Junko Furuta, The Art of brutality

The Brutality against The Japanese High school Girl

Junko Furuta was a Japanese high school student who was abducted, raped, tortured and then subsequently murdered. Her case was called the "concrete-encased high school girl murder case" due to her body being discovered in a concrete drum.

The abuse was mainly perpetrated by four male teenagers: Hiroshi Miyano, Jō Ogura, Shinji Minato, and Yasushi Watanabe, over a period of 44 days from 25 November 1988 to 4 January 1989. The crime has been described as the worst case of juvenile delinquency in post-war Japan. The perpetrators' sentences ranged from juvenile detention to 20 years in prison.

As far as Shinji Minato and his friends, Hiroshi Miyano, Jō Ogura, and Yasushi Watanabe, were concerned, Junko Furuta was their captive, their sex slave, and their punching bag — for 44 days straight. And tragically, on her last day of horrific torture, she would become their murder victim.

Background

Junko Furuta was born in Misato, Saitama, Japan in 1971. And up until her kidnapping at age 17, she was a normal girl. Furuta was known for being pretty, bright, and getting good grades at Yashio-Minami High School. Despite her “good girl” reputation — she didn’t drink, smoke, or use drugs — she was quite popular at school and seemingly had a bright future ahead of her.

But everything changed in November 1988.

At the time, her future kidnapper Hiroshi Miyano was known as the school bully, often bragging about his connections to the Yakuza. According to some of their classmates, Miyano had developed somewhat of a crush on Furuta and was enraged when she turned him down. After all, no one had ever dared to reject him, especially after he told them of his Yakuza friends.

A few days after the rejection, Miyano and Minato were hanging around a local park in Misato, preying on innocent women. As experienced gang rapists, Miyano and Minato were experts at spotting potential targets.

The Abduction Of Junko Furuta

Miyano and Minato wandered around Misato with the intention of robbing and raping local women. They spotted Furuta riding her bicycle home after she had finished a shift at her job. Under Miyano's orders, Minato kicked Furuta off her bike and fled the scene. Miyano, under the pretence of witnessing the attack by coincidence, approached Furuta and offered to walk her home safely.

Upon gaining her trust, he raped her in the warehouse, and again in a nearby hotel, threatening to kill her. From the hotel, Miyano called Minato and his other friends, Jō Ogura and Yasushi Watanabe, and bragged to them about the rape.

Ogura reportedly asked Miyano to keep her in captivity in order to allow numerous people to sexually assault her. The group had a history of gang rape and had recently kidnapped and raped another girl, whom they released afterward.

Miyano took Furuta to a nearby park, where Minato, Ogura, and Watanabe were waiting. They had learned her home address from a notebook in her backpack and told her they knew where she lived, and that Yakuza members would kill her family if she attempted to escape.

The four boys overpowered her, took her to a house in the Ayase district of Adachi, and gang-raped her. The house, which was owned by Minato's parents, soon became their regular gang hangout.

On 27 November, Furuta's parents contacted the police about her disappearance. To discourage further investigation, the kidnappers forced her to call her mother three times to convince her that she had run away but was safe and staying with some friends.

They also forced Furuta to stop the police investigation. When Minato's parents were present, Furuta was forced to act as his girlfriend. They dropped this pretence when it became clear that Minato's parents would not report them to the police. Minato's parents later claimed they did not intervene because they were afraid as their own son was increasingly violent toward them.

Inside Junko Furuta’s 44 Days Of Hell

The group held Furuta captive in the Minato residence for 44 days, where they repeatedly beat, raped, and tortured her. They also invited other men and teenage boys home and encouraged them to take turns raping her.

According to the group's statements, the four shaved her pubic hair, forced her to dance to music while naked and masturbate in front of them, and left her on the balcony in the middle of the night with little clothing.

Over the course of those 44 days, Junko Furuta was raped over 400 times by Miyano and his friends, as well as other boys and men that the four captors knew.

While torturing her, They would insert iron bars, scissors, skewers, fireworks, and even a lit lightbulb into her vagina and anus, destroying her internal anatomy, which left her unable to defecate or urinate properly.

