OFFICE OF THE TOKYO METROPOLITAN POLICE DEPARTMENT
O¯i Takanawa Police Station, Shinagawa Ward, Case # 001294-23E-1994
Autopsy performed by Hiroshi Matsuda, MD
Fuminori Asao, PhD, Chief Toxicologist.
Date: 27/3/94Time: 0830
Name of Deceased: Satō, RinaDate of Birth: 28/3/63
Age: 30Race: Japanese
Sex: FemaleDate of Death: 23/3/94
Body Identified by: Yoshitake Sarashima, father of the deceased
Preliminary Report
The body is that of a normally developed Japanese female measuring 160 cm, weighing 53 kg, and appearing generally consistent with the stated age of thirty years. The eyes are open, irises are dark brown, pupils 0.3 cm, corneas are cloudy. The hair is brown, undyed, layered, and approximately 25 cm in length at the longest point. The body is cold and unembalmed.
There are several scars present on the body. An incision found over the McBurney point of the abdomen suggests an appendectomy (confirmed by absent appendix in internal examination). Surgical scarring is also present on the lower abdomen, which, in combination with the extended pelvic girdle, indicates that the deceased was delivered of a child by Caesarean section. Residual burns are present on the right and left ulnar forearms and wrists in addition to superficial scarring on the thumbs and index fingers of both hands. Interviews with family suggest these injuries resulted from cooking and domestic work.
Rigor mortis is discernible in the muscles of the face, neck, upper body and extremities. There is also lividity in the tissues of the lower back, buttocks and distal portions of the limbs. This white compressed tissue and corresponding dark purple discolouration – a result of blood settling in the limbs – indicate that the body lay flat for some hours after death, before being moved or held in an upright seated position. Injuries to the head include bruising and swelling to the scalp above the occipital bone and a contusion to the base of the chin. There is also substantial discolouration and congestion in the face of the deceased with petechial haemorrhages present in the conjunctivae and sclera of the eyes as well as the mucosa of the lips and interior of the mouth. These injuries manifest most commonly in cases of strangulation where the pressure within the veins of the neck, face and eyes rises suddenly and forcefully.
In the tissue of the deceased’s neck two horizontal ligature furrows are present, which encircle and cross just below the laryngeal prominence. The angle of these grooves forms a shallow V shape on the anterior of the neck and indicates that string or twine was slipped over the deceased’s head and pulled taut. Internal examination revealed that haemorrhaging from the ligatures had penetrated the subdermal tissues of the neck. The width of these furrows varies between 0.3 cm and 0.5 cm and matches that of the suspected ligature used – a sample of household string found at the crime scene. Several white fibres also thought to originate from the string are embedded in the furrows of the skin.
Although these injuries point to the manner of death being ligature strangulation, there is evidence to suggest that manual strangulation occurred as well. The neck is covered in a combination of severe contusions, namely, diffuse round bruises on either side of the trachea and deep crescent-shaped nail marks found at the sides of the neck. Internal examination of the body revealed bleeding in the muscles of the neck and also that the hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage had fractured in response to trauma.
There are a number of defensive wounds on the body including bruising to the left and right forearms and wrists, abrasions across the back of each hand, and a torn fingernail on the right hand that are thought to have occurred as the result of a struggle.
Samples of blood and epithelial cells were taken from beneath all the fingernails of the deceased and sent for testing in addition to swabs from the face, neck, torso and genitals.
Examination of the genital system reveals evidence of recent sexual activity (fluids removed for analysis). However, there is no trauma present in the genital tissue nor any indication that the sexual contact was forcible and coerced. The deceased is not pregnant.
Opinion
Time of Death: Body temperature, rigor and livor mortis assessed at the crime scene indicate an estimated time of death between 1700 and 1900 on 23/3/1994.
Manner of Death: Strangulation
Cause of Death: Cerebral hypoxia
Remarks: Blood samples taken from the deceased tested O positive. Further samples of blood found beneath the victim’s nails tested as AB positive (uncommon, found in only 20 per cent of Japanese males). Initial DNA profiling has identified this blood sample as matching that of her alleged assailant. Further skin swabs taken from the body have revealed the saliva of a second male. The viability of these samples suggests contact with the victim near the time of death. Further tests are awaiting approval.
Evidence Collected
1.Twenty autopsy photographs of the body clothed and unclothed
2.One white turtleneck T-shirt, size Small
3.One pair navy blue denim dungarees stained with pink paint, size Small
4.One pair white underwear
5.One white bra
6.Two white socks
7.Two smooth-textured gold stud earrings 0.5 cm in diameter
8.One gold wristwatch with braided metal band measuring 1.7 cm in width, 16 cm in length
9.Set of fingerprints taken
10.Ten fingernails clipped, scraped, and sent for analysis
11.Fifty head, eyebrow, eyelash and pubic hair samples taken
12.Twenty swab samples collected from the body and sent for DNA analysis
13.Five vaginal and anal swabs retained and tested for semen
14.Samples of blood, bile, tissue (heart, lung, brain, kidney, liver, spleen) retained
15.Right pleural blood and bile submitted for toxicologic analysis. Stomach contents saved
16.One post-mortem CT scan
17. One post-mortem MRI
// Hiroshi Matsuda, MD
Tokyo Prefecture Office of the Coroner
April 27, 1994
Home
That evening in Meguro, standing outside the white metal gate of the house I still shared with my grandfather, I realised I had not seen my home clearly in quite some time. The image I had created in my mind had been generated years before, while in front of me reality had shifted. We see what we expect to see; I am proof of that.
