"What have you done? You were on TV."
"TV? How come I was on TV?"
"You haven't seen the news yet, today. They put on TV an identikit of the "fox-eyed man" as they call the prime suspect of the Glico Incident", said the woman seriously when I arrived in her apartment. It was only a few days into the new year of 1985.
I switched the TV on. Luckily, the evening new was just about to begin. But what I saw the next moment on the screen was an identikit of a fox-eyed man the broadcaster called the prime suspect of the Glico-Morinaga case. Looking at the identikit, I thought to myself "Stop joking." I certainly have eyes that look like those of a fox but I don't look as ugly as that man. But my woman said "Look. He looks exactly like you, doesn't he? Don't you agree?"
The identikit was annotated with the description as follows: "Age 35-45, Height 175 - 178cm, slant lifted eyes, naturally curled hair, well-built, not-so-immaculate salaried man" Hearing this annotation, I groaned in spite of myself. I was then 39, stood 178 cm, and fit the rest of the description, too. The next moment, I sensed troubles ahead, the woman staring at my face. This was how my version of the Glico-Morinaga case began.
As you all know, the Glico-Morinaga case was a 17-month long series of corporate blackmailing that began with the abduction in March, 1984 of the president of Glico corporation, Ezaki, and ended with the "The Case-Closed Declaration" issued by "Monster with 21 faces"
The professional adeptness the culprit showed when he carried out the abduction of Ezaki, the cleverness with which "Monster with 21 faces" as he called himself manipulated the media, the boldness with which he kept sending blackmails and written challenges to the media and the police, the police car chasing a car driven by him late at night, the action movie-like flamboyancy he exhibited as when he, hiding in a manhole, was trying to grab a cash-contained case right under the nose of all the police officers keeping an eye on the case, and the fact the victims were all big companies such as Glico, Morinaga, Marudai, and House. They were all in there to shake the entire nation as the biggest "theater crime" ever committed in the anal of crimes. On March 18th, 1994, three days before the statute of limitation ran out for the Abduction of President of Ezaki Glico Corporation, Mainichi-shinbun newspaper said the Metropolitan Designated Case 114, so called "Glico-Morinaga case" had been the highest on the priority list for the past 10 years, with a total of 1,257 million police officers mobilized, investigating as many as 125,000 people to maintain their prestige. The number of similar blackmailing incidents copying this incident was reported to total 4444. Of all the important incidents to be investigated nationwide as designated by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, the Glico-Morinaga case is the only one that remains unsolved except for No.116 "Asahi-Shinbun Shooting Raid Incident"
For your information, let me go over what happened. At PM.9:00 March 18th, 1994, two masked men with a cap on carrying a gun and a rifle stormed into the house of the president of Glico corporation, in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture. That was what started the incident. Before they broke into the house, they first forced their way into the president's mother's house adjacent to his, tied her up and took away the key to the president's house. Having used the key to get into the house, they went straight upstairs into a room where his wife and daughter were watching TV, tied their hands behind their back. Jumping to the conclusion that they were robbers, she implored to them to set them free, saying "You can take as much money as you like." But the men rejected flatly "We want no money," cut off the telephone line, and forced their way into the bath room on the same floor. In the bathroom were President Ezaki and his two children. The two men said to the three who were upset, "Be quiet", "Don't yell," "Stay put." Ezaki was crying for help. So the two threatened "We'll shoot you dead if you don't get calm. Get out quick." They whisked the naked man away as he got out of the bathroom. They held him for ransom of \1 billion and 100 kg of bullion. Three days later, Ezaki was released and got himself out of a riverside warehouse where he had been held captive.
It looked like the case was closed. But as it turned out soon, it was only the beginning of what followed. Blackmailing was to continue with letters sent to Glico Corporation telling that they had laced some Glico products with potassium cyanide
. All the Glico products disappeared from the shelves as the company had to withdraw them and found itself on the brink of bankruptcy. Meanwhile the culprit group kept sending written challenges that flew in the face of the police." One of them, written mostly in Hiragana, and in Osaka dialect, reads like this:
"Dear dumb police officers. Don't tell a lie. All crimes begin with a lie as we say in Japan. Don't you know that? The written challenge was also sent to Koshien police station. Why don't you keep it to yourself? You seem to be at a loss. So why not let us help you? We'll give you a clue. We entered the factory by the front gate. The typewriter we used is Panwriter. The plastic container used was a piece of street garbage. Monster with 21 faces."
In June, the culprit group declared ceasefire to Glico. But as it turned out, they had only shifted the target from Glico to other companies, Morinaga, Marudai, and House. While blackmailing continued the fierce behind-the-scene battle went on between the culprit group and the police as the group attempted to snatch away the ransom money or to strike a secret deal they were blackmailing. In August, Superintendent Yamamoto of Shiga Prefecture Police took his own life by setting fire to himself. It was believed that he took responsibility for a serious blunder made in the investigation. Five days later, the group sent a "declaration of ending the war" to various media. Since then no move has been made by the culprit group. The letter reads as follows.
".... Yamamoto of Shiga Prefecture Police died. How stupid of him! We've got no mates and no secret hiding place in Shiga. It's Yoshino or Shikata who should have died. What have they been doing for as long as one year and five months? Don't let bad guys like us get away with it. There are many more fools who want to copy us. Non-career Yamamoto died like a man. So we decided to give our condolescence. We decided to forget about torturing food-making companies. If anyone blackmail any of the food-making companies, it's not us but someone copying us. We are bad guys. That means we've got more more to do other than bullying companies. It's fun to lead a bad man's life. Monster with 21 faces." In June 1995, the statue of limitation ran out for the case of a couple assaulted, robbed, and injured, thus leaving no other cases for which the statute of limitation had not run out in connection with the series of incidents that had started with the abduction of the Ezaki Glico's president, the only exception being the case of potassium cyanide laced chocolate attempted murder on which the investigation will continue until February, 2000.
What made the police decide to start conducting an open investigation as they publicized the description of the "fox-eyed man" was that they got firmly convinced that this man was very likely to be the actual leader of the "Monster with 21 faces" group. He was seen twice watching the investigators where the culprit was about to rob Marudai and House of cash, a very suspicious move indeed.
First time it was June 28th, two days after the culprit group declared ceasefire that the group bullied Marudai into striking a secret deal to pay \50 million. They told Marudai to toss a bag of cash from a local train bound for Kyoto when a while flag came in sight. An investigator disguised as a Marudai employee, noticed a suspicious man who seemed to be keeping an eye on him, while he was aboard the 8-past something train he was told to take by the culprit group. The man was a big man, very well-built and bespectacled with eyes like those of a fox, his hair shorted and permed.
