This script, which sounds quite powerful, is adapted from a real event that caused a sensation in Japan at the beginning of this century-the serial disappearance of girls in Ashikaga City. The moving part of this case is not the murderer’s cruelty, but the courage and perseverance of the media people holding high the “sword of conscience” to split the unjust case and tell the truth to the world.
The program “Shake Japan” was made in this way
If you have watched the Japanese drama “Elpis—Hope, or Disaster”, it is not difficult to find that the birth of a high-quality news program depends on two points of luck and eight points of hard work. The play belongs to the “luck” part, which comes from the rookie in the production department played by Atsushi Maeda. Due to coercion, he had to recruit the star female anchor interpreted by Nagasawa Masami to assist in the investigation, which gradually aroused media people. professional passion. Then, with the efforts of eight points, the most frustrated group of people, in the most inconspicuous program time slot, just forcibly produced the most remarkable continuous report, which became the focus of the whole people.
But in reality, the one who pushed the “Ashikaga Incident” to the climax of public opinion was a media person who was already a star – Kiyoshi Shimizu. Anyone who has a little knowledge of Japanese journalism knows that Kiyomizu is a legend among media people. She loves two things in her life: one is to sympathize with the weak, and the other is to fight the case.
As early as 1999, in the world-famous “Barrel Chuan Stalker Murder Incident”, as a small reporter of a third-rate newspaper at that time, Qing Shuijie won the trust of the victim’s family with his sincerity and conscience. He launched an in-depth investigation on this and finally assisted The police arrested the real culprit who had escaped. At that time, Qing Shuijie used a series of in-depth reports to criticize the police for ignoring the police information of women who were stalked and harassed. After the reporter was killed, even the media tried their best to pursue the “perfect victim” and repeatedly publicly discredited the deceased A frivolous woman in pursuit of luxury goods, Qing Shuijie tried her best to restore the innocence of the deceased in the process. Since then, she has become famous in the first battle and is regarded by the press as an industry benchmark.
Because of this, when Shimizu Kiyoshi became a reporter in the Social Affairs Department of Nippon Television in 2007, the director Akino Sugimoto made a request for him to start with an unsolved unsolved case and do a special follow-up report for one year. He has no other requirements for this special, but the final result must be able to “shake Japan”. Akino Sugimoto used to be a track and field athlete, and “Elpis-Hope or Disaster” played by the elite Saito Masaichi of the news department who participated in the investigation of the case is also the actor Suzuki Ryohei who is famous for his physique.
Faced with such a task that is not difficult to say but extremely difficult to do, Qing Shuijie clearly realizes that the minister not only wants him to find an unsolved case, but also needs him to “solve the case” during the investigation process, which is absolutely impossible He completed the task alone, so he found a partner and took the initiative to recruit the female anchor Sugimoto Junko, who used to do news talk shows in the station, into the group. The two met through work as early as 1998 in the “Wakayama Poison Curry Incident”, and they hit it off right away. In this way, after rounds of careful selection, the two focused on the disappearance of a 4-year-old girl, Yukari Yokoyama, who happened in the parking lot of the pinball machine room in Ota City, Gunma Prefecture.
The case is very simple. In May 1996, the Hengshan couple took their daughter You Jiali to a pinball machine room to play. According to the surveillance at the time, a suspicious man who was still wearing long clothes and trousers in the hot weather approached him. Yukari also chatted with her for a long time, the little girl was not on guard against this person, and even moved her white skirt frequently. Then the man walked out of the door, and Yu Jiali chased him out, and there was no further sound for 10 years.
When Kiyomizu opened this old volume, he and Sugimoto Junko buried themselves in the “ocean” of unsolved case materials, trying to salvage some strange “shells”. Finally, they discovered that in Gunma County and neighboring Tochigi County, there had been more than one case of missing and victimized girls in pinball parlors. In 1979, a 5-year-old girl named Manya Fukushima from Ashikaga City, Tochigi Prefecture disappeared from a shrine near her home. In 1987, Tomoko Osawa, an 8-year-old girl from Oshima Town, Gunma Prefecture, disappeared in a park. Both bodies were later found on the banks of a river.
In 1984, a 5-year-old girl, Yumi Hasebe, from Ashikaga City, Tochigi Prefecture disappeared. It was not until one year and four months later that her body was found in a field. In 1990, a 4-year-old girl from the same city, Matsuda Makoto, also disappeared from a pachinko shop, and her body was found on the bank of the Watarase River the next day. The bodies of these girls were barely clothed or only in their underwear, and the immediate cause of death was asphyxiation. The suspect’s bodily fluids were also found on Matsuda’s real shirt.
Qing Shuijie, who has a very keen sense of smell, gradually realizes that he may accidentally pry open a huge door of truth. Inside the door is a serial killer who has escaped for many years. Just when he wanted to open the door to find out, he found that the real case of Matsuda had been solved. The police had arrested a 45-year-old man, Toshikazu Sugaga, from Ashikaga City on December 2, 1991, and charged him with kidnapping. He was prosecuted for murder and murder, and in 1993 the Utsunomiya District Court made a verdict and sentenced the defendant to life imprisonment.
