Grotesque (36 page)

Satoko Sato, the victims mother, began to worry about her daughter when she did not return home on the evening of April 8. Up to this point, Sato had never been out all night. On Monday, April 10, when Satoko learned that her daughter had not gone in to work that morning, she filed a missing persons report.

Item 6: Events Following the Crime

The defendant calmly reported to work at Dreamer on April 9 as though nothing had changed. After work he went with two colleagues to 2 2 6

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Inokashira Park to drink beer. At approximately 11:30 p.m., he boarded the Inokashira Line at Inokashira Station and headed home.

The next day, after he had finished work at Dreamer, the defendant met Chen-yi at Shibuya Station. They went to the ramen noodle shop Tamaryu on the east side of the station. Following this they went bowling at the Shibuya Meeting Hall alley. When they had finished, they discussed Green Villa and decided not to move there, as it was even smaller than their current apartment in Matoya Building. Further, the defendant indicated that he was planning to move to Osaka to find work there.

The eleventh of the month was the defendant’s day off. He went to Niiza City in Saitama Prefecture to meet Chen. The defendant gave Chen ¥100,000, informed him he would not move into the Green Villa Apartments, and gave Chen the key to unit 103. That night Chen returned the key to the landlady, Ms. Yamamoto, at her residence in Suginami Ward. Yamamoto in turn handed the key to her son, Akira, who ran the company that supervised both the Matoya and the Green Villa apartments.

Item 7: Discovery of the Body

On April 18, when Akira Yamamoto was on his way to visit an acquaintance who lived on the first floor of the Matoya Building, he decided to check to be sure the door to unit 103 in the Green Villa Apartments had been locked. Once he approached the apartment, he looked through the eye-level window which was beside the apartment door. A small opening in the window allowed him to peer into the apartment where he saw, in the inner room, the upper body of someone who appeared to be sleeping.

He speculated that the person was either an acquaintance of Chen’s or a Chinese national who was employed in his restaurant. Akira Yamamoto called out and tried the door. It had been left unlocked. A woman’s shoes were lined up just inside the entryway. Yamamoto was unpleasantly surprised when he realized the interloper was a woman. It was at this point he noticed a strange smell permeating the apartment and, without making a sound, he turned and left the apartment, locking the door behind him. The door was the kind that could be locked from the inside without a key. One only needed to push the button on the knob.

The following day, April 19, Akira Yamamoto grew concerned about 2 2 7

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the person he had seen sleeping in the apartment. What if the person continued to stay there? And what about that smell? Worried, Yamamoto headed back to the apartment with the key. When he looked in through the window he noticed that the individual was lying just as she had been the day before. Yamamoto unlocked the door, entered the apartment, and discovered Sato’s corpse.

Other than the strangulation marks on Sato’s throat, there were contusions on her head, face, and limbs—indicating that she’d been struck with a blunt object—and scratches on her as well, as though she’d been dragged. The soft tissue of her neck region and the membrane along her thyroid gland had hemorrhaged.

Item 8: Conduct of the Defendant Following Discovery of the Body On the evening of April 19, 2000, shortly after the defendant returned home from his job at Dreamer, he was visited by a police detective who was conducting a routine investigation of the neighborhood. Dragon, Huang, and Chen-yi were still at work and had not yet returned to the apartment. The detective asked the defendant to answer numerous questions related to his current domicile and his work, and then he left.

As soon as he had departed, the defendant tried to contact the others who shared the apartment.

The defendant called Chen-yi s cell phone and reached him while he was on the job in Dogenzaka. “The police were here,” he said. “Lots of them. They showed me the picture of a woman I didn’t know. They said they’d be back. If they find you here they’ll figure out we’re illegal.”

When Chen-yi heard the defendant’s account, he immediately called Huang at his place of work, the Mirage Cafe in Koenji, Suginami Ward.

