Beyond Sanity: Tsutomu Miyazaki and His Spiral of Violence

an infamous Japanese serial killer. Known for his heinous acts, Miyazaki terrorized Japanese society in the late 1980s. Through an exhaustive investigation, we will discover who Tsutomu Miyazaki was and what he did to earn his sad reputation.

Background and Early Life

Miyazaki was born on August 21, 1962, in Tokyo. His premature birth left him with a deformity in both hands, which were fused with his wrists, making it necessary for him to move his forearms to rotate his hands. At the age of 5, he began to be bullied by his classmates, who made fun of his hands, and he was isolated from Itsukaichi Elementary School.

According to Miyazaki's classmates and teachers, he was a quiet and lonely boy. He used to write essays expressing his wishes for a normal life. However, he always ended up blaming his hands for not being able to lead such a life. Finally, he took refuge in anime and manga, the latter of which he would read compulsively late into the night.

Miyazaki was an intelligent young man and achieved the highest grade among the children who took the entrance exam to Meidai Nakano High School. For three years, he spent two hours a day studying. However, later, his grades began to drop and his interest in studying waned, so instead of studying he began to draw comics. Because of his strong English language skills, he planned to enter Meiji University, but after applying, he was among the last few applicants, so he dropped out and began to study photography, graduating in 1983 as a photography technician.This secured him a job at a printing company owned by an acquaintance of his father's.91This secured him a job at a printing company owned by an acquaintance of his father's.9This secured him a job at a printing company owned by an acquaintance of his father.

In the mid-1980s, Miyazaki moved into his parents' house and shared a room with his older sister near his father's printing press. Miyazaki's family was very influential in Itsukaichi, and his father owned a locally distributed newspaper. However, his family's status had little influence on Miyazaki who seemed to rush into his problems and fantasies, which already inhabited him. Soon after, Miyazaki received a car as a gift.

According to a high school classmate, Miyazaki suffered from a small penis complex that prevented him from engaging in a relationship with an adult woman. However, his sexual appetite was high, to the point that he would take advantage of college tennis matches to photograph the players' crotches and then use the photographs for purely onanistic purposes. In 1984, tired of consuming adult pornography, he began consuming child pornography.

His life as a serial killer

On the afternoon of August 22, 1988, 4-year-old Mari Konno disappeared after going out to play with a friend. After failing to find her, her father reported her missing to the Tokyo Police.

Mari Konno had been tricked by Miyazaki, who offered her a ride in his black Nissan Langley. Miyazaki drove west out of Tokyo and stopped the car under a bridge on a wooded path. There, Miyazaki sat next to the girl for half an hour before murdering her, after committing the crime he stripped the body naked and sexually abused her. He then took the girl's clothes and returned to his car.

On October 3, 1988, Miyazaki was driving his car on a road in Saitama Prefecture when he ran into 7-year-old Masami Yoshizawa. After convincing the girl to go for a ride, Miyazaki drove to the same wooded area where he had murdered Mari Konno. There, in a murderous outburst, he attacked the girl from behind and killed her. Again, he sexually abused the body, took the clothes and escaped in his car.

The Police launched a massive search to find her. However, the search was fruitless, and neither Mari Konno's nor Masami Yoshizawa's body was found.

On December 12, 1988, Miyazaki murdered again; this time a 4-year-old girl from Kawagoe. The girl was Erika Namba, who was returning from a friend's house when Miyazaki abducted her, forcing her into a car. He drove to a parking lot in Naguri. There, he placed the girl in the back seat of the vehicle and forced her to undress, in order to take photographs. After almost being spotted by a car that passed by his car, Miyazaki murdered the girl. He then tied the corpse by hands and feet, wrapped it in a sheet and placed it in the trunk of the car. After that, he disposed of the girl's clothes in a nearby forest and left the girl's body in a wooded area near the parking lot.

The next day, after the girl's body was found, the police force explored the forest for more evidence.

Also, police learned that both Mari Konno's and Erika Namba's families had been receiving strange phone calls and letters referring to the girls' murder.