In the book “Okekawa Stalker Murder Incident”, Kiyoshi Shimizu wrote: “The Japanese people naturally believe in the police and think that the police will not lie. In fact, they are completely wrong. Based on this sharp “distrust”, Kiyoshi Shimizu After carefully collecting information on Toshikazu Suga, it turned out that he was a school bus driver for the kindergarten. When the police launched a large-scale search, the criminal was described as a “single man”, so the toilet paper stained with body fluids that the Suga family threw into the garbage bag was taken to Matsuda. The chemical comparison of the bodily fluids on the real clothes concluded that the DNA was completely consistent. This result became the most solid and possibly the only reason for the arrest of the Suga family.
Judging from the records of the trial process, Toshikazu Suga’s behavior was very strange. From December 1991 From January to 1992, the Suga family went through 10 court trials. He obediently admitted the charges in the first 5 trials. In the 6th trial, he suddenly withdrew his confession, insisting that he had been beaten and kicked by the police for 15 hours before pleading guilty against his will. In the 7th trial, he pleaded guilty again for some unknown reason. In the 10th public trial, he repeated the scene of withdrawing his confession in court. But no matter how the Suga family behaved abnormally, the court still weighed him heavily. Just two years in prison Later, Toshikazu Suga’s father passed away, and he was unable to see his son for the last time. Even so, the Suga family applied to the Utsunomiya District Court for DNA testing as early as October 1997. In 2002, they applied for a retrial of the case. They were all rejected. Faced with such a suspicious case, Kiyoshi Shimizu made up his mind—starting from the disappearance of the Ashikaga girl, to produce a program that could shake Japan.
“Records of Cleansing Injustice” by Media People
Each murder case has its own characteristics, but the secondary injuries caused by the cases are all exactly the same. Similar to the “Barrel River Incident”, when Qing Shuijie started to visit the family members of the victims to find out the situation, all they received were cold rejections. The reason is very simple, because everyone is tired of being questioned by a large number of reporters in front of the gate, especially Matsuda’s mother, who has been questioned by the media and passers-by for many years: “Why did you take your daughter to a place like a pinball machine room?” ? How did you become a mother!”
As a result, Mrs. Matsuda moved frequently and chose an extremely low-key life. She didn’t even dare to attend the trial of Toshikazu Suga. Then she gave birth to two more children. Qing Shuijie, who is always firmly on the side of the victim, is the only media person who persuaded her to stand up and accept the interview again. In fact, Shimizu Kiyoshi’s “Sword of Conscience” has exposed too many doubts at this time, and he is almost certain that Toshikazu Suga was wronged and imprisoned.
First of all, DNA detection technology had just entered the field of criminal investigation at that time, which was still very backward compared to now, and the error rate was very high. Secondly, according to the confession of the Suga family in court, he let Matsuda Zhen sit on the back seat of the bicycle and take him away. However, the real mother said with certainty that her daughter hadn’t learned to sit on the back seat of the bicycle back then. Sent to kindergarten in a bicycle baby chair. There is another piece of evidence that makes Qing Shuijie most frightened, that is, there are 3 cases of “disappearance of girls in the pinball machine room” that are similar to each other, why only the case of Matsuda Makoto was prosecuted? When he asked the personnel who participated in the case handling, the other party blurted out: “Because if there are three prosecutions, the Kan family will be sentenced to death, which is too pitiful.” Finally, the most hard-core empirical evidence is when he really disappeared that year. Witnesses saw the real being taken away by a short man who looked like “Lupine the Third”. Because the girl was wearing a red dress, she was particularly eye-catching. Among the witnesses was a female art teacher who also drew a sketch of the witnessed scene. The features of the man in the drawing were not similar to Suga Toshikazu.
In Fuji TV’s adaptation of the TV series, the heroine Ena Asakawa also raised questions to the police who were involved in handling the case. The arrogance of the police in the play and the weird attitude of “don’t want to bring up this case again” are almost the same as Shimizu’s experience in reality. . With the increasing amount of materials at hand, Kiyomizu’s team finally launched a program called “Action Shakes Japan” in the prime time of January 2008. The opening scene of the program is an aerial shot of the boundary between Tochigi Prefecture and Gunma Prefecture . The same scene was also kept in the TV series, but the way of going on the show became that Asakawa Ena changed the videotape secretly on his own initiative, and forcibly pushed this unjust case in front of the audience.
The first report lasted more than 40 minutes. After the program was broadcast, Shimizu’s biggest gain was not the ratings, but immediately received a letter from the party involved, Suga Toshikazu. It was after seeing this program in prison that he re-firmed his commitment Confidence in clearing himself up, and requesting a new identification of DNA through the lawyer. This long letter from the Suga family became the highlight of the second episode of the program. It was broadcast in the news special of the afternoon program, and the feedback was even more enthusiastic. Letters hoping that Shimizu would help him clear his grievances poured in.