Because the investigator couldn't see the white flag, he got off the train at Kyoto station and sat down on a bench on the platform. The suspicious fox-eyed man also sat on the bench next to it and continued the watch. When the investigator took a train back to Osaka, the fox-eyed man hopped on a different carriage of the same train to stay on his tail. When he saw the investigator checking out of Takatsuki station, he got on a Kyoto-bound train again. Another investigator disguised as a passenger took over and followed him to Kyoto Station where he moved from one place to another as if to shake the investigator off his tail. And he disappeared just like that.
The second time the "foxed eyed man" appeared before the investigators was on the night of Nov.14 when the culprit group attempted to rob House Food Corporation of \100 million in a secret deal. Waiting in a parking lot of the restaurant in Kyoto's Fushimi ward as instructed by the group, the cash delivery van received a taped instruction in a child's voice to move to a bus stop called Jonangu. On the bench at the bus stop was an envelope on which was written "Move to Otsu service area on Meishin Express Way through Kyoto-South interchange".
The cash delivery van headed for Otsu right away. It was in this expressway service area of Otsu that the investigator caught a sight of the foxed eyed man. He stepped out from behind a car and made a strange move that made the investigator suspect that he was watching the van. With his golf cap pulled down, he was wearing dark glasses, his short-cut permed hair showing at the bottom of the cap. But when the suspecting investigator was about to get near him, he was gone. One investigator was there behind a tree watching the every move that the fox-eyed man made. He was the same investigator that lost sight of the fox-eyed man in Kyoto. He could recognize the man who had just disappeared as the same man that had disappeared into the darkness of Kyoto. The cash delivery van then headed for Ritto interchange following the instruction given by the culprit that said "Go toward Nagoya, stop your car when you see a white piece of cloth, and find a empty can covered under the cloth.". The white cloth was found, but no can under it. So, they decided to leave the place at 10:30. The upper echelon of the police force thought first that the move the culprit was to make was to evaluate the police. They took it lightly believing that the culprit group might come out in populated Osaka, or Hyogo where they could easily disappeared into the crowd, not in sparsely populated Shiga. After withdrawing the investigation team, the Osaka Police superintendent Shikata Osamu said full of confidence "We all did very well today. We are now ready to deal with any move the culprit will make."
But, around 9:30, well before the withdrawal of the investigation team, something unexpected had happened. A Shiga Prefecture Police patrol car on its usual patrol found a suspicious station wagon with its engine left running and the headlamps off on the road that crosses the expressway under the fence to which the white cloth was tied. The station wagon was about 50m away from the white cloth. Uninformed of the on-going clandestine operation, the police officer drove up his car to the side of the station wagon, and turned a flash light on the driver's seat to reveal a skinny-cheeked man in his forties seated there as if he was concealing himself. He had his cap pulled down to his eyes, and was listening to a wireless receiver with an earphone on. Taken aback by the presence of a police officer, he got the station wagon off to a jolting start and sped through under the raised expressway and sharply turned right toward the built-up area of Kusatsu city. The car chase up and down the winding narrow streets of Kusatsu, with the police car chasing after the station wagon trying to get away at ferociously high speed went on for about 5 km until at last the station wagon ran away.
It is widely believed that this disastrous failure was as a result of the Shiga Prefecture police having been set up by the culprit group. The culprit group told the driver of the cash delivery van to bring with him a map of "Keihanshin" area (abbreviation of Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe). So the Shiga police did not expect the cash delivery van to make it into their area, Shiga adjacent to "Keihanshin" The station wagon was found abandoned near JR Kusatsu Station. It was a car stolen in Nagaokakyo in Kyoto prefecture. There left inside the abandoned stolen station wagon was a rigged transceiver capable of bugging radio communications between police officers of six prefectures including Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe. The radio was set to the frequency that Shiga police was using. Some other things like a portable vacuum cleaner were found, but none that the culprit group seemed to be using, not even a fragment of fingerprint. One newspaper journalist told me that there found in the car was a trace that suggested that he cleaned the inside of the car while driving at a very high speed.
To tell the truth, my involvement with the Glico/Morinaga case did not begin with the release of the description of the fox-eyed man. About two months before it, a man identifying himself as a journalist for a woman's magazine visited my mother living with my sister, and asked her various questions about me. Thanks to a lot of troubles the family had had for many years, it took my mother no more than a few seconds to know that the journalist was a cop. After giving all the false answers to the questions, she said to my sister "That one was a cop." Cops showed up at the coffee shops, drinking bars, and work associates I used to have when I was in Kyoto before, and checked about me. I had several phone calls that said "Manabu, today I had a cop come to ask about you. Be careful." I also noticed something strange that made me think that I was being watched or followed by police. One time, there at some distance from me, in a coffee shop where I was talking business was sitting a big guy with stern looking eyes. Well, this was rather an exception in that the guy was so typical a cop. But many others had something about them that indicated that they were a cop, but less conspicuous.
Since the identikit of the fox-eyed man was released by the media, I had had quite a few inquires from various segments of the society. As might well have been expected, the keenest were media people who, on the release of the identikit, contacted me for an interview so many times. Among those were my old friends, Asakura Takashi and Otani Akihiro who had already distinguished themselves as crime reporters. They really grilled me saying "Hey, Miyazaki. Come clean now. How did you do it?"
Just as quick as the media people were the outlaws who were living on information. Jumping to their conclusion, and with not a slightest doubt, they would say happily, "What a great feat you did against cops! It feels really good." I denied and denied only to get a reply like "Don't worry. We won't tip the police off." Some were so outrageous, quick in their approach to me to sponge off me, saying "I saw you on TV. But can you spare me some \10 million?"
Everybody who knew me talked a lot about the identikit. Men were saying, "You look too much like him." "It's nothing but a sketch of the photo they used when you were wanted across the country for corporate extortion. No doubt." Women were saying, looking really serious, "You are on TV everyday. Are they telling the truth?"
After all, my mother and I were the only people negative about my similarity to the identikit. My sister was with my mother saying, "Don't be ridiculous. Manabu is nicer looking than that man." But she turned away a detective who had come to ask her about me by railing at him saying, "It's a piece of cake for Manabu to do what you suspect him of having done." But looking back, I can't but come to the conclusion that my mother's eyes were biased in my favor. Indeed, I had my hair short-cut and permed and was wearing glasses like those the foxed-eyed man was wearing.
Well, I couldn't but admit to myself that I was in a very dangerous situation with even the people close to me saying that I looked exactly like the fox-eyed man. And something told me that somebody was breathing down my neck. There was no doubt I was targeted in the midst of the craze about the identikit.
And this time, unlike the time when I had stood up against the Kyoto Prefecture Police, I stood no chance against the police with this particular case designated by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department as the nationwide case No.114. Such a joke-like bully as "Remember you have the retirement age?" wouldn't work at all this time. It's not local this time. It was too obvious that if I were not careful, the police were ready to do whatever they would like, with their investigation at a stalemate, and having allowed the culprit group to get away with anything they did.