On February 6, 1989, Mari Konno's father found a box on his doorstep with the cremated remains of the girl as well as her clothes along with a note that read, "Mari. Bones. Cremation. Investigate. Prove."

Days later, on February 11, police received a three-page letter in which a "Yoko Imada" confessed to Mari Konno's crime. He also mocked the police and the little girl's parents' hopes of finding her alive. Miyazaki would continue to disturb Konno's parents for much longer.

In the summer of 1989, Miyazaki again committed a crime, this time convincing a girl to pull down her panties so he could photograph her, but as he was about to take the pictures, neighbors were alerted and chased Miyazaki, who managed to escape.

However, his sexual appetite would force him to return on June 6, 1989, to a park in Ariake near Tokyo Bay. There he found 5-year-old Ayako Nomoto, whom he convinced to let him take pictures, then forced her into his car, which he drove some 800 meters before murdering the girl. He then wrapped the body in a sheet and placed it in the trunk of the car

Miyazaki took the body to his apartment, where after purchasing a new camera, he photographed the girl's body in different positions. He also took footage of it while masturbating. Miyazaki would spend the next two days with the body practicing necrophilia as well as taking photographs.

When the smell became unbearable, Miyazaki decapitated the body, cut off its hands and torso. He abandoned the torso in the toilets of a cemetery and the head in a meadow while he kept the hands, drinking the blood and eating part of one of them. Fearing that the police would find the remains, two weeks after the crime, Miyazaki returned to collect them, which he took to his room, where he hid them until he decided to burn all traces. From the clothes to the corpse itself.

The police, however, found the torso in the cemetery bathroom and launched a manhunt for the killer. Miyazaki was thwarted but his impulses would lead him to try again and eventually to his arrest.

Arrest and how he was imprisoned

On July 23, 1989, Miyazaki was driving through Tokyo when he saw two sisters playing. He stopped the car and offered to take some photographs of them. The older sister ran scared and went in search of her father. Meanwhile, Miyazaki undressed and photographed the younger girl. When the girls' father arrived on the scene, Miyazaki was trying to insert a contact lens into the little girl's vagina.

The man managed to catch Miyazaki and threw him to the ground, but Miyazaki managed to escape, albeit without the car. When he returned later to retrieve it, police officers were waiting for him. Miyazaki was arrested on charges of "forcing a minor to commit indecent acts."

Seventeen days after his arrest in 1989, Miyazaki confessed to the murder of Ayako Nomoto, whose skull was found the following day. He also confessed to the murder of Erika Namba and Mari Konno. Subsequently, on September 6, 1989, the remains of Masami Yoshizawa were found in a wooded area of Itsukaichi.

After the arrest, police searched his apartment, where they found more than 6,000 videotapes, including those on which Miyazaki had filmed his victims, but the vast majority of the videos were of violent and gore anime such as the Guinea Pig series.

After his son's imprisonment, Miyazaki's father, who refused to pay for his legal defense, committed suicide by throwing himself into a river in 1994. Some time later, Miyazaki himself sent a letter to a local newspaper in which he said that with his father's suicide he felt "like new".

trial and execution

During the 1990s, Miyazaki remained incarcerated while Saitama Prefecture commissioned a group of psychiatrists to evaluate him, concluding in 1997 by this team of psychiatrists from the University of Tokyo that Miyazaki suffered from multiple personality disorder and extreme schizophrenia, although he remained aware of the seriousness and consequence of his crimes, and therefore responsible for them.

Miyazaki was sentenced to death by hanging shortly after his capture, more than 15 years elapsing before the sentence was carried out. During his imprisonment, he attempted to reduce his sentence to life imprisonment, all attempts being unsuccessful.

He also fought for lethal injection instead of hanging, which Miyazaki deeply feared. He spent his years in prison reading comics, manga and watching anime on the small television in his cell.

On January 17, 2006, the Supreme Court upheld the original sentence.

On June 17, 2008, Miyazaki was executed.1 To this day it is unknown what happened to his extensive manga and video collection.