English teacher murdered in Tokyo
Unless you’ve had your head in the sand all week, you can’t fail to have noticed at least something about this tragic story coming out of Japan. On Monday, the body of Lindsay Ann Hawker, a 22 year old British 
girl from Coventry, was found in an apartment in Chiba, Greater Tokyo. The body was in a bathtub out on the apartment balcony and was covered with sand. Preliminary reports have suggested that the girl was either strangled or asphyxiated. Currently her father and long-term boyfriend from the UK are in Japan to identify the body and conduct press conferences and launch appeals for information about Lindsay. This is a very sad event, and as a fellow educator in Japan my condolences go out to her family and friends for their loss. Rather than just repeat what the news reports are saying, I’ll try and make some comments from what I’ve heard and my experiences in Japan.
Apparently, this girl went to the guy’s apartment on Saturday with the intention of giving him an English lesson. She left his address at her own apartment in case there were any problems and headed off. Nobody heard from her after that, and by Sunday night her friend had got worried and called the police. Initially, news reports said that Nova (her employer) had contacted the police, although this has since been denied by the company themselves. She had only been missing 24 hours though and understandably the police were not treating this as a hugely serious case. However, they did follow up the call her friend made on Monday, and they went to this guy’s apartment. When the police arrived, the guy (now the main suspect in the case) was still at the apartment, and he proceeded to leg it barefoot out of the window, and into the rats nest of alleyways and tiny streets at the back of the apartments. The police didn’t chase or track this guy at all, which does come across as strange. Admittedly, they didn’t know anything was wrong with the girl at that time but imagine the situation: you are a police officer investigating a missing person case. You knock on the door of her last known whereabouts and a guy somehow manages to escape out of the apartment. Usually that would be the signal for any officers with sense to think “He’s getting out of there pretty fast - maybe we should have a word with him”… but not here in Japan.
Reports said that her purse/handbag and passport were found close to the apartment (probably dropped by the suspect). My question to that piece of reporting would be: why did she have her passport in her bag when she’s going to teach an English lesson? As a foreigner in Japan, she would have her foreigner’s card to use as identification, and there would be absolutely no reason for her to carry around a passport with her. It’s hardly as if apartment break-ins and passport theft is a huge problem in Japan. It did seem a little strange.
This morning, a number of reports are saying that police claim the suspect stalked the victim before her death, and that he visited her apartment, giving her a note with his name and phone number. And so we come to the second point of debate. Why would she ever consider going to the apartment of someone who has been stalking her, regardless of whether he wanted an English lesson or not? Teachers here in general are told that English lessons should be conducted in public or otherwise neutral places. Superintendent Yoshihiro Sugita, said to a press conference, “We have found no traces of blood and there was no sign of a physical struggle. “The victim was completely naked and her clothes were around the apartment, although we don’t know whether they were taken off by her or by the suspect”. Her parents have strongly denied that she was having any sort of relationship with the suspect, but there just seems to be more to this case than is initially meeting the eye.
The suspect in this case is Tatsuya Ichihashi, and a warrant has been issued for his arrest, on suspicion of 
abandoning her body. The charges are not more serious than that at this time because police are still conducting investigations and doing forensics on the body. There have been no reported sightings of Ichihashi since the incident, and I have read a couple of unconfirmed reports that he is being hidden by the yakuza (the Japanese mafia). If this is the case then I would expect the trail to go cold very soon. The police won’t touch the yakuza as they have far to many links with the government and people high up in the Japanese hierarchy. Incidentally, I want you to have a look at the photos of the suspect to the right, and the victim above. I’m sure when you look at them, you will think something along the lines of “Well she looks a really nice girl… but he looks evil”. But think about it and you’ll find that this is almost always the case, and the reason is partly because the media likes it that way. You never see a photo of a murder suspect smiling, having a good time etc. If you did, that might make you think good of the suspect. Similarly with victims, you always see the best photo possible of them. I know the latter is partly because the victim’s family will always submit a good photo of their loved one, but it is just another thing worth thinking about.