Sure enough, a detective from Tokyo's Nakano police station was later to come to my house to interrogate me. But, I would like you to regress a bit here. I should like to touch upon the bloodiest war ever fought commonly known as Yamaichi War that broke out in Kansai between Yamaguch-gumi and Inchiwa-kai yakuza syndicates. The reason I think I have to mention this war is that it had a far-reaching effect on the social climate of Kansai and the underground movement. Not only that this war seemed to have influenced the background against which the Glico/Morinaga case took place.
The year 1985 was overwhelmingly a year of Kansai. Beginning with the release of the identikit of the fox-eyed man of the Glico/Morinaga case, it was the most tumultuous year that saw the outbreak of Yamaichi War, the crash of a Japan Air Liner jet carrying many Kansai people including President of Nakano of Hanshin Tigers, the stabbing to death of Chairman Nagano of Toyoda Trading, and the most unbelievable of all, the Hanshin Tigers winning the Japan Series of professional baseball. Monster with 21 faces, while throwing in the gauntlet of written challenge publicly, was stubbornly pressing for a behind-the-scene deal. Yamaguch-gumi and Ichiwa-kai had their hit men out for the targets. And the yellow and black of tiger dominated the Japanese baseball scene. What started one of the most eventful years in the postwar Japan was an incident in which the fourth don of Yamaguchi-gumi, Takenaka Masahisa was shot dead by a hit man sent by Ichiwa-kai.
On 26th January, two weeks after the release of the identikit of the fox-eyed man, a written challenge was sent to major media from Monster with 21 faces saying, "Tormenting Morinaga was to save the face as a man." And on the same night, Yamaguchigumi's don, Takenaka Masahisa was shot to death by an Ichiwa-kai's hit man, at his mistress's condo in Esaka, Suita. The first samurai who had accompanied him was also killed in the same way. It was how the battle fought with the men's face at stake ended in exchange for their lives. This touched off the most bloodiest war ever in the anal of Japan's yakuza conflicts. All yakuza guys, faced with the death as reality, were unusually nervous and touchy. One yakuza guy I met in Osaka right after Takenaka was killed said seriously "It's different this time. I may get either killed or sent to jail". So may many others.
The atmosphere was unusually highly charged everywhere whether in Osaka or in Kobe.
When I hailed a cab in Minami, Osaka, I got in and was about to lay myself down in the back seat to alleviate my chronic lower back pain that was getting increasingly worse. But on seeing me trying to lay myself down, the driver said. "You can't do that at the risk of your life. You'll get shot dead." "Shot? Who will shoot me?"
I asked. Then he replied,"Who else but yakuza?"
According to this taxi driver, both Yamaguchi-gumi and Ichiwa-kai guys will lay themselves down when in a taxi not to make an easy target for the hit man. But the swat teams on both sides know this practice only too well. So what they would do is to sneak their car up to the car they suspect carrying the target in the back seat. Then several scary looking men would look into the car. Actually, one boss who was lying low was shot from a foreign-made car sneaking up from behind. So the taxi driver asked me to not to do anything that would invite a trouble. This explains why Osaka is often referred to as the Japanese New York
"It's OK for you to get shot dead. It's your own fault, making a suspicious move. But, who's gonna take responsibility if I get involved and killed?"
Kansai was unusually tense and charged high. And the people there were devouringly enjoying this tensed feeling. The local tabloids like "Osaka Nichinichi" or "Shin-Osaka" devoted the entire front page for reporting either Glico/Morinaga case or Yamaichi War with huge headlines. But the way they reported was very unique indeed, unique to Kansai. They put at the bottom of the front page, under a huge headline like "Yamaguchi-gumi determined to exterminate Ichiwa-kai" a little window "The Today's Results of Yamaichi War" giving the daily statistics broken into several categories of causalities like death, serious injury, light injury, with "2(8)" for example, indicating the number of people killed for the day was 2, with the total of 8 people killed since the war broke out.
Such newspapers were wall-posted here and there in the subterranean streets around Osaka Station, thronged with many passers-by who stopped to look at them. People from all walks of life, daily laborers to respectable-looking gentlemen, were all looking in, their eyes intensely up and down the paper without uttering a word. There was something like intensive heat emanating from those people excited by the ultimate human drama in which humans were trying to kill each other. It must be then human being's long and ultimate pleasure to watch others killing each other without getting involved as Roman nobles waited on by women in a complete safety, watching their slave fighting against a lion.
Yamaichi War was an internecine war. This made it impossible for the war not to end on a black-and-white term. So the brutal tit-for-tat all-out war continued over several years. Put simply, a Pandora's box long tucked away deep in the Kansai's underground world opened all at once when the don, Takenaka was shot dead.
On the morning of February 10th, about two weeks after Takenaka's death, two detectives from Tokyo's Nakano police station came to me at my apartment in Nakano. I opened the door to find two men in dark color suit standing. Unlike Kyoto or Osaka cops, the metropolitan counterparts looked refined, but not enough not to betray their common true nature. Their eyes said they were cops.
"What do you want?"
"We are from Nakano police station. We have some questions to ask you concerning the Nationwide case No.114. We would like you to come to the police station."
Their wording was polite and subdued, but there was something forceful about the way they said what they said that left me no choice but to follow them.
"Is it voluntary?"
"It's voluntary. But we ask for your full cooperation."
"No, I won't go there if it's voluntary."
"I see. In that case, I would like to ask you a few questions now, please." said the older looking detective leaning over to me while the other one fixing his eyes on me. It would have been out of question to accept their request if it's voluntary. But, there was no alternative but to accept their request for interrogation at house. Considering the fact that the police had at last come to surface after a long and persistent "under-the-water" investigation on me, I thought I'd better take advantage of this opportunity to set the record straight once and for all.
"I see. Why don't you come in?"
The seemed to have assigned themselves their own role with the older one asking questions while the younger one checking my reactions. Questions were asked one after another about the Teramura-kensan's debts and bankruptcy, my acquaintances in Kyoto, my relationships with media people, my involvement in the student movement.
"We understand that you are acquainted with so-and-so in Kyoto. How long have you known him? Your company went bankrupt leaving you with debts. How much of debts do you still have outstanding, if you don't mind?" The way they asked these questions was so unexpectedly polite that I felt more disappointed than relieved.
I tried to answer their questions as accurately as I could. But on delicate and sensitive points, I just kept saying categorically "I have no idea" or "I don't know." Each time I reverted to this attitude, they looked into my eyes. Asking a wide range of questions, they would return to the questions already asked many times over. And each time they came back to a certain previously asked question, they would look into my eyes with more astuteness in their eyes as if to drive a wedge of their eyes deeper into mine. Well, it was my alibi on June 24th and November 11, 1984 that a certain previously asked question was about. They wanted to know where I was when the foxed-eyed man appeared. Having anticipated this question, I had looked for the pocket diary for the previous year and kept it at hand. The diary showed that I attended a union meeting for a certain college of music on June 24th, and on November 11 I was in Tokyo with my lawyer briefing each other. I told the officers this. "What a clear alibi you have! Are you positive?" the older one replied, looking deep into my eyes, his eyes telling me "Your alibi is too good to be true."
