Forty-Four Days

Hell on earth for one, and indictment on many more...

This is another entry in the human darkness series. We will be discussing an atrocious case that tests the limits of understanding our fellow man. This is also a tap-out warning. What happened to this girl is infamously awful. It is one of the cases that people are aware of due to its brutality. Today we will be talking about the death of Junko Furuta.

She was born on January 14th, 1970, and she died January 4th, 1989, just shy of her eighteenth birthday. Junko, who was on her way home from work at a small electronics store, was riding her bike when she came to the attention of four young men, Hiroshi Miyano, Jō Ogura, Shinji Minato, and Yasushi Watanabe. The encounter started when Shinji Minato kicked her off her bike and ran away, having been instructed to do so by, Miyano, and then, Hiroshi Miyano, offered her a “helping hand”, pretending to be her savior. He also offered to escort her home, but never had intentions of taking her there.

Instead of doing what he claimed he wanted, he forced Junko into an abandoned warehouse, where beat her, and he raped her, for the first time. He informed her that he was a member of the Yakuza, and that she had to obey him, and that if she didn’t, her family would be in danger, due to those connections. He then kidnapped her, taking her to his home, where the real hell was yet to begin.

The house in which Junko died

I will be listing an account of what happened to Junko while in captivity, but it is not for the faint of heart. I would suggest skipping it if this sort of thing bothers you.

Final warning.

This is what Junko endured before she succumbed to her severe injuries.

DAY One Through Ten: November 22, 1988:

Kidnapped

She was first taken to a hotel, where the other three young men were waiting. There, she was repeatedly raped by all four perpetrators. She was the second girl that they had done this too, but they would step up their egregious acts exponentially with Junko.

Her attackers kept her captive in the house, and she was forced to pretend to be one of the boy’s girlfriends. Miyano’s family did not believe this claim, but did nothing to help her

She was raped over four hundred times. Multiple times, she was gang raped, as well as having objects, such as lit matches, metal poles, knives and wood, inserted into her vagina and anus

She was forced to call her parents and tell them she had run away

She was starved and became very weak due to malnutrition

They fed her cockroaches and made her drink urine

Was forced to masturbate

She was forced to do strip teases for her rapists

They burned her with cigarette lighters and set off fireworks in her ears, mouth, vagina

They raped her with foreign objects inserted into her vagina/anus, including a still lit light-bulb

DAY Eleven Through Day Nineteen: December 1, 1988:

She was severely beat up countless times

They held her face against concrete ground and jumped on

They tied her hands and hung her from the ceiling. They used her body as a punching bag until her damaged internal organs made blood run from her mouth

Her nose filled with so much blood that she could only breathe through her mouth

Dumbbells were dropped onto her stomach

She was so physically damaged, she vomited when she tried to drink water (her stomach couldn’t accept it)

She tried to escape and punished by cigarette burning on arms

They poured flammable liquid on her feet and legs, then lit them on fire

A bottle was inserted into her anus, causing severe injury

DAY Twenty Through Twenty-Nine: December 10, 1988

Junko was unable to walk properly due to severe leg burns

Her attackers beat with bamboo sticks

They inserted fireworks into her anus, and lit them

Her hands were smashed by weights so badly that her fingernails cracked

She was beaten with golf club

The inserted cigarettes into her vagina and forced to drink her own urine as they laughed

They used iron rods to beat her repeatedly

As this was during December, it was very cold out. To torture her further, they forced her outside to sleep on the balcony overnight

They took skewers of grilled chicken, inserted into her vagina and anus, both causing bleeding.

And yet she’d almost escaped. All of her attackers were passed out drunk, so she crawled down the stairs and attempted to call for help, but one of the boys caught her just in time and ended the call for help. They punished her by taunting her with a candle flame and finally dousing her legs in lighter fluid and set her on fire, as punishment for trying to run away. She went into convulsions; the boys would later say that they thought she was faking the seizure. They set her on fire again, then put it out. She survived this round.

DAY Thirty Through Thirty-Nine:

Hot wax was dripped onto her face

Her eyelids were burned by cigarette lighter

They stabbed her with sewing needles all over her chest

Her left was nipple cut and destroyed with pliers

They inserted a hot light bulb into her vagina

They raped her with a pair of scissors, which resulted in heavy bleeding from her vagina

She was no longer able to urinate properly

Her injuries were so severe that it took over an hour for her to crawl downstairs and use the bathroom

Her eardrums were severely damaged

Her brain shrank from the trauma and starvation

DAY Forty Through Forty-Three: January 1, 1989:

Junko begged her torturers to “kill her and get it over with”. They ignored her

Junko greets the New Year’s Day alone

Her body is so brutalized and mutilated she is barely responsive

She was unable to move from the ground, making her a defenseless target

DAY Forty-Four: January 4, 1989:

The last day of her life.

The four boys beat her mangled body with an iron barbell, using a loss at the game of Mah-jongg as a pretext. She is profusely bleeding from her mouth and nose. They put a candle’s flame to her face and eyes.