Perhaps it was a coincidence that the current adaptation directed by the famous director Dagenjin failed to obtain the expected good ratings, and Shimizu Kiyoshi’s initial report on this report also failed to succeed. The response was not great, and even the Utsunomiya District Court once again rejected the Suga family’s request for a retrial one month after the show was broadcast. So Suga’s lawyers appealed directly to the Tokyo Supreme Court.
At the same time, Qing Shuijie is not idle, he continues to sharpen this “sword of conscience” that destroys unjust crimes. With his past investigation experience, he has long anticipated the difficulties and pressures he will face after the program is broadcast. The police insisted that there was no problem with the handling of the case back then, and they were unwilling to cooperate with any media interviews.
Qing Shuijie revealed that in the second week after starting to investigate this old case, he began to try to find the “Lupin” who was mentioned by the eyewitnesses back then. He does not have the professional criminal investigation methods of the police, but only the paranoid perseverance to break through iron shoes. During those days, he traveled back and forth between Tochigi Prefecture and Gunma every day from morning to night, lurking in the pinball machine room at the junction of the two counties, and finally locked on a man who liked to be intimate with girls, and found the other party’s place of residence by helicopter. A tin house. Just like that, Qing Shuijie stepped forward and knocked on the door of the suspicious man’s house, and took the initiative to talk to him. It is worth mentioning that a similar scene also appeared in the adaptation of the TV series, but it was replaced by a mysterious man played by Eita Asakawa, whose features are very similar to the real murderer.
History always repeats itself with Qing Shuijie. In the previous “Tongchuan incident”, he was one step ahead of the police in finding the whereabouts of the real culprit, and notified the police as soon as possible. . This time, Qing Shuijie also operated in the same way. He took the photo of the man when he was young, found eyewitnesses for confirmation, and then submitted all the evidence to the police.
Qingshuijie’s deadly spirit brought good news and bad news.
The bad news is that after the investigation, the police still decided that the “Lu Bang” who Qing Shuijie testified was not the murderer, because the DNA test results were not completely consistent. At that time, the police only found one of them from an ashtray full of cigarette butts in the pinball machine room, and determined that it belonged to the suspect. Then they took the cigarette butt for identification and came to such a conclusion.
The good news is that as the program gets deeper and deeper, the balance of justice has finally gradually shifted to the side of Toshikazu Suga, who has served 17 years in Chiba Prison. Not only the viewers who followed the report program, but also the family members of the victims publicly called for the judiciary not to allow innocent people to be wronged. This series of social reactions finally paid off on December 19, 2008. The presiding judge of the Tokyo High Court, Yasuro Tanaka, agreed to retest the DNA. In February 2009, two expert witnesses recommended by the prosecution and the defense re-tested the DNA. The final conclusion of the high court was exactly the same as Kiyoshi Shimizu thought—the DNA type of Toshikazu Suga and the body fluid type on Matsuda’s real underwear did not match. .
As a reporter for a third-rate newspaper at the time, Qing Shuijie won the trust of the victim’s family with her sincerity and conscience. She launched an in-depth investigation on this and finally assisted the police in apprehending the escaped murderer.
Judging from the records of the trial process, Toshikazu Suga’s performance was very strange. From December 1991 to 1992, the Suga family experienced 10 court trials.
The case of the disappearance of the girl in Ashikaga City once became a hot topic of media reports at that time.
The families of the victims who demanded that the investigation be reopened held a press conference.
Shimizu passed the investigation and finally rehabilitated the suspect in the Ashikaga case.
In June of the same year, Toshikazu Suga walked out of the cage and returned to the normal world that should belong to him. He received 80 million yen in compensation and an insincere apology from the police. You know, the police even got a medal of commendation for solving this case. Although Suga Jialihe cleared his grievances, the truth of the case is still unknown.
Why are neither the court nor the police willing to retry the case and restore the innocence of the innocent? Because 17 years ago, when DNA technology was still immature, the police station had already used it to “crack” countless cases. Toshikazu Suga was the first “criminal” in history to re-identify DNA after being sentenced and reverse the case. . If the accuracy of the DNA is overturned, the parties involved in the massive previous cases may use this to request a retrial, so what is the face of the judiciary? Japan’s criminal cases reached an ultra-high conviction rate of 99.8%, which was the “dignity” of the judicial system at that time. And this “dignity” was once again destroyed in the hands of Qing Shuijie, who was a tabloid reporter.
Of course, everyone knows that only by catching the real culprit can the shaken Japan return to calm. For this reason, from October 2010 to April 2011, Shimizu Jie serially reported “This Is the Real Criminal” on “Literary Spring and Autumn”, so that everyone has been firmly watching the trail of “Lupin”.