"May I use your telephone, please?" the younger one asked me.
"Ya, go right ahead."
I gathered that the Metropolitan Police Department was on the other end of the line. I heard him saying, "He's got an alibi. On June 28th, he was at ..college of music....." So they would start right away to collect evidence that would confirm my alibi.
"By the way, at the meeting you said you had attended for the college of music, did you speak with anybody there? If you did, what did you talk about? Can you tell me if you don't mind?"
They continued to ask questions about my alibi on both the days, subtly modified each time they returned to the question. They seemed to be checking so hard for any discrepancy or inconsistency between various versions of my answer to the basically same questions.
The cops persistently asking me about my alibi, the interrogation lasted 2 to 3 hours, then broke into a casual talk in which I asked, "In what context do you, the police view this Glico/Morinaga case?" I remember quite clearly the older one expressed his personal view: "Although it's only my personal view, I think it's the share prices that it's all about. The prices of the shares in the companies targeted by the culprit group will fall sharply as things develop. While the prices remain low, the culprit group will take profits by selling short or buying back the shares. It may well be that the culprit group's attempts to rob the target companies of money was a red herring to lure us away from their real intention of manipulating share prices." While he was talking, I felt the intensity with which they were laying their eyes on me for any unusual sign I might give away. They seemed to be already informed that I had worked for "Shukan Gendai" weekly journal as a stock market journalist. Finally the detective, smiling wryly, added "It's hard to arrest the culprit if the attempted robbery is only a red herring and all he needs to do is just escape from the scene, for which he is very well-prepared."
As might have been expected of a metropolitan detective at the seat of government, he asked questions very much to the point, and grilled me very effectively. And by bringing up the subject of shares, he implied "We, the police are not simple-minded in our investigation as you may think we are. We have long since considered the possibility of the culprit group trying to manipulate share prices. The culprit stands no chance against us."
The moment I saw the two gone, I found myself completely exhausted. Catching me heave a big sigh of relief, the woman I was living with was staring at me as if I were something weird.
The police's follow-up action was very quick, indeed. On the same day, the lawyer I said I had been with on the day in question called me to say, "I had detectives from Metropolitan Police Department come to see me. They asked me all sorts of questions about you." On the same day detectives were sent to the labor union of the college of music to collect the evidence that would corroborate my statement. It looked like that the police, after a long clandestine investigation on me, "under the water" as we say in Japan, have come out in the open.
I had been long resigned to the police marking me as a suspect. The circumstantial evidence was overwhelmingly against me. My career as an activist student at Waseda and journalist, and a reckless way of appropriating money I employed until my company went bankrupt, my anti-police behavior and attitude and my manipulation of media when I was listed as wanted for corporate extortion, the huge amount of debts, and the close resemblance to the fox-eyed man of the identikit. There was nothing in favor of me.
Actually, there is still the same suspicion in our media today, more than 10 years after the incident occurred. For instance, in 1995, Mainichi-shinbun newspaper's Kansai edition featured a serialized article entitled "Traces --- 10 years of Glico/Morinaga case" Or, in the same year, a monthly journal "Shincho 45" carried a story "The identity of Monster with 21 faces (final part)" authored by Hitotsubashi Humiya. The latter was recently published by Shinchosha as a single book entitled "Monster who disappeared into dark -- the truth about Glico/Morinaga case" Attached to its cover is a strip of paper that reads "They have known who has done it."
In this book, under the heading "the most important witness M" I am described as follows:
Let me quote this book:
So the investigations have been made from various view points, bringing up great many suspects in the process. However, the follow-up investigations and interrogations have failed to produce any corroborative evidence, taking just as many off the suspect list. Especially at the prospect of one case after another becoming subject to the statute of limitations vet shortly, the investigation was focused on how they were going to take suspects off the list. But there remained some that they couldn't remove from the list. The investigation team has re-checked those on the "gray" list many times over. Among those gray-listed is a man called "M"And who is Mr, "M"
According to the profile the investigation team built up, Mr. "M" was born in Kyoto, in 1945. His father was a local yakuza boss.
After graduating from a private high school in Osaka, he went to study at a well-known private university in Tokyo But he got involved in student movements and finally dropped out. He was working a reporter/writer for a journalist for a while. But he went back to Kyoto to join the management of the construction company his relative was running. Since then, while traveling between Tokyo and Kyoto, he set up a construction-related company, or involved in printing press business. In 1987 he set up a real estate/financial broker business with a help of some gangster group in Tokyo.
Despite his family background as a son of a gangster boss, he was an activist of student movement. So he is a "black sheep" with his acquaintance list ranging from left wing to right wing, including gangster groups. He was marked as one of the most important suspects from the very beginning.
According to his junior and high school teachers and friends, Mr. "M" did very well at school, being very good at English and mathematics. He was also elected the student leader. But he was, on the other hand, very bossy with many his subordinates following him, and so excitable that he would get worked up and provoked into abusing or bullying others at the slightest hint of .....
But, it's not his peculiar background, character or human ties that made him a suspect. Most important of all, Mr. "M" looks so much like "F" (the foxed-eyed man", that he was a top class one suspected of being "F". the seven detectives who have seen "F" while working on the House Incident and Marudai Incident went to see his face many times to check his behavior.
The investigation reports also shows that Mr. "M" has a record of corporate extortion in the past, and it has been found that he, and people close to him have had some troubles with Ezaki Glico.
Let us list up specific points that bring together Mr. "M" and the Glico/Morinaga case.
First of all, the 1976 tape (the blackmail tape sent to a board director of Glico by someone the investigative team firmly believes to be the same culprit as in the Glico/Morinaga case".-- Author) was sent to Glico around the time when it was in labor dispute, in which, he seems to have been secretly involved to support the union in its struggle.
In the same year of 1976, Glico had a dispute over the relocation of its Kyoto factory's employees, and in the following year, it had a dispute over its personnel reshuffle involving its labor union. Investigator who contacted those involved in the disputes obtained a few testimonies that Mr."M" and those close to him were behind them.
And in 1975 through 1976, the industrial waste like starch that resulted as a by-product of the food processing was flowing into nearby rivers, or trapped in the gutter giving off bad odor, causing the local residents a lot of environmental troubles. The residents rose up and called for improvement of the environment and compensations, thus organizing a resident movement. The investigation team checked with those involved to find that there was every reason to believe that Mr. "M" was behind it
The same report says that Mr. "M" was also implicated in the resignation of the union leader over his alleged involvement in the irregularities in the union's accounting that came to surface when Glico Nutritional Foods and Glico Ham merged. Next, it should be noted that the company he had been running until two years before Glico/Morinaga case was located near the route in Kyoto that the culprit told the cash delivery van to take when House Food Industry was blackmailed. What is more, it has been found that Mr. "M" had his work places or his clients near Ritto East Interchange where the Shiga Prefecture police car failed to catch the culprit, the riverside warehouse when President Ezaki of Glico was confined to, and the copy center in Kyoto's Sakyou-kku where the monster with 21 faces copied written challenges, and that he is very familiar with the geography of where these incidents took place. The third point that cannot be dismissed is that one of his relatives owned what might have very likely been an old taxi car he had bought cheap from a taxi company. Such cars are different from ordinary passenger cars in that the rear doors open or close automatically. The culprit of the "Couple Assault" ran away with the hostage woman in such a car. It's very rare to find one interested in such a car having done so many more miles than ordinary cars, and not so comfortable to ride in at all. So this information got the attention of the investigating team.