When my mother was alive, the front garden had been full of glossy white pebbles, and tiny shrubs bordering the tiled driveway. As I opened the gate, I saw what time had done in her absence. The small green tiles were still swept clean, but the magnolia that used to reside in a corner beside the gate now threatened to burst onto the drive itself. The walkway, once polished, glistened with mould, and the pebbled borders were shrouded with a layer of speckled grey film.
I unlocked the front door and stepped into the hallway. For a second, I caught myself listening for Hannae in the kitchen, for the clatter of cooking utensils as she prepared the evening meal, but she was not there. She had left us when I turned twenty, just after my coming-of-age day, and had gone south to live with her family.
The house was silent as I put on my slippers and padded down the dimly lit stairway to the basement. There the familiar smell of my family home gave way to a damp chill. The basement was our safe haven during earthquakes. The walls and floors were reinforced concrete, secured by thick pillars in each corner. My grandfather’s passion for filing continued there. All those things he did not need but could not throw away were shelved and boxed by category. Once a year, Grandpa would employ a cleaning company to dust everything, and then he himself would go down to make sure that nothing had been stolen. Taking a deep breath of the cold air, I walked towards the section labelled ‘Electronics’.
With the VCR in my arms, I paused in the front h
all to collect my bag with the videos and case file. The overhead lamp cast a shaft of light into Grandpa’s study, illuminating the books within. I had spent so much time in that room that I had begun to think of it as mine, but this too had proved to be an illusion.
From where I stood, I could see the shelves that I had colonised while studying for my degree and training with the Supreme Court in Wakō. When working with the judiciary, I had drafted several custodial sentences. Those that were approved were carried out. I had collected manuals on prisons in Tokyo and the surrounding prefectures. Most of them were academic, but others were published for the curious reading public and filled with cartoon drawings of prisoners’ summer and winter uniforms, men sitting in the seiza position awaiting cell inspection, or kneeling with their rice bowls in regulated rows. I had read them all, but that night I viewed them differently from the books I had studied. They would feel different too, if I picked them up. They would feel personal.
Looking at those volumes in the darkness of my home, I was sure of one thing: I did not want to know the fate of Kaitarō Nakamura; I only wanted to know what he had done to me and mine.
Upstairs in my bedroom, I set everything down in front of the small brown television in the corner. This at least was just the same, although I had not watched it in some time. I remembered how in the evenings after school when Grandpa returned home from work, he would run upstairs to see me and then place his hand on the back of the TV. If it was warm he knew that I had been watching soaps all afternoon instead of completing my homework. I learned quickly about timing and the benefits of giving the machine an hour to cool down.
As I set up the VCR, I saw my room reflected in that same small screen. My bed, neatly made, the grey coverlet with white flowers folded on the end. The dry-cleaned suit I had picked up that morning hung on the door of my wardrobe while novels, magazines, an old textbook were piled up on the window seat next to my battered white tiger, Tora. By the window, the white mirror and dresser, at which I applied my make-up and brushed my hair each morning, looked as it always had; only that night I could see the years of dressing-up, summer festivals and school concerts in its lacquered surface. That bureau contained layers of my childhood, memories that had gathered at the bottom of my life, like silt.
I sat down at the dressing table and began to sift through the first of the drawers. It was filled with lipsticks and dried nail polish from the convenience store, a high-school archery certificate, and, finally, a baseball team photograph. I was sitting next to Kimiko, whom I hated for all of fifth grade; even looking at her now made my childhood irritation resurface.
In the next drawer was a photograph of my parents at a party. They were dressed as pirates in bohemian chic; my mother was wearing a beaded necklace across her forehead. All my pictures of her were in the family album downstairs, and there were very few of my father, so I was stunned to find this one. My parents looked glamorous, impenetrable, but no matter how much I stared at them, I could not tell what they were thinking. I tucked the photograph away and turned to a pile of notebooks topped with my ‘stress’ ball in the shape of a globe, which I used to squeeze and toss from hand to hand when revising. I remembered the thud of the foam against my palm as I memorised fact after fact. There was a replica Roman coin that Grandpa had bought me in Italy along with pictures from our trip. I had just started at the juku that would prepare me for applying to Tōdai, and as a treat Grandpa decided to take me abroad. I smiled at a photo of Grandpa ecstatic on the steps of the chapel in Assisi and one of me, constrained by my adolescence, tired and bored, leaning against the bus.
In the final drawer, I found a copy of the national anthem, a flag from a school parade, and a stack of birthday cards from my mother. At the base of these, beneath the last card she had given me, was an envelope.
We erase events from our lives, experiences that do not fit in with the storeys we tell ourselves. Still, there are some memories that hover on the periphery. They reach out to you from another time and transform a moment of joy into one of shame. From then on these recollections stay with you. They linger on the edge of your vision and say, ‘Look at what you are.’
Inside the envelope was a photograph. I picked it up, feeling the waxy texture of it between my fingers. The print was grainy and old, and it depicted a group of three on a beach in late summer. The sun had a soft, filtered quality to it and the air was tinged with heat. In the background the waves curled crisply on the shore, edged in white foam, and yachts floated in a small open harbour. In the foreground was a family.
The woman was wearing a light cardigan over her cotton dress; the collar was high and narrow framing her slender neck. She was laughing at the pair beside her – a little girl in red shorts and a T-shirt was kicking her heels in the air and sticking her tongue out at the man holding her aloft. He grinned back at her. The sun was setting behind them, and apart from the flash of his smile, the man’s face was in shadow. But if you look closely at this picture, if you focus in on the man and the little girl, you can see that their eyes are looking into each other’s and that they are happy. Standing by my bed where I had tucked myself in night after night – alone for all the nights of my childhood – I let the photograph slip from my fingers.
The case file must have been beige originally; in the light of my bedroom I could see that it had been smudged grey over time by fingers stained with cheap ink. Inside were forensic tests, interview notes and witness statements, all of them carefully typed and official, but there were handwritten notes as well, some on Post-its or scrawled on sheets of lined paper. As I read them, they began to shift and coalesce. An image began to form, providing a glimpse of the man my mother loved. For she must have loved him; surely she could not have left me for anything less.
Once in police custody a person may be held for up to twenty-three days without charge or legal counsel, and during that time the state will decide when they eat, sleep or bathe. Interrogations can be endless, conducted with fresh relays of police officers. Mild violence such as a slap is accepted, though kicking is a step too far. I knew from Yurie Kagashima’s notes what the detectives thought of Kaitarō Nakamura – they viewed him as a monster and a murderer. They judged his reticence as defiance, his rejection of their confession as a lack of remorse. I could understand their attitude and in that moment I shared it, for if he was the man who killed my mother then he deserved no quarter.
Prosecutors have a mandate to solve a crime and to get to the whole truth of the matter. Often, this is achieved by obtaining a full confession, which, once signed, is transformed into legal evidence: the key to a swift and easy trial. I saw several versions were drafted for Kaitarō Nakamura, first by the police detectives and finally by the lead prosecutor himself. For a long time Kaitarō Nakamura refused to sign them, but he did sign the last. That night in my bedroom, I could not imagine the reason he would do so.
Beside me on the floor were the interrogation tapes given to Yurie Kagashima at the prosecutor’s discretion. He was not required to share the tapes, so he must have thought them robust, yet I wondered what Yurie Kagashima had seen there for she had marked three of them with an asterisk in red pen. Towards the end of the investigation, the prosecutor conducted all the interviews of Kaitarō Nakamura himself. His interrogation began on 12 April, 1994, the date of the first marked tape. Slipping it into the VCR, I rose to switch off the lamps around my bedroom. Then I sat before the screen, alone in a pool of light; beyond me there was darkness.
The film flickered with black-and-white dots and then suddenly the image stabilised. He was sitting in a chair, looking away from the camera as though refusing to acknowledge it. His head was tilted down towards his lap. His hair was long and unwashed. I could see bruises on his face through weeks of stubble. He had a livid scratch on his cheek, purple and raised, yet probably older than his confinement because the edges had already healed. And then there beneath it all, like a shadow, his former self:
dark, young and vital. The man my mother would have known. The opening of the interview was lost on my intake of breath as suddenly Kaitarō looked up at the camera and smiled.
‘I love my job. I’m good at it.’
‘Answer the question, Mr Nakamura.’
‘There is no one-word answer.’
‘She was a job? A target?’
Kaitarō laughs. ‘She was my life,’ he says, glancing at the room around him, from the grey walls to the opaque glass and the police officers behind it and finally back to the man sitting opposite him, ‘and she’ll have it in the end too.’
‘When did you first encounter the victim? Mr Satō has told us that you first met his wife at a market in Ebisu. Is this true?’
Kaitarō leans over the table. ‘Have you met people like me before?’
‘No, you are the first.’
Kaitarō clasps his hands in front of him, long elegant hands that might hand a child a cone of ice cream.
‘Your questions are ridiculous,’ he says, looking over his interrogator, taking in his manicured nails, his suit. ‘You are all ridiculous.’
The interviewer’s lips twitch but he doesn’t say anything. The room must be hot under the lights for a sheen of sweat has developed at Kaitarō’s temples and above his chapped lips, but he does not move to wipe the moisture away. For a second, he flicks a glance at the portfolio on the table between them and the badge pinned to its rim. It is a white chrysanthemum with golden leaves surrounding a red sun – the climatic extremes of autumn frost and scorching sunlight – designed to remind its bearer of the constant principles and harsh judgements expected from those who enforce the law. Kaitarō may not understand the badge, but the man before him is no simple detective and Kaitarō knows it.
‘Mr Satō supplied you with information about his wife. Was he very involved in the case?’ Kaitarō lifts his chin; his eyes gleam in response.
What's Left of Me is Yours Page 7
