Issei Sagawa fired a bullet through the head of Renée Hartevelt while she read a poem to him in German. He then proceeded to cut out Renée’s flesh, some of which he ate raw and others he fried in a pan.
He roams free in Tokyo, and is referred to as Sagawa-kun (kun means “young, cute and innocent” in japanese). He has appeared on television programmes and magazines, and has written a book on the gruesome murder he committed, which became a best-seller.
Lindsay Hawker was beaten and strangled, then stripped and buried in a bathtub of sand by Tatsuya Ishihashi. Friends of Lindsay had to pressure the police to have them investigate her disappearance. While eight policemen were at Ishihashi’s apartment where her body was found, her murderer walked away a free man.
The dismembered corpse of Lucie Blackman was found in a cave on the property of Joji Obara. Lucie’s head was encased in a concrete block. Her family had to force Japanese police to act on her disappearance. Obara had bought hacking tools and cement, but the recent trial of Obara in Tokyo found him not guilty of the crime.
What does this tell us? Do the Japanese have any sense of justice when it comes to crimes committed against foreigners? Do they care at all? How could a book on the gruesome murder of Renée become a best-seller? What explains their morbid fascination?
Where security is touted as one of the most positive aspects of living in this country, what reasonable explanation do the police have for their apathetic attitude? Lindsay did not come home for two days and did not show up for work. Anyone with a modicum of common sense should be alarmed.
Lucie was not found on the premises of a quiet old man tending to a vegetable garden. She was found on the property of a known rapist who laces the drinks of his victims in order to incapacitate them. The Japanese judge who acquitted Obara reasoned that there was no proof that Obara alone was responsible for her death. Is Obara considered innocent of the crime because there were others involved?
Weird is a soft word to describe this state of affairs. It is abnormal, aberrant, and disturbing that most Japanese seem to feel no sense of repugnance nor shame for crimes committed against foreigners.
Renée Hartevelt: The Cannibal of Japan
Lindsay Anne Hawker: Tokyo Victim was Stripped, Beaten and Strangled
Help Us Get Justice for Lindsay
Lucie Blackman: How Family Forced Police to Act
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May 19, 2007 at 5:31 am
I really feel repugnancy for societies such as Japanese that pay no attention to such horrible crimes.
August 6, 2007 at 6:33 pm
I feel sick when I read this. These men shouldn’t be alive and walk around free. I feel very sorry for the parents of all these girls. We should feed them to the dogs.
November 5, 2007 at 11:20 pm
The stupid Japaneses legal system works like this: the condemnation rate is around 98-99%. If an accused is acquitted that is seen as a failure for both the judge that oversaw the trial and for the attorney investigating the case.
If there is a very small chance that a criminal might not be punished because of the lack of evidence then no attorney or judge will be interested to see the case put forward for trial. If the trial does not end with a condemnation then the qualifications of both the attorney and the judge are put under questioning.
This insane system can lead to many anomalies including free murderers.
European states and America should never extradite people to Japan because their justice system is just not functional.
Their justice system is a reminiscent of the times of the samurai. People are not judged, people are not important all that matters is a stupid sense of honor.
December 27, 2007 at 8:42 am
I am curious as to whether the family of Renee Hartvelt were accorded any justice? I know I would sue the Sagawa family personally for every yen they had. . his father would not be wealthy for long, I could promise you that. How is it possible that he feels no remore for the horror his son committed on another human being?! I know, he was probably a prison guard in a Japanese POW camp and is used to treating people brutally.
February 27, 2008 at 9:56 pm
I am Japanese and I like to apologyse to the families of Miss Lindsay and Miss Lucie. Obara is convicted for murder of Miss Karita, Austrlian woman, and the raping. He will never leave jail.
Victims of criminals in Japan are too unhappy with judging system.There is a movement to focus power on victim but it is hard. Also, when victim is woman and in sex-type work it is hard. We have effort to make awareness of discrimination.
Japanese police tried to put Sagawa Issei in prison. He had a conviction in France and for same crime you cannot judge again in Japan. Japan tried for France to help but it did not work. I don’t know why France did not stay him in their hospital.Disgusting some people don’t understand he is a bad person. He should do suicide to say sorry.