This particular car, deregistered in 1981 by a taxi company in Kyoto was re-registered by a certain figure, and then registered again as the Mr. "M"'s relative became its owner. It's said that this relative then two other relatives were driving this car around. One of the two other relatives, under interrogation, testified, "In 1984 I bought another used Japanese-made car. So I gave it to my Korean friend." This friend, then, testified, "In early 1985, it got its front shield glass smashed to pieces by somebody when it was parked on a road. Then I asked my friend, a wrecker, to dispose of the useless car." The car has been disposed of but still remaining registered as a Mr. "M"'s relative's.
And there are more to suggest Mr."M"'s involvement. Someone affiliated with a company his relative is running has the same type of typewriter that Monster with 21 faces used. Or one of his relatives has a red two-door dedan of the same make as seem on the scene of the crime when President Ezaki was abducted.
And, in February, 1984, Mr. "M" was given a ticket in Tokyo by the local police station for violation of traffic laws. On the evening of November 14, the same year when the House Incident occurred, a car of the same make with the lower 4 digits of the registration plate identical to those of the car he was driving came on Meishin Expressway through Kyoto-South interchange and headed toward Shiga. It was one hour before the cash delivery van got on the expressway that it got on it. And his relative, the owner of the car bought cheap from a tax company was fined for speeding in Fukui Prefecture. He was driving a car of the same make, with the lower 4 digits of its registration number identical to those of the ca seen getting on Meishin Expressway and heading toward Shiga.
The owner of the car was a man living in Ritto, Shiga prefecture, and the car was used for a building materials supply company in Kyoto. And the car the same relative of his was driving when he was fined for speeding in Kyoto had the lower 4 digits of its registration plate identical to those of the car seen on Route 171 heading toward Kyoto South interchange 2 hours before the cash delivery van.
The owner of the car was found to be a member of a gangster organization affiliated with the family.
4BR>Because the N-system (automatic number reading device) was not yet introduced, with license plate numbers read by the naked eyes of each inspector, the numbers could not fully identified. But the fact that three cars, with their license plate number resembling so closely one another's were seen near the place of crime was more than enough to get the police to be suspicious.
Considering the kind of people associated with Mr."M", including a high-ranking yakuza gangster member looking very much like the one photographed in the video film who blackmailed Glico corporation complaining that his son had accidentally cut himself with a opened can containing a Glico product, sokaiya (corporate racketeers), and people of various political organizations blackmailing Glioco corporation one way or another, it wouldn't be surprising that he was called over to the police as "the most important witness". The investigating team went on to interrogate not only Mr."M" himself but also those close to him to collect and corroborate evidence to substantiate their conviction.
But they were never able to refute Mr. "M"'s assertion about his alibi, "At the time of Glico/Morinaga case, I was in the printing business in Tokyo, and had very little contact with my relatives back in Kyoto. I never thought about Glico at all, much less any grudge against it. I've got nobody in Glico I know. And at the time when Marudai and House incidents occur, I was with my friends at a certain meeting at some place in Tokyo."@And there was no physical evidence found that would incriminate him.
In an interview, he insisted on his innocence. "The police are intentionally drawing the attention to my relationship with Ezaki Glico. They deliberately turn away from the facts or evidence that might prove my innocence. I have a perfect alibi. Granted that there is some biased circumstantial evidence against me, there is no evidence at all that might directly point to my involvement in the case. It's perfectly clear that I had no part in it."@
"But that doesn't mean he is innocent at all. It's just that we couldn't produce one final decisive evidence against him," grumbled some investigators. But the investigation into Mr."M" by the Investigation Headquarters was called off.
Thanks a lot for writing so much about me. But this surely gives you a good idea what I was suspected of. And I admit many of them are true. For example, Teramura-doken was on the street the cash delivery van went down. And there near Ritto interchange is Uchida-gumi I talked about before in this book. I had a very good client quite near the riverside warehouse where President Esaki was locked up. And that's also quite near Keiko Gakuen high school I went to. Yes, someone affiliated with my brother's company had a typewriter of the same make, "Pan Writer". @And my sister was driving around in a suspicious red two-door sedan. Yes, one relative of mine had a car he bought off from a tax company. Yes, it's really true that I was involved with scoundrels
It is also true that I gave my support to the Glico's labor union in their labor disputes. You should know that Glico has been a company that stinks all the time.
It just happened that Teramura-kensan was located behind the Glico Nutritional Food Fushimi plant. So I had known that Glico was a ruthless company that would get rid of its subcontractors mercilessly and hire professional racketeers to crack down on its labor movements, and I knew some of the union members. When the company threatened to fire its part-time obachan ladies, I offered to let the union members use my photocopiers or my office. I was sort of instigating these obachan ladies saying, "Ezaki is a typical second generation president. He is dumb. So kick him out." So it wasn't surprising at all with all these facts that I was suspected. The media wrote a lot about me and I was flooded with requests for interviews. I tried to accept as many requests for interview as I could as I felt I still owed something to the world of media I once was in as a weekly journal reporter. But far from knowing my feelings, the newspapers and weeklies were treating me as the culprit.
It was "Shukan Post", as I can now recall, that suspected me of being the same person as that man who was caught by video camera putting an arsenide-laced chocolate bar on a shelf of a super market in Nishinomiya. I was interviewed several times by newspaper journalists in Kansai. Their questions were very much to the point that I found some of them really hard to answer. It's quite understandable if you know that their paper's main focus is on social affairs. And they are very open, too, a typical crime reporter.
One journalist who had never seen me in person before burst into laughter on seeing me, saying, "Wow, I've heard a lot about you but I haven't been able to believe what they are saying until now. You really look like the fox-eyed man."
And the interviews were just as open and frank. In a tone as if to chat about everyday life, they asked questions like "There's one called "Enjo" in Fushimi. Was it your client?", or "Do your remember a restaurant "Sato"? I understand your father contracted its construction. Did he not?" But their eyes were like those of detectives, trying not to fail to notice any unusual response that I would make. They went further to say "Mr. Miyazaki, you owed quite a few of dump trucks, didn't you? I understand that they were equipped with a radio apparatus to outwit the police. Is it true?" It's a very sensitive question you couldn't readily answer. "Ya, that's right. We, a construction company, cannot afford to be arrested every time the police want to arrest us." I answered only to be asked more questions with their eyes probing deeper into mine than before.