He planned to tell Huang not to return to the apartment. But Huang had already gotten off work and was on his way home. Chen-yi next raced to Dragon’s place of employment—Orchard Tower—in the second block of Kabuki-cho, Shinjuku Ward. When he told Dragon what had happened, they both went to stay with an acquaintance of Dragon s.

While Huang was on his way home, unaware of the events that had transpired, he was met by a police detective and shown a photograph of the victim. Huang told the detective that he had seen the woman before.

He also told him that the defendant had a key to one of the Green Villa apartments.

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Around the same time, the defendant left unit 404 in the Matoya Building and stayed the night in a capsule hotel. Policemen went to question him at the Dreamer the next day, but he did not show up for work. The next day, April 21, the defendant left the hotel and went to Chen’s house in Niiza City in Saitama Prefecture. He asked Chen to cover for him by telling the police that he returned the key to Green Villa apartments, unit 103, on April 8, the day before the crime. At that time he had also delivered ¥100,000 in cash. Chen informed him that he had already spoken to the police, and he refused to adhere to the defendant’s request. Moreover, he told the defendant that the police were looking for him—since they knew he had had the key in his possession—

and he ought to turn himself in. The defendant refused.

On the way back from Chen’s the defendant began to worry about money. He decided to stop by his place of employment, resign, and ask to be given his back wages. So he headed toward the Dreamer in Musashino City.

When the police detective questioned the owner of the Dreamer, he discovered that the defendant had either entered the country illegally or was working without a proper visa. The defendant was therefore apprehended later that day and held on charges of entering the country illegally and working without appropriate documentation. He was brought to trial on June 30 of the same year and found guilty of the immigration and employment crimes for which he had been charged.

Subsequently it was discovered that the fingerprints found in unit 205 Hope Heights, the scene of Yuriko Hirata’s murder, belonged to the defendant. Moreover, he was discovered to be in possession of the victim’s necklace. After a thorough police investigation, the defendant was charged with the murders of both Hirata and Sato.

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“MY CRIMES”: THE DEFENDANT’S STATEMENT

BY ZHANG ZHE-ZHONG

JUNE 10, THE TWELFTH YEAR OF HEISEI (2000)

The original was written in Chinese. One of the examining officers instructed the defendant to write the statement after he had the defendant reenact the crime using a life-sized mannequin at the police station.

Detective Takahashi said, “Tell us everything about your life up to now; every rotten thing you’ve done, down to the last detail. Don’t hide anything.”

Well, I’ve been living a rough life, hand to mouth, just trying to do the best I can. I haven’t even had time to look back over the last few years of my life or pause for reflection. I can’t remember the things that happened in the distant past, and I don’t want to. They were too sad, too painful, and I’ve sealed them tightly in a forgotten chamber of my memory. I have many memories that I’ve tried to leave behind.

But Detective Takahashi has kindly given me this opportunity to tell my side of the story, and I would like to do my best to meet his request.

It means, however, that I will have to think back on my pathetic life and recall all the many stupid mistakes I have made—mistakes that cannot be unmade. I have heard that I am suspected in the death of Miss Kazue Sato, but I am innocent of this crime. I hope this statement will clear my name where that is concerned.

In China, a persons fate is determined by where he is born. This is a saying we are accustomed to hear. But for me it is more than just a saying, it 2 3 0

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is the truth. If I’d been born in a city like Shanghai or Beijing or Hong Kong, not deep in the mountains of Sichuan Province, my life would have been filled with promise. It would have been bright and happy, of that I am certain. And certainly I would not have ended up making such a mess of things in a foreign country!

It’s true that I am from Sichuan Province. Ninety percent of the total population of China lives in inland areas like Sichuan. Even so, those areas possess only 10 percent of the nation’s wealth. The rest is controlled by Shanghai and Guangzhou and other port cities. Only 10 percent of the nation’s population lives in port cities, yet those cities control 90 percent of the nation’s wealth. The economic disparity between those who live on the coast and those in the inland regions only continues to deepen.

