Nagoya prosecutors on Tuesday indicted a 27-year-old woman for killing her three daughters aged 5, 3 and nine months, in February.
According to prosecutors, Himeka Toya was indicted after three months of psychiatric examinations found her mentally responsible for her actions, Kyodo News reported. Toya was arrested on Feb 11 after her 34-year-old husband came home and found their three daughters dead.
The bodies of the three girls — Himari, 5, Nanoka, 3, and Sakura, nine months — were found in the living room on the second floor of the house. All three had been strangled with an electric appliance cord.
Toya had also tried to kill herself by slitting her wrists and stabbing herself in the neck with a knife.
Toya’s husband told police that his wife had been in an unstable state of mind prior to the killings.
© Japan Today
35 Comments
Login to comment
obladi
the only person who could have prevented this is Dad...
What a terrible loss
Meiyouwenti
What was the point of printing the names of the three hapless daughters killed by their mother?
virusrex
Hindsight is 20/20, and it solves nothing to say this should have been a warning sign, but hopefully in the future some other families will remember this tragedy and will seek professional help before something as bad as this happens.
Yrral
Probably post Porteum Psychosis ,this happen to lots of women ,post pregnancy,I am not making any excuses,why did her husband intervene,if you know a woman,having a difficult time,maybe volunteer,to watch her child,while get a away for a few hours and discuss with her how she feeling
Yrral
Virus,you are a logical reason person,you know lots of women ,still have hormonal imbalances after pregnancy,that cause them emotional distress, should their man be their too support them
Yrral
Aim,I look up that word,first time I heard it,if a man love his children,and his wife is acting erratic,it the man duty to see his children are in safe environment from harm
Seigi
Mental health matters but in Japan it doesn't seem to matter. In Japantoday, it's the Covid-19 count that matters daily.
finally rich
japanese Shutter Island. My condolences. Can't even imagine what the father is going through.
Yrral
Rich,maybe if he was attentive to his kids,he probably would not be in dispair
Joe Blow
He's at work all day, plenty of time for his psycho wife to do something.
CaptDingleheimer
That father is of strong mind if he's still alive. Not sure I would be if that happened to me...
obladi
I'm not blaming the dad, and I fully apologize if that's how my comment was construed.
I'm just saying he was the only person who could have possibly seen it coming.
Who else in this world, other than the dad, could have known about the danger to the kids?
A neighbor? Unlikely to get involved.
A teacher? The kids were too young.
Chico3
Exactly! It's bad enough that they suffered in the hands of their mom, but to post their names? I'm sure the father was in shocked. I sure would be, and I'm a father of 3.
wtfjapan
the only person who could have prevented this is Dad...
why many people have mental break downs, doesnt mean they become murderous.
Im curious how the father could have prevented it, is he part of some new precrime tech
Mark
""after her 34-year-old husband came home and found their three daughters dead.""
I can't even begin to imagine the pain.
Lindsay
Toya’s husband told police that his wife had been in an unstable state of mind prior to the killings.
And, what did he do about it? Perhaps the husband was the cause of her emotional issues. Mental health is a serious problem in Japan but very little is done about it. It’s always ignored until someone snaps.
Mocheake
Probably left at home to care for three young children without any real support from the dad, who was probably "working" until late. Poor kids.
aaaaaiiiiiiiiiii
@Lindsay
That's exactly what came to my mind at first. Many women are enslaved as a wife or a mother and unable to seek for help even if they are overwhelmed with raising kid, doing chores, going to work and taking care of almost everything around by herself while a husband weaponize his incompetence and deliberately ignore the problem/potential problem. Although what she did was totally not unforgivable, we need to look into what made her that way and try to save people who are suffering like her to prevent similar incident.
Aly Rustom
ya think?
Kyo wa heiwa dayo ne
Mental health is a difficult issue in Japan as people are just supposed to ignore it and many don't reach out for help and support groups and self help networks are few and far between.
Natural medicine like aromatherapy or Kanpo yaku isn't recognized or provided in Japan and the shame and blame culture certainly doesn't help.
Sincere condolences to those poor young girls for whom lives had barely begun.
