Tsutomu Miyazaki

Four girls, 1988–1989

Between 1988 and 1989, four young girls were abducted and murdered in Japan: Mari Konno, aged 4; Masami Yoshizawa, aged 7; Erika Nanba, aged 4; and Ayako Nomoto, aged 5. The killings caused deep public fear, made worse by letters the killer sent to the media and to the victims' families, taunting the police. The man later convicted of the crimes, Tsutomu Miyazaki, became one of the most infamous criminals in modern Japanese history.

This case file avoids describing what was done to the victims. Reporting at the time and later court findings documented extreme acts against the children's bodies; those details are not needed to understand the case and are omitted here out of respect for the girls and their families.

Arrest

Miyazaki was arrested on 23 July 1989 after he was caught trying to take indecent photographs of a six-year-old girl near her home in Tokyo. Police then connected him to the earlier abductions. Searching his home, investigators found 5,763 videotapes, including violent and pornographic live-action films as well as anime.

The "otaku murderer" and a media panic

That collection shaped how the case was reported. Newspapers and television labelled Miyazaki the "otaku murderer", using a word that had previously described introverted, obsessive fans. According to Anime News Network, the case and essayist Akio Nakamori's writing about it both popularised the term and turned public opinion against it, so that fans of anime and manga were stigmatised as a group for the crimes of one man. The case also fed calls in Japan for tighter limits on violent and pornographic videos.

A trial lasting years

Miyazaki's trial began in 1990 and lasted seven years. In 1997 he was sentenced to death. The Tokyo High Court upheld the sentence in 2001, and Japan's Supreme Court confirmed it in January 2006, exhausting his ordinary appeals.

Execution without notice

Miyazaki was hanged at the Tokyo Detention Centre on 17 June 2008, aged 45, on the same day as two other death-row prisoners. The executions were ordered by Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama, an outspoken supporter of capital punishment, who cited the "indescribable cruelty" of the crimes. Thirteen prisoners were hanged during Hatoyama's first six months in office; by comparison, only one inmate had been executed in the whole of 2005.

Miyazaki's lawyer, Maiko Tagusari, said he had been executed without any prior notice to her. She said he was mentally ill and had received psychiatric treatment in detention for more than ten years, and that she had been preparing a request for a retrial and had written to the justice minister on 30 May asking him not to carry out the execution.

Japan's death penalty since then

Miyazaki's case remains part of the debate over how Japan administers capital punishment. Prisoners are usually told of their execution only one to two hours beforehand, and families are generally informed afterwards. In 2021 two death-row inmates sued the state, arguing that same-day notification violates constitutional guarantees of due process and dignity; on 15 April 2024 the Osaka District Court dismissed the suit without ruling on whether the practice is constitutional. At the end of March 2024, 109 people were on death row, and no executions had been carried out in 2023.

In September 2024, Iwao Hakamada, who spent longer on death row than anyone else in the world, was acquitted after a court found he had been wrongly convicted, renewing scrutiny of wrongful convictions. Executions resumed on 27 June 2025, when Takahiro Shiraishi was hanged in Japan's first execution since July 2022. Public support remains high: a 2024 government survey found that 83 percent of respondents regarded the death penalty as "unavoidable".

Why the case still matters

The Miyazaki case is remembered in Japan for three reasons. It was a horrifying series of crimes against small children that shook the country at the end of the 1980s. It produced a media panic that stigmatised a whole community of fans. And its ending, an execution carried out while his lawyer was preparing a retrial request and arguing that he was mentally ill, illustrates the secrecy and short notice that critics of Japan's death-penalty system continue to challenge.