For those of us who live inland, we can only grit our teeth in despair as we smell the scent of the paper money and watch the glitter of the gold that we will never possess. We have no choice but to satisfy ourselves with millet and coarse grains, our faces and hair streaked with the dust of the fields we tend.

Ever since I was a boy my parents and my siblings always said, “Zhezhong is the smartest child in the village.” I am not writing this to boast but to be sure that you understand the conditions under which I was raised. I was, to be sure, brighter than the other children my age. I picked up reading and writing in no time at all. And I was able to calculate finances without any effort. To stretch myself and expand my knowledge, I wanted to continue my schooling and go on to higher-level classes. But my family was poor. They could only afford to send me to the village elementary school. When I realized that my dreams would never be realized, I suppose—like a tree whose roots are stymied and twisted and not allowed to grow—I began to nurture a dark jealousy in my heart, an ugly envy. I believed fate had determined that I would be born into this miserable existence.

Going elsewhere to seek work was the only way people like me could escape this fate. When I went to Guangzhou and Shenzhen, I worked long and hard, thinking all the while that eventually I also would be able to enjoy a wealthy life and save money just like the people from those regions. But after I came to Japan, I was overwhelmed with the feeling that my plans were utterly hopeless. Why might that be? Because the wealth of Japan was beyond compare even to that of China’s port cities.

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If I had not been Chinese, if I had been born Japanese, I surely would not be experiencing these hardships now. From the minute I entered this world I would have had access to so many delicious dishes that half the food would go to waste. To get water, I would just turn a tap. I could bathe as often as I liked, and when I wanted to go to the next village or a neighboring town, I wouldn’t have to walk or wait for a bus that might or might not ever come, I could take a train that rushes through the station every three minutes. I could study what I wanted when I wanted, I could pursue the career of my choice, I could wear attractive clothing, I’d have a cell phone and a car, and I’d end my life under the care of an excellent medical staff. The difference between the life I had in China and the one I might have had in Japan was so great, just imagining it caused me nothing but grief.

For so long I dreamed of this free and miraculous country, this Japan.

I envied all who lived here. And yet it is in the country for which I longed so desperately that I now find myself imprisoned. How ironic! Its pathetic, in fact. Back home in my impoverished village, my mother—

suffering from illness—awaits a letter from me, each day passing as slowly as a thousand autumn nights. If she ever finds out what has become of me, I will not be able to continue living.

Investigating officers, detectives, and Your Honor, I beseech you, after I serve my term for killing Yuriko Hirata, please let me return to my home in China. Let me spend the rest of my allotted time on earth plowing the barren land of my home village and contemplating my life and the crimes I have committed. I beg of you, please show me leniency. I throw myself on the mercy of the court.

I’ve been made a fool of all my life. My family was the poorest in our impoverished village. We lived in a cave, so the others looked down on us. There were those who spread rumors that my father was cursed by the gods of poverty. Even when we were invited to a wedding celebration or a festival, my father was almost always seated in the lowest seat.

My father was a Hakka Chinese. When he was a boy, my grandfather led him all the way from Hui’an in Fujian Province to a small village in Sichuan, and they began to live in a little corner there. The local toughs 2 3 2

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were all Han Chinese. Not a single Hakka had ever lived in the village, and they told my grandfather they would not allow him to build a house.

That’s how we came to live in a cave.

My grandfather was a diviner, a fortune-teller. I was told he started off with a successful business in the village but before long he lost favor because all his fortunes forecast bad luck. Eventually, he ran out of business altogether and our family slipped down to the depths of poverty. My grandfather refused to read anyone’s fortune after that, even if they asked him to, and even at home he usually refused to speak to anyone. If he ever were to open his mouth, those around him would stand on guard, worried about his ill-omened prophecies. Even though he practiced his craft with great earnestness, people hated him for it. So he decided he’d be better off saying nothing at all.

After a while my grandfather ceased moving as well. His hair and beard grew long, and he sat inside all day long like Bodhidharma himself.