For a country that doesn't have guns its sad to read about murders in Japan almost daily .
Most of them their own family members.
So sad
Kyo wa heiwa dayo ne
@aaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiii
It's unfair to assume or insinuate that the husband was the cause of her mental state and in a misogynistic relationship.
Some people are predisposed to mental emotional health issues.
Without being fully aware of all the details its a bit sinister to blame the husband.
Perhaps he wanted her to seek counseling but she refused.
Mr Kipling
Yes, killing your kids and cutting yourself up are regular signs of mental responsibility. Japan's findings are very different to much of the rest of the world.
therougou
So in "the rest of the world" nobody who kills their kids is held responsible?
oyatoi
Perception is everything. Being all in the family and not involving outsiders conveniently absolves the state from having to acknowledge its own complicity in not addressing social factors which undoubtedly contributed to the tragedy. While we can only speculate, the litany of unaddressed causal factors need no explication. Fathers prevented from being there for the family, lack of mental support for young mothers, the soldier on and survival of the fittest 我慢 ethos, limited second chances available to those who could do with such breaks. Little wonder that when life does its bad dream best to resemble a boot camp, some go postal.
Nuno Teixeira da Cunha
Disturbing read...could he spot her wierd look in the eyes and take her to an exam of mental health, i m sure this creature wouldbe spoted as dangerous.
kaimycahl
@ Kyo wa heiwa dayo I almost agreed with you until you wrote "For a country that doesn't have guns its sad to read about murders in Japan almost daily" . Murder is murder whether it occurred by a knife or gun the end result is death! Death is death!
Kyo wa heiwa dayo neToday 03:19 pm JST
Mental health is a difficult issue in Japan as people are just supposed to ignore it and many don't reach out for help and support groups and self help networks are few and far between.
Natural medicine like aromatherapy or Kanpo yaku isn't recognized or provided in Japan and the shame and blame culture certainly doesn't help.
Sincere condolences to those poor young girls for whom lives had barely begun.
For a country that doesn't have guns its sad to read about murders in Japan almost daily .
Most of them their own family members.
So sad
El Rata
She deserves the capital punishment, period. No need for mental health apologists.
Strangerland
Um, there are 130 million people in Japan. Humans have always murdered other humans, family members have always murdered other family members. Fortunately, Japan has EXTREMELY low numbers of murders, family or other, in comparison to almost every other country in the world. Japan is one of the places you should be born to if you want to keep your odds of being murdered lower than, well basically lower than everywhere on this planet.
oyatoi
If only that were true. In fact, the rampant misogyny of North East Asia ensures that women there are far MORE likely to be a murder victim than women elsewhere. But nice try deflecting.
https://time.com/4668658/violence-women-v-day-domestic-asia-homicide-sexism/
Strangerland
You seem to have misunderstood the article you posted. From the article:
This article is speaking of the number of female homicide victims relative to the overall number of homicides.
Let's review my comment:
Nothing in the article you posted contradicts this.
oyatoi
Strangleland
Nowhere did I say what you erroneously claim. The absolute number of female victims is lower, true. As a proportion, however, a murder victim in Japan is much MORE likely to be female than in most other places.
Strangerland
Your statement says Japanese women are far more likely to be murder victims in other countries. That is false, as no one is very likely to get murdered in Japan compared to other countries.
Let me put some numbers into this equation. Let's say Japan has four murders per year per 10,000 people, and three are women. That means by your reckoning, a woman is three times as likely to be murdered as a man in Japan (and you added 'as compared to other countries').
Now lets say in country X, 300 men are killed, and 30 women, per 10,000 people. Country X has a 10:1 murder rate of women to men, and Japan has a 1:3 murder ratio of men:women. By your reckoning, that would mean that as a woman, you'd one-tenth as likely to be murdered in country X as in Japan. Yet the actual murder numbers of women in country X would be ten times the number in Japan.
See how your logic falls apart? The relative ratio of murders of men:women in Japan doesn't change the fact that Japan has an EXTREMELY low murder rates in the first place. So I stand by my original statement, which you still have provided nothing to counter: