Nocturne of Remembrance (8 page)

1. I serve as a welfare officer in the Taishido district. Prior to that, I was an elementary school teacher, but I retired five years ago and have since been working as a welfare officer. My wife has already passed away, and my only blood relations are my sons, Shingo and Takahiro, who both managed to start their own families, such as they were. I am currently living with my
second son and his family and am enjoying a fairly carefree life. Shingo’s house was purchased. He prospered at his former company and was able to get a mortgage when he was thirty or so. Conveniently, there was a real find in our neighborhood, “close enough that soup wouldn’t get cold” as Shingo put it to me, so I helped with the down payment. Still, I always thought that my son wasn’t so much sharp-eyed as prone to jump on the bandwagon. I became sure of this when I saw him not make any decent effort to find another job after his company took a turn for the worse. When the head of the household does not work, the family’s daily existence changes drastically to the extent that you can see it from the outside. Just watching the family aroused my pity, and although I thought I was being meddlesome, I frequently dropped by to see how they were doing. I particularly felt sorry for my two granddaughters. Even though their father was in the house all day after Akiko went to work, he didn’t even make any decent conversation with them. Even young children can recognize a strained relationship between their parents. Their home, which should be a place of repose, had become one of tension and hatred. But even in the middle of that mess, as I observed her, Akiko was a very accomplished daughter-in-law. She worked not only her share, but also that of my son, who had closed himself off in his room. On top of that, she diligently fulfilled her role as a mother. I thought that she was too good for Shingo.

2. On May 5th, I received a call from Shingo’s next-door neighbor. I mean the Saito residence, which I had asked to let me know if there were any loud fights or something irregular. The idea was to mediate any quarrels, but in the worst case, I was ready to take the girls back to my house for a night. When I arrived and rang the doorbell, no one answered. The lights seemed to be on and the door was unlocked, so I entered. Calling out to Shingo and Akiko and walking through the
hall, I came to the door of the dressing area, which was open in my direction, and there I discovered Shingo’s dead body. He was spread out in the nude on a blue tarp. I was speechless. From the bathroom on the other side I could hear the shower running. For a moment, I suspected that there had been a robbery, and my hand reflexively pushed open the door. There I found Akiko doggedly washing off the blood on the walls. She seemed greatly shocked to see me but immediately resigned herself, dropped what she was doing, and asked me to call the police.

3. When I saw the wretched state of the bathroom, I thought that what I had been afraid of had occurred in the worst form possible. Shingo must have been the cause, but there was no need to kill him. His nude form was pitiful, but I knew that like on the detective dramas on TV absolutely nothing at the crime scene should be touched until the police arrived, so I calmed down Akiko, and the two of us waited together.

4. I have described the circumstances of my discovery of the dead body to police personnel, and there is no mistake in the above. If there is anything else you need from me in the future, I will certainly cooperate.

1. I have been employed as a CPA at the Midorikawa Accounting Firm since April 2006. I am a colleague of Akiko Tsuda. Today I will explain my relationship with Ms. Tsuda.

2. Because accounting firms perform accounting and tax-related work, for which they employ CPAs like myself and licensed tax accountants, it’s considered a workplace where highly expert knowledge is needed. Actually, however, there are many routine tasks that do not require such expertise. Our work may involve financial matters, but there aren’t that many specialists in corporate finance, so we end up preparing financial charts and tax forms based on business accounting and sometimes even keep the books for our clients.
Take tax forms: before they can be prepared the receipts must be categorized, but anyone who knows the basics can handle that. Ms. Tsuda joined the firm two years ago as a part-time clerk, and most of the work allotted to her was of that routine variety. She had been at another accounting firm prior to her
marriage, so for that kind of work she only needed some occasional advice.

3. Including our boss Mr. Midorikawa, there are three CPAs at the Midorikawa Accounting Firm, but preparing tax forms primarily fell on me. There was a lot of routine work involved, so as a matter of course I often teamed up with Ms. Tsuda. During tax-return season, the volume of cases skyrockets and we sometimes work well into the night. Even though she was a part-timer, there were days that Ms. Tsuda’s work extended past 6 p.m., so as a way to thank her for her hard work, I treated her a number of times. However, our relationship was only that of coworkers, and I harbored no special sentiments toward her. To begin with, I cohabit with my girlfriend and plan to make it official in the near future. Given the situation, the idea of cheating on the side with a coworker who meant very little to me is absurd.