They force-fed her with large amounts of alcohol, milk and water. She was also forced to smoke multiple cigarettes at once and inhale paint thinner.

When they weren’t raping her, the boys forced her to do other terrible things, like eating live cockroaches, masturbating in front of them, and drinking her own urine. Her body, still very much alive at that point, was hung from the ceiling and beaten with golf clubs, bamboo sticks, and iron rods. Her eyelids and genitals were burned with cigarettes, lighters, and hot wax.

In one incident, Miyano repeatedly burned Furuta's legs and arms with lighter fluid. By the end of December, Furuta was severely malnourished after being fed only small amounts of food and eventually only milk. Due to her severe injuries and infected burns, she became unable to go to the downstairs toilet, and became confined to the floor of Minato's room in a state of extreme weakness.

Furuta's appearance was drastically altered from the brutality of the attacks. Her face was so swollen that it was difficult to make out her features. Her body was also severely crippled, giving off a rotting smell that caused the four boys to lose sexual interest in her.

Death

On 4 January 1989, after losing a game of mahjong against another person the night before, Miyano decided to take his anger out on Furuta by pouring lighter fluid on her body and setting her on fire.

Furuta allegedly made attempts to put out the fire, but gradually became unresponsive.They continued to punch her, ignited a candle and dripped hot wax on her face, placed two short candles on her eyelids, and forced her to drink her own urine.

After she was kicked, she fell onto a stereo unit and collapsed into a fit of convulsions. Since she was bleeding profusely, and pus was emerging from her infected burns, the four boys covered their hands in plastic bags. They continued to beat her and dropped an iron exercise ball onto her stomach several times.

And the torture didn’t stop until Furuta was dead.

The attack reportedly lasted two hours. Furuta eventually succumbed to her wounds and died.

Less than 24 hours after her death, Minato's brother called to tell him that Furuta appeared to be dead. Afraid of being penalised for murder, the group wrapped her body in blankets and shoved her into a travel bag. They then put her body in a 55-US-gallon (210-litre) drum and filled it with wet concrete. And for a while, they thought they would never be caught.

Investigation

On 23 January 1989, Miyano and Ogura were arrested for the gang-rape of the 19-year-old girl whom they had kidnapped in December. On 29 March, two police officers came to interrogate them, as women's underwear had been found at their addresses.

During the interrogation, Miyano believed that one of the officers was aware of his culpability in Furuta's murder. Thinking that Jō Ogura had confessed to the crimes against Furuta, Miyano told the police where to find Furuta's body.

The police were initially puzzled by the confession, as they had been referring to the murder of a different woman and her seven-year-old son that had occurred nine days prior to Furuta's abduction, a case which remains unsolved.

The police found the drum containing Furuta's body the following day. She was identified via fingerprints. On 1 April 1989, Ogura was arrested for a separate sexual assault, and subsequently re-arrested for Furuta's murder. The arrest of Watanabe, Minato, and Minato's brother followed. Several other accomplices who participated in abusing and raping Furuta were officially identified, including Tetsuo Nakamura and Koichi Ihara, who were charged with rape after their DNA was found on and inside the victim's body

The Aftermath Of A Heinous Crime

In the end, the case that the police had been referencing had been unrelated to Furuta, and Miyano had unwittingly turned himself in for her murder. Within days, all four boys were in custody.

But despite the mountain of evidence against them — and their grisly torture of Junko Furuta — the boys received shockingly light sentences.

Hiroshi Miyano was sentenced to 20 years, Shinji Minato received a term of five-to-nine years, Jō Ogura was sentenced to five-to-10 years, and Yasushi Watanabe received a term of five-to-seven years.

Since they were teenagers at the time of Junko Furuta’s murder, their youth was linked to their light sentences — though it is widely believed that their connections to the Yakuza also had something to do with it. Had the case been heard elsewhere or had the boys been just a couple of years older, they would have likely been dealt capital punishments.

Instead, all four of Furuta’s killers were eventually released from prison. It’s believed that Watanabe is the only one who has not reoffended since his release. To this day, many in Japan feel that justice has not been served in Furuta’s case. And tragically, it doesn’t seem like that will ever happen.