I think the story above needs a bit of explanation. This took place I was asked about the "House Incident" when the fox-eyed man appeared for the second time. "Enjo" is a stationary shop in Fushimi, where the culprit bought the paper he used for blackmailing. The paper is an Enjo's specialty, available only from it. Enjo is an old customer of Terayama-kensan, operating within a very limited area of Kyoto's Fushimi. So they had suspicion.
"Sato" is a franchised family restaurant, officially called "Sato Fushimi branch" It was this restaurant where the culprit told the cash delivery van to wait for the first time in the "House Incident". I have been to this restaurant several times because I was living nearby. And after all, it was a restaurant my brother was involved in the construction of. I was quite familiar with its plan and atmosphere. This is the reason for their suspicion.
What they said about dump trucks equipped with a radio apparatus needs explanation, too. You see it wouldn't pay to be in the construction work business if we go by the regulation on truckloads, with the truck only carrying the specified volume or below. It's quite natural for a construction work company to try to load their fleet with as much as possible, far in excess of the legal limit, and to escape police detection. So Teramura-kensan equipped their trucks with a radio receiver capable of picking up police radio communications to slip through the police dragnet. The police should be aware of this. But because of the culprit they failed to catch at Ritto Interchange was intercepting the police radio communications, I was suspected of my involvement in the case.
They also asked all sorts of questions about my acquaintances and my work. They asked me about the corporate extortion involving the Monopoly Corporation's Fushimi plant, my company's bankruptcy, debts, my misconduct, and my delinquent friends. I answered all of them as I saw fit. But more I answered, I felt, the more their suspicion deepened.
It's not only because I owed a lot to those in the world of media that I was willing to accept the requests for interviews. I was also interested to know what suspicions the police had of me through those interviews. Particularly newspaper journalists, working so closely together with the investigators, should be very well informed of what the police investigative team was getting up to, or the progress made so far. It's very difficult to hold back what they know. The truth would eventually come out one way or another as they sat face-to-face with me and interviewed me. Judging from what I got this way about the way they suspected me, couldn't help coming to the conclusion that I was very much in trouble.
People close to me also came under their scrutiny. For instance, my close friend, Kobata Yuichi. Although he was a rebellious man through and through, he had by that time turned into a businessman running a housing/real estate business, a security company and a round-the-clock open noodle restaurant. There was something I could detect about the way the police were handling this case that The Kyoto Prefecture Police presumptuously suspected Kobata because of his hostile remarks and behavior against the police, and his close relationship with me. The police had come to possess a "strange conviction" that they should suspect Kyoto because it had never been the scene of any of the crimes despite the fact that it's where they were first told to deliver cash and it's where the written challenges were photocopied, or some artifacts used for the crime were purchased. Once they have a suspicion, the police will remain clinging to it right to the end.
An investigator coming to Kobata's office in Fushimi to ask "Is everything OK?" was secretly checking the serial number of the typewriter. Or the police attempted to arrest him on some other charge. At one time, Kobata was asked by a women he knew to employ a delinquent girl to discipline her. Kobata, always willing to do whatever he could for others, agreed to employ her to work at his noodle restaurant. Right after that, the police came to him and said "You're under arrest for violation of the Child Welfare Law. If you don't want to be arrested, tell us what you know of the Glico/Morinaga case. You know something, don't you?" It was around that time that a weekly journal "Shukan Hoseki" wrote about me for the first time. So, probably, they wanted to take Kobata and me. Naturally, this made Kobata furious.
"Glico? Ah, that's what I did. Dumb cops like you can't even get anything on me. But I had Glico come to me with \500 million yesterday. Do you wanna take my ass with you? Take me there and make me "sing" If you could, even a dumb cop like you would find yourself at the top of the Metropolitan Police." He ridiculed the police. He went on making fun of the police with increasing intensity. Unlike me, Kobata was a heavy drinker. He would keep on drinking three days on end. Not so many yakuza or scoundrels can drink much. But Kobata was sort of an extinct species of outlaw that could drink like crazy and get drunk anywhere. Getting drunk, he would call the police to say, "Come over here. I'll tell you who did it." The Glico/Morinaga case being a Metropolitan-designated nationwide case, the police would come tumbling into his office. Then, Kobata would say, "It's Manabu of Terramura. Why don't you go get him right away? He's such a bad one." For him, the reaction of the police officers was something he enjoyed drinking over. At one time when I was drinking with him, one police officer was called over, then he said, "Here's the fox-eyed man. No doubt about it. Look at him. He looks exactly like the identikit. Get him quick. But remember he won't "sing" as you knew from the hard time you had with him in that extortion case. If you could make him "sing", you would be the Metropolitan Police Superintendent. Your wife would burst into tears with joy. Come on. Go right ahead. Arrest him." so went on he making fun of the officers.
The detective left with a parting shot "Enjoy drinking as much as you like while you can. I'll come and get you, both of you, and give you many years." The Glico/Morinaga case is said to have been perpetrated by someone enjoying the way people react to what he has done. But nobody has enjoyed it more in the whole wide country of Japan than Kobata did.
The newspapers said that the 247,400 people had contributed information about the foxed-eyed man. "Contributed information" sounds nice but it's only squealing or tattling. The police, especially local police rely heavily and consistently on squealing and tattling whether it's a simple murder or a complicated case of strife between yakuzas. Indeed, there are more people who squeal or tattle than you may think. And I am told that quite a few people tattled on me. "The fox-eyed man is Mayazaku Manabu in Fushimi-ku. That's for sure. He has been doing all sorts of bad things. It must be him this time, too. Me, I'm a just an ordinary citizen.", "I know a man called Miyazaki Manubu who was in the same year at junior high school. He so resembles the fox-eyed man. I want you to check on him. My name? I can't give you my name, sorry." They go like this in secret.
Behind the act of tipping on somebody is a boiling personal interest or emotion. Some try to use the case to revenge themselves on somebody for the suffering or ill feeling caused by him. Some simply nuzzled up to the police seeking for the sense of security. Or some, knowing perfectly well that he has nothing to do with the case, try to use the case to take it out on a suspect. There were, I was told, quite a few absolutely useless tattlers such as one guy who tattled on his ex-wife he had broke up with saying, "The man she has a relation with is a man with fox-eyes and she has some personal grudge against President Ezaki."
Of course, some cannot help doing so out of sense of " duty" as a citizen. What dictates them is the logic that any criminal is an enemy of the civil society, and "informing the authority" about an enemy of the civic society is a duty of every citizen, expressing the spirit of "Self-autonomy". Well what these people don't seem to realize is that a healthy civic society would be impossible as long s it totally depends on the authority, much less civic self-autonomy.
