Political Philosophy and Japanese Government – An Open Secret: Lindsay Ann Hawker’s Case

PART I: The Facts and Myths

At the end of March 2007, during my holiday visit to Japan, one incident that specifically attracted my attention, and hence revivifying my long-held sceptical belief about how cunningly clever the political philosophy of Japanese government employs is. This incident has, of course, made me sick and I tried to appeal to as many people as possible by means of Facebook, emails or face-to-face discussions, however, to no avail. Here, I’d like to once more revisit the incident in hopes for letting the openly discussed secret of political philosophy of Japan and its maneuver out so as to perhaps give more people an opportunity to suspect, doubt and delve into the issue and perhaps make a difference.

The incident happened on the 23rd of March (see for detail the link: Lindsay Ann Hawker). What happened was that an British girl who came to teach English in Japan was found dead, naked in a guy’s bathtub. The guy’s name is Tatsuya Ichihashi, to whom Ms. Hawker was tutoring privately (that is, in addition to her full-time job at Nova – then the largest English conversation school in Japan).

Facts of the Event – how it is conceived by the majority

Ms. Hawker’s roommate found it strange when she did not return home for two days without informing her, and filed a police report upon finding out that Ms. Hawker had not answered any of phone calls. The roommate had vaguely heard of Ms. Hawker mentioning to her about going to tutor a guy last time she had spoken to her, and she gave that information to the police correspondingly. The police then went to the address given for enquiry, when they saw Ichihashi open the door. Ichihashi, upon seeing the police, quickly ran away, escaping police’s chase. Since then, he has not been seen and he is still on the run, being nationally sought for all over Japan.

Facts of the Event – Doubts and Mysteries

Now, let us move on to give an account of what the problems are by further explicating the incident closely. Then, several obvious incoherence can be manifest. They are as follows;

1) There were 8 police officers at the door of the criminal’s apartment. How could he have possibly succeeded in escaping?

2) Ichihashi is said to have carried 50,000 yen (equivalent of $500USD) at the time of escape. Police has posted posters of him as a criminal search all over the country within the next few weeks. No one has seen him, no report of him has been done, and further, he has not been seen at any banks or ATMs. How has been managing to survive?

3) The Japanese police performed an autopsy on Ms. Hawker’s body, but has since then refused to tell what really happened. Why would they not reveal their findings as they always have done in the past cases?

Let us, now, look at each of the mysteries, and we will see that each issue reveals further confusion as to what really happened to Ms. Hawker, and what this incident allows us to glimpse the inner workings of the kind of political principle Japan is holding onto. Indeed, this is one of the few incidents (that seem to happen every couple of years) that makes it intelligible what Japan hides from the public as well as the international audience, namely, a covert-policy whose existence wholly depends on the deceptive mask it bears. And although this mask comes off once in a while, it is virtually impossible to take it all off because of the way in which this covert-policy is ingrained.

PART II: The Further Analysis of this Incident

1) The fugitive and the 8 police officers

What strikes us all first of all is probably this unaccounted fact that how a) it was possible for a fugitive with an average sized body to successfully escape the chase by 8 officers. In addition, this question also must be asked, b) how come there were so many of them in the first place? Let us then begin with these two questions.

a) On the possibility of escape: It is virtually impossible. He was seen running away from the police officers and none of them could catch him, even though the officers gave an account that he was particularly fast, leaving a shoe behind as he ran.

b) On the fact that 8 officers were stationed: As has been suggested by analysts, there must be some reason for why they sent 8 police officers to the suspect’s apartment. Unless the police were absolutely certain that this suspect was dangerous or holding some significant information to solving of a problem, they would not have sent 8 officers as a response to a missing person report. Even more so if they had only a couple of days since the disappearance of the girl. If then they had been suspecting this particular suspect for whatever reasons prior to the incident or if they knew there was a good reason to send 8 officers for a ‘general enquiry’ of a missing person,  then these officers knew what was at stake, and therefore must have been properly placed so as not to let the suspect escape. How then could it happen at all?

What then can we draw as a likely conclusion from these two points?  Namely, a) The fact that it is impossible for a suspect to escape from 8 officers and b) the police were positioned properly in order to execute their task successfully? The obvious echoing answer to this question is this: the police did succeed in their execution and as a result the suspect disappeared.