4. Indeed, when I first heard the story from a detective, I was perplexed. Not even once did I send such signals to Ms. Tsuda. Conversely, I don’t recall her ever troubling me with any of her own. To be frank, my impression of her was merely that of “a hard-working mother,” and I simply would not consider her in a romantic way. If by chance Ms. Tsuda did construe my behavior towards her in such a manner, it was a complete misunderstanding on her part.

5. There is no mistake in the foregoing explanation of my relationship with Ms. Akiko Tsuda. If there is anything else you need from me in the future, I will certainly cooperate.

1. This is a murder case in which the husband Shingo Tsuda (at the time, thirty-nine years old; hereafter referred to as “the victim”) had considerably lost his will to work after being laid off, worsening the couple’s relationship, and the victim was stabbed to death after a quarrel.

2. Regarding the formation process of the accused’s motive for committing this crime, the defense claimed that the accused acted purely out of a desire to get away from the discord of
her home life between her and the victim. The accused herself testified in this court that she was supporting the family instead of her husband and was worn out from her daily labors, which led to a crime of impulse, thus locating the cause in the victim’s self-indulgent lifestyle.
Nevertheless, in addition to the accused’s aforementioned motive, she stated that she aspired to marry a colleague. While the accused held that the violence she experienced at the victim’s hands immediately before the crime triggered it, according to the testimony of the investigators who rushed to the scene immediately after the crime, no signs of abuse were visible on her. Given that the accused’s testimony has no material basis, the court can only conclude that the motive behind this crime was that living together with the victim had become a nuisance from which the accused wanted to escape in order to lead a new life with her colleague that she had pictured all on her own.
That is to say, the motive in this case was extremely selfish and hasty and allows no room for sympathy.

3. The manner of this crime as judged are that the accused offered to wash the back of the victim who was in the bath; stabbed the now totally defenseless victim in the neck from behind with a knife that she was concealing, as many as three times, deeply, causing him to bleed to death; and prepared a blue tarp to attempt to dispose of the body: the manner was cool-headed and premeditated. The victim believed that the discord from the quarrel with the accused had been resolved and was in a tranquil state when he was suddenly stabbed. His regret and indignation are too much to imagine.

(omitted)

5. The accused prepared a blue tarp to dispose of the body and was washing the blood to remove traces of the crime, and only happened to be discovered by her father-in-law who
unexpectedly visited the house. It cannot be refuted that if he had not visited the house, she would have proceeded to dispose of the body. Her naked attempt to escape responsibility must be termed extremely heinous.

1. Assertion of the defendant and her attorney
There were no points of contention since the accused admitted to the court that she committed the murder and did not object to the reported aspects.

2. Regarding the cause of the incident, the accused attributed it to the fact that the victim had abandoned his responsibility to work and was living idly. While it can be surmised that, in fact, the victim had lost his will to work, that offers no positive reason to kill him. The victim’s father and younger brother lived nearby, and it should have still been possible to hold a family conference to attend to the matter. It must be said once again that in perpetrating the crime in the absence of such honest effort, the accused acted hastily. Thus, the defendant’s assertion that the prosecution’s recommended sentence is too severe has no merit.

3. Regarding the formation process of murderous intent and its particulars, as mentioned above, the defendant’s assertion that the victim’s violence led her to act on impulse is very feeble. For instance, the knife that was used as the weapon had not been in the living room, where the dispute supposedly took place, but in a toolbox in a closet in the corner of the hallway. Having confirmed that the victim was taking a bath, the accused expressly went to the closet to obtain the murder weapon, inveigled the victim to lower his guard, and seized the opportunity to stab him to death from behind. Therefore, the malicious intent was hardly impulsive; in fact, it appears to be
a premeditated act with a clear intention to kill. Ultimately, none of the circumstances raised by the defense negate the accused’s self-centeredness, and there is ample reason to admit murderous intent.

1. The prosecutor requests a prison sentence for the defendant, and based on the above circumstances the accused bears an extremely grave responsibility and clearly should be held accountable for murder. Furthermore, there is no reason to reduce the prosecution’s recommended sentence.