I spoke to my family yesterday, and each one of them mentioned that this girl’s murder is one of the top stories in the UK at the moment, both on the news and in the newspapers. In contrast, on the Asahi website here in Japan (one of the biggest sites for Japanese news), it is absent from the front news page. Indeed, the story is 9th most important according to this website with a number of (in my opinion) less important stories featured above it. And this is one of the issues in Japan. It’s a sure-fire bet that if the victim had been Japanese and the suspect a foreigner (more so if they were in the US military), then all the TV channels would be broadcasting hourly reports and updates, and the suspect would not have been allowed to leg it out of the apartment and escape. Crimes where the foreigner in Japan is a victim do seem to be regarded as much less important than crimes by foreigners. I have fortunately not been the victim of any crime while I have been here in Japan, nor have I seen any, but I have read numerous reports backing this statement up. The Metropolis, an English-language magazine here in Japan, posted an article about this just last week. But in Japan, if you are charged with a crime, then you may as well plead guilty, regardless of whether you are innocent or not. Japan’s criminal courts have a 99% conviction rate, and the only way to get a lenient sentence is to plead guilty and show remorse. If you do that you might get off with a shorter jail term, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Nova are understandably keeping their distance from this story for a number of reasons. One of the main ones being that they discourage their teachers from taking private lessons and teaching outside the Nova classrooms. Obviously, doing that would decrease the revenue that Nova makes, as well as the safety aspect of it. Indeed, they have banned teachers from interacting with their students outside the classroom, I believe due to approaches made by some teachers on female students. However, another reason is that they are already involved in a scandal in Japan, and want to keep away from any further bad publicity. Last month, Nova were inspected for allegedly giving students false cancellation policies, and then charging them huge amounts if they wish to discontinue their course. They were also refusing to give money back and refusing unconditional cancellations, claiming that the cooling-off period had expired. Although one of the biggest private language schools in Japan, Nova’s reputation among the foreign community in Japan is not a great one to be honest.
This story brings back memories of the murder of Lucie Blackman, allegedly by Joji Obara. She was a hostess working in the Roppongi district of Tokyo when she went missing in 2000. Her body was found in a remote village a year later with her head encased in concrete. That case is finally due to reach a verdict on April 24th this year. The only thing I will note about this previous murder is that the word hostess does not mean escort or prostitute, as many westerners might think. Hostesses in Japan are women who work in places usually called “snack bars” and who drink and talk with men through the night. There is very little physical contact between the two parties. I will actually write a little more about this occupation in the near future, although I must admit I know little of the details about it.
Well, I’m sure the media in the west are having a field day with this story, parading Japan as a country in which no foreigner is safe. Indeed, the BBC already have an article online, entitled “Are foreign women safe in Japan?“. I’ll answer that question for you now so you don’t have to click the link. Yes, they are! They’re probably a whole lot safer in Japan than they would be in their home country. I will try to post more about this story as more details come out, but I hope I’ve given you a few things to think about.
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Trackbacks & Pingbacks
- Big in Japan | Tokyo English teacher murder - a small update pingbacked on March 30, 2007, 12:20 pm
- Big in Japan | Tokyo English teacher murder - trail gone cold pingbacked on April 6, 2007, 11:20 am
- Big in Japan | Ex-police officer guilty of forcing confessions from suspects pingbacked on March 18, 2008, 3:48 pm
Hi Dave,
This is a very sad story and my condolecens go to the family.
It has howeever a few similarities to a case that happened on koh Samui, Thailand (where I live) where a young English tourist was murdered (and sexually abused) on New Years Eve. The Thai police initially tried to cover the case up untill it hit the Western (UK) media big time and all of a sudden, things happened a lot faster than usual in Thailand and even two suspects were areested and convicted. One wonders if they really were the culprits.
Interesting to follow this case now and see how it pans out.
Hi Dave,
Very shocking news and I really hope the man who killed Lindsay will be caught soon.
About Lucie Blackman.. You said you’d write about the news soon.. One thing I want to mention is that she was actually working in Roppongi.. This place is one of the most dangerous places in Tokyo, and even though, like you said, the word “hostess” does not mean “prostitute” in Japan, many men expect those hostesses to provide further “service”. Many hostesses go out with their customers after work or on their day off, just to keep them. Some hostesses actually do sleep with their customers. I am not sure about Lucie, but she was with Joji Obara on the day she was killed, and it suggests that she went out with her customer(s) after her work or on her day off.
Many hostesses are business women or students during daytime and work as hostesses part-time. But those who are desperate to make money and work as hostesses “full-time” might go out with their customers, especially wealthy ones like Joji Obara.
I do think money is the key.. Whether they are Japanese or foreigners, they would not go out with those men if there was no money involved.. don’t you think ?
Personally, I am not very impressed with Japanese police, however, the work Public Security Intelligence Office/Bureau (kind of like American CIA and FBI combined) do is impressive. I hope the police and Public Security Intelligence Office work together and find the man who murdered Lindsay.