2) On the fugitive’s financial source

How is it that the criminal has still been on the run after two and a half years without any continuing financial aid? Nay, how can anyone survive without detection by anyone for a month with only $500? The answer is, again, resoundingly, he can’t. Then, what could have happened, granting that he did indeed escape the detection of the 8 police officers? The media seem to report and entertain the idea that Ichihashi, immediately after escaping the police, took on a bus to his parents’ house, which was only about 2 hours away by bus from where he was. Now, conveniently, he did carry just about enough money to get on a bus that would take him to the area where his parents resided. Also convenient was that he did not have to wait for the bus, since he happened to have escaped from the police at around the same time when the bus to his desired destination was to depart. Now, the media reporting such a speculation caused the general public to believe that the suspect had in fact left the prefecture he was in and had in effect assimilated with the populous per se.

Two things to keep in mind: One is the sudden appearance of his parents in the story, as though deus ex machina, and the other is that it is not a fact but a mere speculation by the media who were not informed at all of the incidents.

Now, in the minds of populous, the suspect had already gone too far into the crowd that the search was not an easy one. Here, I’d like to dwell on the above-mentioned three points, namely, a) what was the relation of the parents with the story? b) how did the media come to believe in such an alternative story, and how they could convince an uninformed populous with such a baseless speculation at a stroke, and lastly, c) the media’s role on this whole incident.

a) The suspect’s parents: They never appeared on TV. Except for one time with mosaic figures in the very early stage of the investigation, but afterwards no one talked or mentioned about them. The media reportedly reported that the suspect’s parents were both doctors and lived in a huge house, and hence i) they could afford to hide their son or ii) financially support him therefore continuously support him on his run from the nation. First of all, the second alternative is unlikely, that is, for the parents to financially aid him so that he could continue running away. The only way for this to work is for them to arrange him a way out of the country, but this also must be done immediately, and such a plan as a continuous financial support within the country is beyond absurdity, for why not just hide him in their house where he could be safe and in their reach for his safety’s assurance? Hence, it brings us back to the first of the two alternatives, namely, hiding him in their house or somewhere in their reach. Such a plan, if indeed was carried out, could successfully work out on the only condition that the house be never searched by the police. Indeed, there has been no report as to whether the house was searched (last it was heard was that the family refused to be interviewed or to be sought). Indeed, as long as the house search does not take place, the suspect might as well have been still hiding in the huge house in the country. Now, how do we know, though, that the suspect’s parents did indeed live and own a huge house if it was never interviewed or the police search was refused? Recall, however, in the beginning of this paragraph I mentioned that the suspect’s parents were once and only once shown on TV with mosaic on their face, with the attempted interview conducted just outside the house, showing a huge house and the father going back into the house gesticulating how he did not want to be filmed. From such a clip, we know that the parents (or, assumed parents) did in fact seem to live in a huge house in the country. But let us once again strip all the speculations and assumptions and recall only the facts, the facts supposing that what the media reported to be true, namely, that the suspect had parents who were rich 2 hours away from where he was.

From such (pseudo) factual account, along with the sporadical clips with parents and the house, what we can factually assume is this: We were told that the suspect had rich parents 2-hour away from his apartment, we were shown a clip of a failed interview only showing people with mosaic figures with the huge house on their back, giving the air of suspiciousness. Let me summarize even further, and what this all amounts to is thus: we see mosaic figured people with a huge house on their back on TV, gesticulating that they don’t want to be filmed. And that was the whole appearance of the supposed family of the suspect.

This is far from satisfactory in terms of convincing the population. Except that we were convinced, even without being shown the direct connection between these people and the suspect, that those mosaic figured people were in fact the suspect’s parents and that they did own a huge house.

However, we are still forgetting the validity of such a claim as the suspect’s asking for help to his family, or where such a story was conjured up and on what grounds. For these speculations were made independently of the police report, we might want to be extra weary about such a claim’s validity, however many people may have believed in it. One thing is certain, if in fact there was something such a claim made by the media did accomplish, that is, the suspect had now been given a variety of way-outs. He could be anywhere, they would say. He could have taken a different bus, he could have left the country, or he could have been hidden by his parents, etc… The list goes on.

But let us go back to the sanity, and ask ourselves if any of these claims of his taking a bus in the first place was build on a convincing proof. In fact, what was it that made the media convinced that such was the case? Nothing. There was no evidence at all that the suspect had taken a bus to begin with. Remember that he had not yet been seen at all at this point (yes, he was several times witnessed after-the-fact on surveillance throughout the years; which eliminates the possibility of him being hidden by his parents). So, what the media were saying unanimously had absolutely no basis whatsoever. Nay, they even openly contradicted themselves by claiming and posing the question: ‘He could have been anywhere, even outside the country.’ The basic assumption being that he did move around, when in fact no one has seen him at all. Yet, such a contradiction was never detected, and the investigation was directed towards all over Japan.

