"Man who killed as teen sent up for abduction"
Today's ill wind blows to us from the pages of The Japan Times, published March 2, 2005.
VENGEANCE IS mine sayeth the Lord, and I happen to agree. But retribution is a different matter entirely. Without the balance retribution provides, we would live in a constant state of moral confusion and ultimately chaos. Citizens must know that actions have consequences; they must trust that they live in a society that is – for the most part – fair.
Japan is, paradoxically, notorious for two aspects of its criminal justice system: overly enthusiastic interrogation techniques and lenient sentencing. Today's story is concerned with the latter. As a famous American lawyer might say: "The did the crime, the didn't do the time."
This terrible tale is known to most sentient Japanese. The cruelty and callous nature of the event shocked the country in November 1988.
In that year, four teenage boys abducted a 17-year-old high school girl and held her captive in the home of another friend for 41 days. The house was located in Adachi Ward, one of the crappier, poorer areas of the city.
For over a month they raped and tortured the girl in the boy's upstairs bedroom. Much of the abuse went unreported in the press (and was certainly not covered in this Japan Times story) In addition to gang rapes, they set her limbs on fire with lighter fluid, kicked her repeatedly, starved her and kept her in line with a stun gun. Eventually they dropped barbell weights on her until she went into convulsions and died.
On occasion, they took the victim downstairs to eat dinner with the boy's parents. She begged them for help. The parents testified they thought there was nothing unusual going on or, alternatively, that they might get in trouble. That they were (uncharged) accessories to murder is without question.
After the 17-year-old died, the teens taped her limbs together, placed the body in a 55-gallon drum, filled it with cement, and dumped it in a vacant lot. The body wasn't discovered for nearly a year.
OK, that's the background. On March 1, the ringleader of the gang, Jo Kamisaku, 33, was sentenced to fours years in prison for another abduction. This came after he served 10 years in prison for the girl's torture-murder and was released. In the latest case, he was pissed off that some guy was, in Kamisaku's warped worldview, hitting on his girlfriend. According to Tokyo High Court records, Kamisaku told the man, "I've committed murder before," and then shoved him into the trunk of his car in Adachi Ward.
With his victim in the trunk, Kamisaku drove to a bar in Misato, Saitama Prefecture. He then beat the guy up.
Public prosecutors asked the court to put the ex-con back behind bars for seven years, bu the judge let him off with four years, saying with no apparent irony, "It is doubtful whether (the defendant) really repented and tried to make a new start because he used the previous incident as a threat.''
The judge, clearly no believer in the scales of justice, then – I swear it's true – made excuses for this killer's behavior. Judge Noriaki Kikuchi said, "But it cannot be denied that (Kamisaku's) motivation to reform was reduced by others' knowledge of his previous crime."
Kikuchi himself deserves a year or two in the slammer just for that comment. Poor Kamisaku. Other people knew he had mutilated, raped and murdered a teenage girl. What a burden.
And this is why we have religion. This is why all religions promise us retribution – heaven and hell – in one form or another. When government fails us, as it did in this case, we look to God to right the ship. We pray for divine intervention – that Jo Kamisaku will be gang-raped, beaten to death and buried in cement, over and over again. For eternity. He deserves more, but that will have to do. And God, we trust you are looking out for that 17-year-old victim; that she is in a pretty, happy place.