It's a society where everybody goes strictly by the rule or commonsense, and watches everybody else for any deviation from the commonsense. Yet, they don't even feel being watched because everything comes wrapped in a nice cloth such as "Well-meaningness", "Justice", "Citizen" or "Self-autonomy" This will stifle the society, close on itself from within, and degenerate it. Once a "grass-root" democracy begins to exclude foreign elements, it will soon turn into a "vigilante democracy" where everybody is a watchdog.
Born into an "enemy of citizens", and living as "an enemy of citizens", an ordinary citizen tattling on me was something I cannot not accept. But it wasn't just those ordinary good citizens but also some other "enemies of citizens" that tattled on me. To give you an example, it was those outlaws in jail. They would tell a prison guard anything they like; "It's Manabu of Teramura who did it. It's true." They said things like this just to get a permission to smoke in the investigation room, or to get their prison sentence reduced. Scoundrels sometimes go out of their way to sacrifice themselves for no reward, but basically they are very selfish and think of nothing but the immediate profits and pleasure. This type of tattling is not a reflection of something pathologically wrong in society or anything at all. It's nothing but the greed out of which they do what they do. Human beings are hopelessly greedy. And being honest about your greed is only natural and healthy at least as a living organism. The problem was simply that I was surrounded by too many such healthy human beings.
What offended me most was that the police were saying in public that I was the culprit of the Glico Incident. Somebody told me that the detective who interrogated me when I was arrested on suspicion of corporate extortion was saying, "Manabu is the culprit of the Glico Incident. The way he does what he does, his defiant attitude toward police, and his skillful manipulation of the media, they are exactly the same as those of the Glico one. Besides, he is hard pressed for money with his company gone bankrupt." and his superior was also saying, "There is no doubt." So, when I went back to Kyoto on some occasion, I burst into the Kyoto Prefecture Police as furious as ever and said "What the hell do you think you bastards are doing to me without any evidence?" The detectives denied and never budged saying, "We've never said that." But allowing some groundless information to leak is a method commonly used by the police to lead the media or public opinion. I just warned them, " You can't get away with anything groundless you say about me." But I knew perfectly well the more I wailed like that the more I would get mired.
In August,1985, the culprit group declared the their offensive ended. But that didn't stop the media from approaching me while the police seemed to be checking around me. It was then that the Okatome Yasunori, the editor in chief for a journal "Uwasano Shinso" ("Truth Behind the Rumor") called me to say, "It seems that you are the prime suspect. So why don't you write a provocative article? We have arranged for you to have a conversation with Asakura Takashi, titled "I was the fox-eyed man. You can say anything you like."
I'd long been a reader of "Uwasano Shinso" and Asakura was my friend. I didn't like being written about all the time, deprived of any means to fight back. I had to fight the police still interrogating my sister in Kyoto. So I accepted the offer right away.
The article that came out in the 1985 October issue of "Uwasano Shinso" was so much like it, looking very sensational. In the front piece of the magazine, the photo of my face and the montage photo of the fox-eyed man were laid side by side. Beside the pictures read "At last, a fox-eyed suspect in the never-to-be solved case of the Monster with 21 faces group, Miyazaki Manabu reveals the shocking truth " The two photos were admittedly so much alike to my disgust. The article consisted of my memoir and my conversation with Asakura Takashi. And it opened with a strikingly large font sentence "I was the fox eyed man."
"Oh, ya. I remember that. But it's all behind us. His eyes looking at the glass of beer, He was answering wearily the questions the journalist put to him.
In 1988 when he was arrested for forgery of sealed private document by Kanda Police Station, he was interrogated about the Glico/Morinaga case. The interrogation was very extensive. He was asked about his relationship with "Miyazaki", the child of the Korean woman he was then living with, and his alibi on the day the House Food Industry incident took place. In other words, he was suspected of being the driver of the station wagon that sped off, shaking the police car off its tail, and of recording the voice of the child of the Korean woman he was living with on the blackmailing tape.
I was listening to Nishimoto and the journalist without interrupting them, to realize that his case was just as bad as mine was with the circumstantial evidence all against him. As a proper in chemistry, he was quite familiar with the way to handle potassium cyanide. He also matched the description of the culprit as an unusually skilled driver. He was a member of driving club in his college days, a holder of B-class license. He would have had no difficulty shaking a police off his tail. Indeed, I knew he was a reckless driver in Kyoto, speeding up and down narrow back streets of the city at 100mk/h. And I heard that some witnesses testified that he was in the station wagon that ran away at Ritto.
And he was presiding over the Kyoto chapter of an organization called "Science of Human Behavior Research Center" which I set up with a professor at Waseda's Faculty of Science and Engineering, whom I got acquainted with. Holding his old business card up close to his face, the investigator pressed ahead with interrogation, "What is this organization? What were you doing with Miyazaki under the cover of this?" What the police wanted to see was me playing the role of the fox-eyed man with Nishimoto being a right-handed man working for me. But it was after all unsubstantiated interrogation and Nishimoto was released after a record setting 80 days of detention for Kanda Police station.
The interview lasted about two hours but it was a harmless talk, both getting around the sensitive areas as they usually do when they meet for the first time. How could you possibly expect anybody you've never talked with before to tell everything he knows? And it's only a scenario the wistful thinking police came up with. You cannot expect him to look hard for an answer that would fit such a fabrication.
Having listened to them talk right to the end, I turned on the TV. On the air was a special program featuring the AUM problem. The journalist watching it with us asked "Mr. Nishimoto, is there anything in common that the extreme left you used to deal with before and those AUM people have, or they are completely different in nature?" On hearing this question, Nishimoto sipping beer, looking carefree, suddenly became a serious looking man, and said, "No, they are so different. Those extreme left guys were really serious about Japan, and searching seriously for an individualism that is free from the state authority. No matter what anybody says about them, that's for sure. But those young AUM people are just chasing after selfish interest. No, they are so different from the extreme left"
I had never heard Nishimoto expressing his own view like that. Nor had I heard him telling anything about the extreme left. It's ironical to see Nishimoto now defending the extreme left he used to crack down on and everybody has stopped talking about. Perhaps he and the extreme left were like Siamese twins with their back to each other's. So he must have felt something about them that would move him. With the demise of the extreme left, something must have snapped in him.
Now that I have been made into a prime suspect, I think I deserve the right to express my observation on this. This is what I guessed.
Some say the wording, tone and the logic used in the blackmailing letters and written challenges are those used by the left, or exactly the same as found on the board we used to put up on the college campus when we protested against the college authority or Kaku-maru sect. But I find those to the contrary. If it was done by the left, they would give themselves away. It's impossible not to suppress their assertiveness no matter how hard they may try to do so. We can't imagine a leftist activist without any self-assertiveness.
This self-assertiveness is nowhere to be found whether it's the blackmailing letters or written challenges. The reason behind the use of such wording as would make fool of the recipient of the letter was perhaps that pretending to be enjoying the response of the victims of the crime was intended to confuse the police. Some references were made to the wartime refuge. But something tells me this is also a red herring, intended to hide their ages. It seems to me that it was at the hand of those a little younger. Generally, any easily noticeable characteristic may well be a redherring.
It is often referred to as a "theatrical crime". But any crime could be a theatrical these days with the mass media so sophisticated as it is now. And it's totally wrong to assume that the crime is committed solely for theatrical effects. At least in the Glico/Morinaga case, anything theatrical is a carefully worked-out means, rather than an end.
There's every reason to believe that this was a carefully worked-out premeditated crime. There's no doubt that it took several years of preparation with hundreds of millions of yen involved. That leaves only some professionals as suspects. Considering the details of the way the Ezaki's house was broken into, or he was whisked away, I cannot but conclude that it was carried out by a professional group of outlaws including yakuza.
From the way they write in their blackmailing letters, we can get some glimpse of the culprit. For instance in the letter sent 8 days after the House Food Industry's incident, from Fushimi, Kyoto to Kawauchi Yasunori, the author of "Gekko Kamen" who wrote in for a weekly journal telling the culprit "Stop blackmailing for our children to have merry Christmas. I'll pay you ?120 million. Waiting for your reply." The culprit's reply was as follows:
" --- you said you'll give away your money. But we don't want your money.
We are not beggars.
We can get as much money from the wealthy and companies as we like.
We are not interested in taking money from the poor.
Money is something you must earn by yourself
Sorry to disappoint you
Take care of yourself
Our life has been a dark tunnel with no light at the end
Feeling mortified all the time
It's not our fault that we are bad.
Our society is to blame
For what went wrong with us
But tomorrow we are on the top of the world
It was a bit of joke and he got himself drunk on it toward the end. But the sentence "We are not beggars" seems to suggest something about the culprit. This is the sentence yakuza or those discriminated against use so often when they get worked up. I've heard tens of thousand times at Teramura-gumi and in the world surrounding it people saying, "I'm not a beggar. The way you talk to me makes me sick. You wanna get killed?"
There must have been something about the Kawauchi's call for the end of blackmailing that made them sick, or jolted something inside them back to life.
The culprit might be saying "120,000,000 (120 million)? Don't you see one or two zeros missing from this? How stupid of you to think that this scanty little money could lure us out. If you really cared about kids, stop being a dirty old man believing that money can buy everything. It works only with money loving beauties in Ginza with a bit of lecturing about nothing. On the other hand, the culprit is showing his sophisticated side when he seems to be cheering up Kawauchi, "We used to enjoy watching your "Gekko-kamen" on TV. All healthy stuff in those days. But look at all TV programs. They are allgarbage, everything so messed up like hell. Something has gone wrong with this world."
And some view this crime as committed by a "shadow organization" having gone unbridled with nothing there to control the Kansai underground world as a result of "Yama-Ichi" war. But this is too farfetched a view because the Kansai underground world has never been under control any time before. It has always been and still is where you can get away with almost anything.
Actually, there is nothing new about this crime because crimes like this have long been perpetrated against corporations although none of them have not come to surface at all. Every time the police are about to give up their investigation, they say, "It's the shadow organization we have run up against." It's the same old story. Let me express my view here about the "shadow organization". There is no such entity. But it is true that there exists something you may call a shadow organization. I don't think it's something like Mafia syndicate or anything. In the underground, individuals have much more clout than in the "aboveground". Some individuals exert far reaching influence and control over the others with his human ties so extensive and so water-tight.
Of course, there are only a handful of them who could wield such power. So they invariably come to fore when money or power really count as evidenced by those "shadow gentlemen" implicated in almost all big economic scandals. The mechanism is just as simple as that. And there are human ties and networks liking those few to one another. Actually it's these networks that seem to be working behind all this yet so hard to get hold of. But they are not anything we call an organization.
Then what did they do that for? I can't imagine any professional of crime doing what they did, putting so much at risk, and leaving so much that the police can go on. So it's not robbery that they wanted to do to get cash as they appeared to and many are led to believe. While throwing the public into confusion by blackmailing, etc. they must have been engaged in secret deals with companies and in manipulation of the stock market. The detective at Nakano Police station may be right about that. But it's not that simplistic practice of selling stocks and buying them back that they did to gain from their manipulated stock prices. That would easily expose them. What they might have done was to conduct transactions overseas, the practice known as "foreigner buy" perhaps through security brokers in Hong Kong with several non-Japanese corporations working as intermediaries making it difficult to trace back to the real culprit. I'm sure that's what they intended to do.
Then, why the police failed? Well, while the Japanese police carry out their daily routine duties meticulously and vigorously, they depend largely on squealing and tattling. But squealing and tattling is only possible where the police are accepted as part of their normal daily life. And such police-to-inhabitants relations only develop and work in rural areas or small local cities.
This case seems to prove that such structure does not work in mega-cities.
When this case was designated as nation-wide crime No.114, the Public Security Police came in as it began to be suspected that extreme left or right wing organizations were involved. But this is also typical of their traditional reaction they make when they are getting nowhere with nothing to go on" asking the Security for help. The police standing powerless before a sophisticated and well-planned crime such as this Glico/Morinaga seems to represent the limit of that traditional method of investigation.
It is true that high-ranking bureaucrats in the police force are still competent and capable. But they could only operate well in dealing with prescribed problems using prescribed methods that have been around with us for such a long time since the Cold War began or since the 1955 regime came into being. But it's increasingly clear especially from late '80s that such ability to go by the book does not seem to work any more in this world where there is nothing to go by. The Glico/Morinaga case just happened to expose such unpreparedness of the police.
And let me comment on the "B-campaign". It really doesn't make sense to me. The reason is simple. If all their suspects were really the ones who did that, they would have skipped all these complicated steps and would have come up with a way to get money quick, and I think they are capable enough to have succeeded in it. The "B" campaign would not make sense at all to me as a way to solve the Glico/Morinaga case unless it was intended otherwise. Let me add here to what I said to Asakura Takashi who interviewed me for a journal "Uwasa-no Shinso". My statement that anti-discrimination campaign people worked as mediators to release Ezaki from the riverside warehouse may be interpreted as discriminatory. But I have to make it clear as a fact that this is what they are saying among investigators in Kansai area where the things are happening mostly.
That was a provocative statement I made in my own style with this in mind. And I have no intension at all to evade the responsibility for what I said. Another fact is that the "Buraku-Liberation League" asked the Osaka Prefecture Police for their real intention when they accused the police of being biased against the special districts in their investigation.
My prediction expressed by the words " No, they are sure not to (get them." is based partly on the way the police approach this case. I am feeling a bit embarrassed, having aired my views in a grandiose style. But I couldn't have felt revenged on the police who said publicly "Manabu is the prime suspect." But it's OK now. It's in the dark, remaining unsolved. Anyway, the year 1985 was the year when a fox I was suspected of being got drowned in the cheering for his favorite Hanshin Tigers who won the Japan Series Championship.