Now, let me report a few things about the media’s role in this entire incident as it was broadcast. Aside from what was being said just now, there is one more thing that strikes me as peculiar, which is this: The incident was first broadcasted on the Thursday night news, as it was when they discovered the body. In Japan, regular news hours are between 9-12. There are three major broadcasting services that are most popular; one hour each, by different networks. So basically each broadcasting network has one hour news program that covers roughly the same things in the other news programs. Each news program lasts from 9-10, 10-11, and 11-12 respectively. So whoever missed a program can watch the next one to get himself informed. Now, these news programs normally are broadcast Monday to Thursday, and on Fridays and the weekends, various other broadcasting services offer somewhat low quality news program in brief at various times of the day. Basically, the main conception is that news programs are run from 9-12 at night from Mondays through Thursdays. Necessarily, then, because the news was first broadcasted on the night of Thursday, whatever new information on the murder case would be broadcasted afresh on Monday’s news program.

What they said on the Thursdays program, however, quite differs in manner of report from the following weeks’ news reports. Such that it is worth noting here. On the Thursday night’s news, they had just discovered the body and informed us that the police would be performing the autopsy and that whether the victim was sexually abused or not would be made clear in the following week. Peculiar point 1) On Monday’s news onwards, no word on the question of sexual abuse was mentioned and no reporter said a word on it as though such question had never been asked. Peculiar point 2) during the weekend immediately after the incident, many local news network stations tried to report on the murder case, and it was this time when they showed the clip of the suspect’s parents and their house as an attempted interview, which in the end failed. However, there was no follow up after the weekend. No one talked of the parents, again, as if it were a taboo to mention about them. Peculiar point 3) all three broadcasting services began analysis of the incident towards the same direction. No question was asked about the parents, no question was asked about the sexual assault, and each of them consistently worked its way to establish a timeline of the murder, introducing and connecting those assumptions aforementioned.

3) What really happened?

Why does the police refuse to divulge their findings to the public, namely, whether the victim was sexually abused as they have always done in the past? What was different in this case? Again, the media reported that Ms. Hawker was found dead naked in the bathtub of the guy’s apartment with bruises on her neck and on her arm. It was one of the key clues that could add some more credulity to those otherwise baseless assumptions that the media were making about the suspect if it had been divulged. In fact, the news was talking about it on Thursday night, but ceased to talk of it after the weekend is particularly strange. Something did not add up, so I myself took liberty of contacting the British Time Magazine editor in UK, believing that he might know something about it – if the police was refusing because they were requested or because there would be some complication in divulging such an information, etc. To my surprise, the editor of UK Time Magazine responded to me immediately, telling me that they had asked the Japanese police as to whether there was a sexual assault on the victim or not, but their response was, he said, that the refusal to comment. The editor himself was confused, as it was the Japanese police that performed the autopsy and they must know what really happened, but refusing to comment did not make much sense, he said. And that was the reason why the news programs never dared to touch upon the subject of sexual assault. It was simply a taboo.

In the close analysis of the three raised questions, we learn that there are more mysteries than there seemed to be in the beginning. Let us sum up each point;

From 1) the fugitive and the 8 police officers, we gathered that the police did succeed in execution of their task and as a result the suspect disappeared.

From 2) the suspect’s financial source, we were led to believe that the media had created a story which carries the suspect away from the murder scene, making us believe that he could be anywhere, even out of country.

From 3) what really happened, we concluded that the police did not feel comfortable commenting on it when being scrutinized at the evidence’s whereabouts. Or perhaps their intention may be either a) not to comment in order to sustain the stable friendship with the Britain or b) not to comment so that they can prevent the international hatred from arising. Among these latter two points, the first is unlikely for by concealing the fact, they would not be making friends with anyone but only increasing antimony. As for the second option, that is, to protect Japanese citizens from foreign accusations – that is to say, while admitting by coming to the conclusion from the evidence they found at the autopsy that the victim was a foreigner and the criminal Japanese, they didn’t want to admit it publicly (or internationally), and tried as much to protect Japanese citizens even if that meant to protect a murderer. But to do that and still keep doing that after over 2 years, this murderer must be very important for them. Either way, it all comes back to this: there is something suspicious about where the evidence is, i.e. where the center of this entire incident lies.

From these three major premises drawn, we might conclude that Japanese authority is hiding something. But to be successful in doing so for over 2 years when everyone is looking for the guy, they must divert attentions of all people, even and especially those who are directly involved in the investigation. Consequently, our next task is to show how such an ‘enterprise’ consists in deceiving the entire police force as well as the populous, and the way in which they might go about in order for their successful operation.

…To Continued (PART III~)