door was locked. The lights,
air conditioner and word-processor were on. The word-processor screen
was showing the summary of the speech she was preparing to give at
the symposium on religion and politics in Kochi.The document had not
yet been stored on disc.
Her handbag containing her wallet was left inside the office. Yano
received a phone call from one of the other assembly members. At 9:19
p.m., their phone conversation was interrupted by a call waiting. It was
from Asaki, who said. "I feel a little sick, so I think I'm going to take a
rest."
The 9.5-second conversation was tape-recorded by Yano, and later NTT
(Nippon Telegraph Telephone) records confirmed that she had called from her
home. In less than 40 minutes, she either fell or was pushed from the emergency stairwell of the mystery building.
The location of the fall was neither her residence nor her
office. There was no reason for her to be there.
The local police announced, after their initial investigation, that the
possibility of a murder was slim, and that their probe would be based on
the assumption of either a suicide or accident. Rumors quickly circulated
around town, suggesting that Asaki may have committed suicide
because of a minor shoplifting charge.
The mass media, however, sensed some sort of conspiracy. TV news
programs and magazines vigorously pursued the story. The majority of
reporters described Asaki's death as a murder.
An investigative report in Shukan Gendai, a weekly magazine published
by Kodansha, quoted Daito Asaki, 57, the victim's husband, and her
daughter, who both claimed that she was murdered in a conspiracy
hatched by Soka Gakkai activists.
"My mother was framed on the shoplifting charge," asserts Naoko Asaki.
"Stealing a ¥1,900 T-shirt? Impossible! Someone set her up, because
they wanted to damage her reputation."
Asaki and her colleague Yano had claimed that they had been
experiencing frequent attacks and harassment, including an arson
attempt, threatening phone calls and attempted car collisions since July.
"It is obvious someone wanted her psychologically harmed and
disturbed and, eventually, dead," said Naoko, insisting that her mother
was not the type who would commit suicide. "She was a tough person,
so tough that the more obstacles or disadvantages she faced, the harder
she tried to get over them."
Asaki, who supported the Diet proposal to revise the Religious
Corporations Law, was rumored to have been planning to run for a seat
in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly in 1997. The Tokyo Metropolitan
Government has jurisdiction over the religious corporation status of
Soka Gakkai.
Thus, Asaki represented a direct political threat to the sect, whose
members hold a scandalously disproportionate number of positions in
the TMG bureaucracy as well as the district prosecutors' office. "She
repeatedly mentioned that Soka Gakkai was capable of doing anything
to stop her," recalls Naoko.
The day after the Sept. 23 issue of Shukan Gendai hit the newsstands,
in which it charged that Soka Gakkai's methods of threats and
abductions are strikingly similar to those of AUM Shinrikyo. Soka Gakkai
filed a libel suit against the magazine's editor-in-chief, Daito Asaki and
Naoko Asaki.
The libel case (another tactic often employed by Aum) will come under
the Code of Criminal Procedure, instead of civil procedure which, in
case of libel suits, is more common in Japan. Following the former
procedure entails a criminal investigation by the police. "We chose the
Code of Criminal Procedure because we wanted to have everything
clarified through a police probe," says Hiroshi Nishiguchi, Soka Gakkai's
vice president and director of information and public relations. "What the
media have written so far is extremely lopsided. They are just writing
what the Asaki side says, without checking its credibility, and without
any concrete evidence."
Oddly echoing the Soka Gakkai spokesman, Eiji Chiba, deputy chief of
the Higashi-Murayama Police Station, said that he didn't understand
how some magazines reported comments by the police doctor, who first
inquested Asaki's body, as if he had said something that conflicted with
the police announcement.
Chiba said that the press has overemphasized the exchange between
the Mossburger manager and Asaki. ("Did you fall?" "No.") "The
manager also asked if Asaki wanted him to call an ambulance for her,
and her answer was 'No.' If she had been pushed away by someone,
she would have said 'Please call an ambulance,'" said Chiba.
These assertions by the police officer, however, fail to explain other
damning evidence.
First, the missing shoes. Asaki's shoes have never been found. If she
had killed herself, her shoes would have been left on the landing of the
emergency stairs or near where she fell. Psychological studies have
shown that most suicide victims who jump from a building leave their
shoes at the site. And why would she not be wearing shoes in a strange
building that was not her residence, and that, in fact, had no relationship
to her? Was she drugged or gassed and carried to the site?
