Police in Tokyo have arrested four company workers on suspicion of killing a 56-year-old colleague by manipulating him to stand on train tracks and be hit by a train, with the intention of making it look like a suicide.
The incident occurred at around 12:10 a.m. on December 3, 2023, at a crossing between Tobu-Nerima and Shimo-Akatsuka stations on the Tobu Tojo line in Itabashi Ward, NTV reported. The four suspects, one of whom is the company president, were arrested on Sunday.
The suspects are Manabu Sasaki, 39, the president of the paint company MA Kenso, and three employees, Akihito Shimabata, 34, Shunta Nozaki, 39, and Atsuya Iwade, 30.
According to police, the four visited the victim, Osamu Takano, at his apartment at around 10 p.m. on Dec 2, 2023. They all left by car. At some point, Sasaki and Iwade left the group.
The car with Shimabata, Nozaki and Takano stopped on a bridge over the Arakawa River on the border between Itabashi Ward and Saitama Prefecture. Nozaki's smartphone recorded audio suggested that they talked about forcing Takano to jump into the river on the bridge, but when he resisted, they headed to the railroad crossing.
When police received the first report of the incident, they initially investigated the possibility of suicide, as security camera footage showed Takano getting out the car and wandering onto the tracks where he was hit by an oncoming train. There is no barrier at the crossing.
Police said a video has also been found that shows Sasaki and others assaulting Takano at various times prior to his death. They believe Takano was subjected to bullying regularly at his company where he worked for 10 years.
Police said that messages on the four suspects' cell phones and the Line messaging app show that Takano was mentally and physically bullied for the last three years and that apparently he had reached breaking point.
Even though Takano seemed to willingly walk onto the train tracks by himself and was not pushed, police believe his act was the result of years of abuse at the hands of his colleagues, and thus his death could be classified as a murder.
© Japan Today
29 Comments
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Keepitreal
Throw the book at these animals what kind of evil does stuff like this to another human.
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finally rich
It's good to know the law is actually applied to prevent this kind of bullying.
But I've been reading and watching tons of cases in schools the people in charge simply turn a blind eye, a foreigner parent goes to a school to complain about their son being bullied and the school does nothing!
It almost makes you think bullying is actually an acceptable part of japanese culture and they punish bullies every now and then just for show.
almakukac
And of course I feel for this poor guy. Rest in peace Takano-san. I hope these scum will rot in prison.
sakurasuki
56 year-old person being bullied by 30s something coworker?
Ah_so
That's what it says. I don't think the text is unclear at all, so not sure why you are confused.
sakurasuki
With Japanese seniority system, it was expected that 30s something bullying early 20s something.
It's really rare the opposite happen.
sakurasuki
Why bullying him? That company not just thug school, for blue collar labor in Japan that just a normal thing, either Japanese or not Japanese.
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20220118/p2a/00m/0na/016000c
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20231026/p2a/00m/0na/018000c
shogun36
Most 30 year olds either have a family or girlfriend. Maybe even a hobby.
What "adult" has the free time to do dumb JHS non-sense?
Lock these fools up for life.
MilesTeg
I wonder if this is a case of 'madogiwazoku' (sit by window employee). Since they can't be fired (which I never really understood) instead they are given a useless job with truly menial tasks that a child can do but meanwhile are ostracized by some and bullied by others. They keep hoping that the employee will leave on their own but often they never do so more anger and frustration towards them builds up. It's no wonder so many are unhappy at their jobs. Sometimes it's completely dysfunctional.
grc
To almakukac - well said
TrafficCone
Life in prison with no chance of parole please.
BertieWooster
Before leaving Sapporo, I worked on a very large project for the Hokkaido Government. They seemed to love meetings. On one of these occasions, the head of the meeting called a guy to stand up. He then proceeded to belittle and put him down. The poor guy was shaking and close to tears. I couldn't stand it any longer and stood up to interrupt the leader. "I thought we were going to have a meeting to discuss the translation project," I said. "This is your internal problem and don't wish to be part of it. If you are not going to discuss the things you called the meeting for, I'm out of here!"
He sheepishly apologised and we got down to business, but, after the meeting, I was warned to never speak to a meeting leader like that, as I made him lose face.
"I couldn't care less!" I answered. I'm here as the head of the translation team. That's all I'm here for."
Strangely I was invited to very few meetings after that.
garymalmgren
No mention of an insurance policy?
kaimycahl
Set the trap door give each one of the idiots a rope tied to the lever to release the door and tell them to pull the rope on command.
syniksan
Japanese society is sick.
Pukey2
bertie:
And it never occurred to anyone else that the bullied guy was made to lose face?
njca4
Poor guy.
Some people are really nasty when they together in groups.
I'm really interested to know why they did it.
@Japan Glimpsed
Apart from the proximate cause, because that's humans.
Sorry to burst your bubble.
Bret T
I doubt he got in the car willingly. Prosecutor should add kidnapping just to make sure their sentence is as severe as possible.
Zaphod
Bret T
By the same token you could wonder why did not quit his job or why he walked alone onto the tracks. It all looks pretty incomprehensible from the outside. It seems all that bullying for several years had worn him down.
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TokyoLiving
Put to work gallows for those 4 scumbags..
Michael Machida
And a Japanese Company President as well.
But, it's safe here.
Ricky Kaminski13
There is still a very dark side to this culture that we get a glimpse of occasionally in these group bullying episodes, one of unchecked cruelty and completely devoid of empathy. Were these animals sniffing their own paint or something? El Presidente?
RIP to the poor fellow that just gave up and took the train instead of the ongoing pain.
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smithinjapan
Give each of them life in prison and see how they like the bullying there. But this is Japan, so they'll probably all just get off with a "stern warning". This is a culture that not only protects bullying, but espouses it when it produces results. After there's a corpse the authorities will sometimes do something, but even then there are often no consequences for the bullies.
ebisen
I take offense at your classifying these animals as humans and daring to put them in the same group as real humans.
Gazman
‘Could’ be classified as murder. There’s no doubt in my mind that it ‘should’ most definitely be classified as murder.
Moskollo
Very sick people, they’re not kids and it wasn’t a maturity thing, it’s a they are sick mfs thing. Hope they disappear for a while..
ThonTaddeo
@Bret - two of the men (Sasaki and Iwade) seemed to have left the group when the realized what the rest were going to do, and those two definitely deserve kidnapping charges even if they didn't go through with the murder.
@Japan Glimpsed
Perhaps you could share some links, @reading and watching finally rich.