We need world-over awareness of victims. Mass media uses crime sensational. There is no reform in judging.
February 28, 2008 at 10:22 pm
DHH, you bring up some very important points but I feel they’re being obscured for the lack of some key facts. This is probably going to turn into a long one, but you’ve started something—so here we go.
First, as the last commenter points out, Joji Obara is serving multiple life terms for 9 rapes and the killing of Australian Carita Ridgeway. Stating he was acquitted for the murder of Lucie Blackman creates an impression he is a free man, and this is not the case. The scumbag is not going anywhere. Also, prosecutors are appealing the Blackman verdict. They for one are not falling down on the job.
The tragedy of the Obara case is that if the Tokyo Met police had pursued the rape cases earlier, 2 women would not be dead and so many assaulted. In the end, Carita Ridgeway and Lucie Blackman actually received better treatment(!) from the police than their Japanese colleagues in the sex/hospitality trade, because they were white women from countries that could bring diplomatic pressure on the investigation. It is foreigners from less well-to-do nations that bear the brunt of discrimination in Japan. The Obara disaster marks the convergence of the well-documented police bias towards the male, mainstream and middle-class, lack of empathy for sexual assault victims and marginalization of sex/hospitality workers. I personally favor re-legalizing prostitution in Japan as the first step.
Next, failing to catch the suspect as he ran from the apartment where Lindsay Ann Hawker was buried was a massive Ichikawa police cock-up, plain and simple. Characterizing it as “he walked away a free man”, in my mind, suggests that the case is somehow closed and the suspect is in the clear—the opposite of the truth. The suspect hasn’t even been through the Japanese justice system, so IMO, this has very little in common with the Obara case. I’d be interested to know if the Ichikawa police played fast and loose with rules for considering someone a missing person, and if they lacked experience with murder cases that led to the botch.
Lastly, the worst. I didn’t know a thing about the Sagawa case and decided to go looking myself. I can’t really bear to go further in my research because it is beyond heartbreaking. I think it’s safe to say that the poor girl has been victimized by authorities and the media in both France and Japan. The French judge unilaterally decided there would be no trial (despite public outrage), and committed the SOB to a hospital. He was interviewed on French television, a French publisher got a hold of his prison diaries, and (worst of all, how is this even allowed?) Paris Match ran the autopsy photos—I couldn’t sleep last night. Finally, France deported him, then refused to provide Japanese authorities (who wanted to charge him) with the case files. To top off this hideous story, a Japanese psychiatrist pronounced the killer ‘cured’, and 5 years after the murder, he was a free man.
His fame/infamy in Japan is more complex than the international media has reported. The name “Sagawa-kun” is not a sign of affection, but taken from the disquieting title of a novel “Sagawa-kun kara no tegami (Letters from Sagawa-kun)”, by Kara Juro, a Japanese playwright who was contacted by Sagawa about writing the screenplay of ‘his story’ after someone approached him while at the French hospital. The novel (which Sagawa opposed) is described as bleak, hallucinatory and existential, and won a prestigious literary prize. After his release, Sagawa himself took to producing memoirs, novels and ‘the psychology of a killer’ type of books, and his public appearances seem to mostly stem from those. He has apologists/champions among the self-declared avante-garde, and plies his trade as the resident Dr. Lecter whenever a particularly disturbing murder takes place. I found scant evidence that he has enjoyed any genuine acceptance in Japanese society. In a country where being a ‘regular’ ex-con or a psychiatric patient negatively impacts your life, it seems unlikely that most people see him with anything but fear and loathing. I found a mention that he was evicted from an apartment in late 2004 after the landlord discovered who he was.
This is a description of the scene when he visited the backstage of a performance he was invited to:
“As soon as he entered, the entire backstage was plunged into a grim, oppressive atmosphere. It was as though everyone had lowered their voice to a whisper and watching his every move. When Sagawa, seeing a box of sweets on the table, asked “Can I eat these too?”, every person jumped noticeably.”