Then, lighter fluid was poured onto her legs, arms, face and stomach, and she was lit on fire. This final torture lasted over two hours. Junko Furuta died later that day, in pain and alone.

After her death, her body was unceremoniously placed in a metal barrel, that was then filled with concrete. They put Furuta's body in a 55-gallon oil drum and filled it with concrete. They dumped the drum at a construction site in Kōtō.

Now, in a rather strange twist to the case, while Junko was still alive, they had beaten her so badly, they no longer found her attractive. This, of course, would not lessen her torture. They would continue to do so, despite their lack of “attraction” to her, but they did use it as an excuse to target another victim, a nineteen-year-old woman, and raped her. This victim involved the police, and the four men were brought in for questioning regarding this rape, and one of the attackers, Hiroshi, thought they were talking about Junko, not the living victim. He thought that the other boys had told police about what they had done, so he confessed to what they had done to Junko and told informed them where they could find her remains.

Junko had to be identified through her fingerprints, as the torture had left her otherwise unrecognizable. The autopsy showed that she had been made pregnant by her rapists. The details of her murder were so horrific, they caused her mother to require hospitalization for her mental health. All in all, it was a truly atrocious crime.

Shinji Minato’s family claimed that they were too afraid of Shinji, because of his supposed ties to the Yakuza, so they did nothing. They knew, but ignored what was happening in their home for nearly a month and a half.

Worse than that? Jō Ogura’s mother blamed Junko for ruining her son’s life. She blamed Junko for what her son did to her. She also, allegedly, vandalized Junko’s final resting place, instead of holding her monster to account for his deplorable actions.

So, why did it make it into my human darkness series? It isn’t a mass event, it involved only a select few, right? No. Junko’s location, and her treatment was not only known by Minato’s family, but countless others. There was no real attempt to hide what they were doing, and they brought friends to the house to participate in Junko’s torture and rape. No one said anything. No one helped her. No one did anything for Junko at all.

Some enthusiastically took part, and some just observed, but not one of them looked and Junko as a human being that needed help. They didn’t have to fight all of her attackers, and rescue her on the back of a white horse. All they needed to do was to go to the police. Tell them what was happening. Bring them to the house and show them what was going on. No one did. Not one person could be bothered to see what was happening as something that they were required to intervene in.

It’s very easy to think that if this situation presented itself to you, that you would do the right thing. You would help her, and make sure that what was happening, ended. In reality, however, it is far easier to dehumanize Junko, and convince yourself that she likes it, she wants to be there, that she did something to deserve her torture, and that it’s not your problem.

That’s far easier.

I think part of why that is, is because there seems to be a lot of emotional baggage involved with dealing with this kind of situation. It is a great deal to take in, and process. Perhaps for many, it is easier to not process any of that emotional impacts, and instead find a way to justify the situation. That’s true… I think… for some.

However, a larger aspect of this, is that people often want the chance to do something like this to someone else. There is a sadistic drive that seems to awaken in people when presented with a victim that has been stripped of all of their dignity, and is available for them to work through their darkest desires. A lot of people will either turn a blind eye, or take what they see as a once in a lifetime opportunity. Very few would have been Junko’s savior.

This, of course, is but one of many examples of what happens when people get to play with their darkness in environments that they don’t think will bring them trouble later on. If they think they are immune from the consequences, the depths that they will explore will horrify the masses when it is all brought to light.

I very much believe that evil actions are always a choice. I could be wrong, but I think that even serial killers, as much as they would like to claim otherwise, know exactly what they are doing, and while they may like killing, I don’t think they need to do so. There is a big difference between an irresistible impulse and an impulse not resisted.

It seems to me, that most evil actions are indulged because it is what’s desired at that moment. It might be that later on they feel guilty abouut what they do, and that’e where all these stories about how they couldn’t help themselves comes in. I think that they could have. They just didn’t want to. I know I know, that requires a person to accept responsibility for their emotions, for their actions, for their thoughts, but guess what? They do have to take responsibility for those things. The only person that you can control in this world is yourself, and living in society means that you have a duty to do so without inflicting your twisted darkness on those around you.

Those that don’t make the correct choice gets no quarter from me, nor should it from anyone else.

That said. Junko’s murderers were barely punished. They were not charged with murder. They were charged with "causing bodily injury resulting in death". The sentences these awful examples of human beings received are as follows:

Hiroshi got seventeen years but it was later upgraded to twenty after an appeal.

Minato got five to seven years. After being released, Minato changed his name to Shinji and was later arrested for the attempted murder of a businessman

Watanabe got nine years.

Jō got eight years. After he was released, Jō changed his name to Jō Kamisaku. He felt no guilt about what he had done, and bragged about Furuta's murder. His father was deeply ashamed, promising to give his entire life savings to Junko’s family. This never happened, however, because Jō took the money, and spent it all.

All of them were “underage” when they committed these crimes, which was part of the reasoning for their light sentences, but in my mind, they should have served life. They took one willingly, so they should give the rest of theirs willingly. All of them are free today. Living as though Junko never existed. Likely there has been effects on their lives that they would prefer not to deal with, but we know that at least one of them brags about what they did. The others? Who knows?