Second, the office keys she was carrying, which were not found on the
first search on Sept. 2nd, mysteriously turned up two days later. A
Mossburger employee is said to have found the keys on the 2nd floor of
the building, at around 5:30 p.m. on Sept. 2nd. "We just overlooked it
the first time," said a police officer at the Higashi-Murayama Police
Station.
Third, the delay of notification of her death to the Asaki family. The
police identified her around 1 a.m., but did not contact the family until 8
a.m. -- 7 hours afier her death.
In June, Asaki met with the Higashi-murayama police officers on three
occasions. Why did it take so long to identify her, considering there was
no facial damage? Why was the body removed to a funeral home before
the family was notified? "Because we thought it was important to let the
dead rest peacefully first," said a police officer.
Fourth, why did Asaki shriek before she fell? (Note: she did not while
she was failing, but before her fall.)
The police officer explained: "One of the reasons why we are inclined to
determine Asaki committed suicide is that she fell straight down to the
ground, instead of falling along a parabolic line. If she had been pushed
from the top landing of the stair, she should have fallen far away from
the building, shouldn't she? And another point is that traces of fingers on
the rail of the top landing have been confirmed, though her fingerprints
have not been found. The way the traces were marked showed that she
hung on to the rail from the outside, which suggests she was not
pushed."
It's all interesting, very, very interesting. As mysteries deepened in
Higashi-Murayama, the Asaki family and Yano visited the headquarters
of the National Police Agency on Sept. 18, to submit a petition for a
thorough inquiry to Ryuji Fukaya, chief of the National Public Safety
Commission.
"I hope for and I'm positive that the truth will be revealed soon," said
Yano.
Naomi Kazusa is a contributor to the Weekly.
Sins of terrorism?
"I don't know why the Higashi-Murayama Police Station suddenly
became so oversensitive and even obsessire about us," says Hozumi
Yano, Asaki's colleague. "It's not that we had ever been at loggerheads
with the police. But things began to change in February, after a
personnel transfer at the station."
Yano asserted that he and Asaki, highly visible political reformers, had
experienced menacing attacks and harassment after initiating an anti-Soka
Gakkai campaign. The following list of incidents between July and
September was provided by Yano.
July 14: Copies of a flyer attacking Kusa-no-ne Shimin no kai, a political
reform group to which Asaki and Yano belonged, were distributed. The
flyer contained statements such as "Wake up, citizens of Higashi-Murayama,
and get rid of Kusa-no-ne, or the city will be the nation's laughingstock."
July 16: Yano on his way home at 3 a.m was assaulted on the street by
a young man, kicked and battered. His injuries took two weeks to heal.
One of his front teeth was broken in the attack.
August 2: While Yano was riding a bicycle, a truck ahead of him and
another behind trapped him, nearly causing a serious accident. Later,
the license plate number of one of the trucks showed that it was owned
by a Soka Gakkai member. After admitting that the truck owner was a
member, a sect representative said, "He has seldom participated in
Soka Gakkai events. And he himself denies the allegation."
August 10: Asaki fell from her bicycle because the brakes had been
tampered with.
August 19: Naoko, Asaki's eldest daughter, received a message
consisting of twelve 4's in a row on the display of her beeper. The
number 4 (pronounced shi) means "death" in Japanese.
August 20: An arson attempt with newspaper in kerosene was attempted
on Asaki's gatepost.
August 26: A threatening letter was sent to the office of Kusa-no-ne,
along with powdered metal in the envelope. The message of the letter
was bakushi, which means death by bomb explosion. (Recall the
package sent to Gov. Yukio Aoshima?)
August 28: An organizer of the symposium in Kochi on politics and
religion received two messages on his cellular phone, saying "Don't ever
assume the lecturer will be able to arnve in one piece."
September 1: Asaki's mysterious death occurs.
September 5: Yano was shadowed along the streets by a small truck.
September 21: A threatening letter was delivered to Yano: "I know you
killed Asaki. Make a confession and stop agitating stupid people. The
only way you can contribute to the society is to die. Die, Yano. I can help
you out with your death if you want me to."
The cases are under investigation, but an officer at the Higashi-Murayama
Police Station says that Yano has little to substantiate his theory.
(N.K.)
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