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/佐川一政
Someone on the trackback speculated about his father’s wartime occupation. I was curious myself, and this is what I found. His father was drafted, sent to Manchuria, then interned in Siberia. He flew to Paris after the arrest, and had his first stroke there. Sagawa’s mother had a nervous breakdown. For 20 years, the elder Sagawa seems to have paid his son’s rent (Issei Sagawa is not a particularly successful writer, it seems), despite the latter declaring that the crime was all his father’s fault for being overprotective. The elder Sagawa was increasingly incapacitated by a series of strokes, and died in 2005. His wife died the following day.
The fascination that both the European and the Japanese press seem to hold for this twisted nothing of a person is infuriating. Is this the dark side of Old World arts culture, that seems to blindly value the experience of taboo transgression? Is it just too easy an acceptance of death and suffering, curdling into a particularly morbid and repulsive aesthetic? Is this why serial killer porn and gore sites are proliferating in the U.S. as well?
I wonder if Renee Hartevelt’s parents are out there still, trying to live in a world that is more like Sagawa and less like their daughter.
May 16, 2008 at 6:24 am
The question I have is; Is japan safe? Do they undreport crimes due to all these reasons? What is the true state of their police force? It does seem to be a country where effecting change will be difficult. Very difficult.
June 18, 2008 at 1:21 pm
I am disgusted to see that Sagawa is a celebrity in Japan and a free man.
I pray for Renee’s family and wish them well.
December 17, 2008 at 5:44 am
News update:
12/17/2008 00:37
The Daily Yomiuri
The Tokyo High Court on Tuesday found Joji Obara guilty of abandoning and mutilating the body of Briton Lucie Blackman and sentenced him to life in prison.
February 8, 2009 at 9:14 am
Hi. If I am ever diagnosed with a uncurable illness I will personally fly to Japan and kill Sagawa myself.
The Japanese should be disgusted with themselves. In any other nation protests would be rampant if such a killer walked the streets.
I am losing every last shred of respect for these people..
They are so incredibly xenophobic yet love to lap up western culture. Maybe we should just parachute our convicted killers on to their tiny little inbred island.
April 30, 2009 at 12:16 am
I believe that Sagawa’s father had him transferred to a mental institution in Japan. It was insinuated in the article that I read that the father paid people off, both in Japan and France, to eventually have his son free. I think we can all agree justice was not served, regardless of how it happened. I don’t really wonder about how Sagawa or his father are able to live with themselves. It’s obvious they don’t care. What I wonder is what about the girl’s family? I’ve searched and could not find any statements from them.
June 2, 2009 at 5:18 pm
The Japanese have a weird obsession over death and all sorts of disgusting stuff. This guy is worshiped and has a cult of followers there. Damn it!
September 7, 2009 at 1:06 am
Sagawa must be retried. And executed. Simple as that. I know it won’t happen. Plan b would for him to have a little ‘accident’.
September 30, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Japan is an absurdly safe country. It’s the fact that they have so few crimes there that the police become incompetent, they don’t have the same sense of justice, and certain sub-cultures even develop a fetish for killers (although this is not unknown in the West). The other thing to note is that in these cases the killers all had extremely wealthy fathers, who can pay off the courts.
October 13, 2009 at 1:33 am
I came across the story of Renée Hartevelt on Friday. I was completely disgusted and outraged over it all. Not only for what was done to her but that the man is FREE and looked at as a Celebrity! I am so glad that I found this post as I felt like I was the only person to be so pissed about this. I wish he would travel to America because I am sure he would meet his end.
November 12, 2009 at 5:53 pm
People who are active on this page, message me. We need to devise a plan to end these wicked people once and for all.
November 13, 2009 at 1:18 am
News update:
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/photospecials/graph/ichihashi/
Police in Osaka say they have arrested the prime suspect in the 2007 killing of Briton Lindsay Ann Hawker.
Tatsuya Ichihashi, 30, was arrested in Osaka’s Suminoe Ward on Tuesday, on suspicion of abandoning Hawker’s body. Police and other sources said investigators received a phone tip on Tuesday evening reporting a man resembling Ichihashi at a ferry terminal. Officers rushed to the scene and questioned the man, who reportedly admitted that he was Ichihashi.
December 17, 2009 at 3:00 pm
How in hell would anybody do anything like this. Do you see how beautiful Renee is? I can’t see how anybody would do this. I’m at a loss for words.