AIRI KINOSHITA

, a seven year old first-grade student from the Japanese city of Hiroshima, was sexually assaulted and murdered by Juan Carlos Pizarro Yagi in November 2005. Yagi, a Peruvian of Japanese descent, already had a record as a child sexual offender at that time in Peru.

Contents

The murder

Arrest and trial

Reaction in Japan

See also

Eternal link

The murder

An autopsy revealed that she had been murdered within 90 minutes of leaving school at lunchtime on Tuesday, November 22, 2005. She died of suffocation caused by pressure to the neck. A local resident spotted the tape bound cardboard box in which her body was found in a vacant lot in Hiroshima's Aki Ward. The box had been used as packaging for an oven sold in Higashi. Police said they suspected her killer lured Airi away as she was walking home and strangled her soon afterwards. Her schoolbag was found alongside a road about 300 meters away. She had been carrying a 'crime prevention buzzer' but it was missing when her body was found.
300 people attended her funeral in Yatsushiro, Kumamoto Prefecture, her father Kenichi's hometown. The mourners included Ground Self-Defense Force members who served with Kenichi. "I was deeply shocked when I was told by police that she was probably murdered," Kenichi said in an address during the funeral. "I feel animosity toward the person who committed the crime. I hope the culprit is caught soon."

Arrest and trial

Japanese police arrested 'Juan Carlos Pizarro Yagi' on November 30, 2005. Japanese mass media guessed that the criminal was Otaku or Figure moe zoku before the arrest. It was completely denied by the arrest. Many Japanese otaku criticized Japanese mass media.
At first her real name was reported on Japanese mass media. When sexual assault of her was reported, Japanese mass media stopped reporting her real name. The bereaved, however, wanted her real name reported. On June 26, 2006, her father Kenichi said
: ''あいりは『広島市の小１女児』ではない。あいりはここで生きてきた。実名を使って問題ない。''[1]
: ''Airi wa Hiroshima-shi no shōichi joji dewa nai. Airi wa koko de ikite kita. Jitsumei o tsukatte mondai nai.''
: ''Airi is not 'a Hiroshima first-grade girl'. Airi lived here. It is all right to use her real name.''
After the speech, Japanese mass media reported her real name again. The speech made the name Airi Kinoshita famous in Japan. In Japanese many cases of little girl sexual assault murder, the victim's real names were usually taboo for the bereaved. For example, the name Kaede Ariyama was hidden by Japanese mass media though the bereaved announced her name and picture in September 2006.
On July 4, 2006, Torres Yagi was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Hiroshima District Court for sexually assaulting and killing the girl. He had dumped the girl's body close to his apartment. Prosecutors appealed against the leniency of the sentence, demanding the death penalty.

Reaction in Japan

Kinoshita's death shocked Japan, where youngsters in Japan have traditionally walked home from school without fear. Government polls have shown that nearly 9 in 10 Japanese believe their country is less safe than it was a decade ago, and most blame foreigners and young Japanese for rising crime, although the rates for similar crimes are, in reality, steady. "The number of violent crimes against children has [given rise to] great concern in society and is something that must be given great attention," the Japanese Justice Ministry said in it's annual report on crime in Japan for 2005.
105 children under 13 were murdered in Japan in 2005, a fall of six from 111 in 2004 and down from a record 121 1998m but still one of the highest levels of the last decade. There were 72 reported rape cases of child rape in 2005, down from 74 the previous year. Overall crime rates declined for the third consecutive year in the year of her death, with the number of penal code offences known to police falling by 8.8 percent, to 3,125,216 cases among Japan's 127 million people. The ministry said it remained concerned by the recidivism rate of sex offenders. Of those released in 1999 and followed for five years, 39.9 percent were arrested again on some charge.

See also

★ Kaede Ariyama

Eternal link

★ Japan's top 2005 stories: Murders of young girls horrify Japan

★ JAPAN: Slain girl's dad wants details of crime reported

★ Report on the murder

★ Japan Times report on her funeral

★ Taipei Times article on child murder rates.