Source: Kamaitachi no Yoru 2 Official Novels: Strange Tales of Mikazuki Island, page 94-113
Kamaitachi no Yoru 2: Excerpts from the Records of Sokomushi Village
The Five Severed Heads Murders
Record of a bizarre Showa-era crime
September 1933, Showa 8.
Kirakuya was a small restaurant in Sannomiya, Kobe City, that had gone out of business. Its new owner, who bought the shop and all of its contents as-is, was organising the place when, in the otherwise neatly tidied kitchen, he found a lone stained bottle lying around. He guessed that it contained pickled umeboshi or similar, but the neck was covered with cloth or kraft paper, tightly bound in place by a thin string wound around it over and over. The rotten smell it emitted was unbefitting of a kitchen. He snipped the string and opened the bottle, and inside it found a severed head. Already fully decomposed, it had dried out and mummified.
The horrified man contacted Nishinomiya Police Station. An officer dispatched to the scene discovered five severed heads in jars, causing a huge stir. As the previous owner's name and whereabouts were known, the police went to speak to him immediately. It turned out, however, that despite having been the restaurant's actual owner he had never once visited the place, and the running of it had been entirely left up to one man: Mutsuhisa Abe.
Kirakuya, the scene of the crime (pictured in 1933).
By the time the police arrived, the apartment Abe had been occupying was already deserted. The following March, Abe's body was found hanging in a park in Osaka City. Though no note was found, it was ruled a suicide. Countless drawings of decapitated women were found in his apartment, as well as articles such as hair and scraps of underwear, along with a folder containing names and addresses. Using these records, detailing five people, they were able to identify the five severed heads. This case would later come to be known as 'the five severed heads murders'.
The perpetrator, Mutsuhisa Abe. Many factors of the crime, including motive and method, remain unclear to this day.
A newspaper article reporting on the incident.
A diagram of the interior of Kirakuya. The X marks the spot where the mummified human heads were found.
As the five victims had nothing in common, they were believed to have been assailed at random. After holding a variety of jobs, the suspect, Mutsuhisa Abe, began working as a detective. Whether he had found his calling or was merely lucky, he had several servants in his employ, and is said to have been doing well for himself - all until, in the middle of an investigation, he suddenly vanished into thin air. Immediately after this, he began running Kirakuya on behalf of its owner.
Why did he have no choice but to disappear? His company, the Abe Detective Agency, was operating smoothly without issue. Abe himself was making a substantial amount of money, and, as a bachelor, was said to have lived a quite lavish lifestyle. Consequently, his disappearance could not have come as a result of financial difficulties or debt-related issues.
An interview was conducted with a woman who once worked at Abe Detective Agency as an assistant. Allow me to quote a small portion of it.
...Yes, Mr. Abe was a cheerful person - easy-going, or carefree, I suppose I should say. He had lots of friends, and... yes, he spared no expense when it came to the ladies whose company he kept. Oh, me? Well, I was a child at the time, and that's how he treated me - as a girl, not a woman. He'd been acting strangely just before he disappeared. By that I mean, um... He became very quiet. Gloomy, perhaps you might say. Sometimes he'd stand completely still, staring off into space, just muttering something to himself. It gave me a bit of the heebie-jeebies, so I remember it well. What started it? Hmm... Well, I don't think there was anything strange about the office. The investigation he was in the middle of? Hm... I don't remember it very well, but I believe it was a run-of-the-mill background check.
World of True Stories Weekly
Excerpt from 'Special Feature: Exposing Mysteries of the Showa Era'
The last investigation Abe was involved with has been made public. The client was Shinichi Chikawara. The subject of the investigation was his fiancée, Michika Abiko. If you are wondering why this is so precisely documented, it is because Abe vanished with his records in hand, which were later found in his apartment.
The investigation itself was a background check on a future spouse, something which is extremely commonplace, and there was nothing noteworthy about it. The only potential curiosity was that the client was Shinichi himself. In most cases, background checks on someone who is already engaged are requested by the parents. Detectives are, after all, not cheap to hire. At the time, Shinichi was a part-time worker at a riverside fish market, and it seems doubtful that he had much money at his disposal. The idea that he decided to scrape together enough money to hire a detective even despite this is an odd one indeed. If he had had some sort of problem, surely he would go to his parents for advice. Perhaps the reason he did not do this, then, is that it was not the sort of problem he could discuss with them. Why did he have to keep it a secret from his parents that he was having a background check carried out on his fiancée?
Michika Abiko was an ordinary OL who worked in an office. On top of his daily spying, Abe even went around asking about the reputation of her parents.
A notebook in Abe's possession (figure 1).
I have managed to obtain a notebook Abe left behind in his apartment (figure 1), which was in the possession of the son of the owner of Kirakuya, the place where Abe worked. As Abe had no living relatives, his possessions were handed over to the owner, who left them stored away in his shed. Upon learning of the notebook's existence during the course of my inquiries, I asked him to retrieve it from storage for me. Here are excerpts from the notebook pertaining to the investigation of Michika Abiko.
A copy of the notebook in Abe's possession. The latter half is covered with nonsensical writing.
One of the walls of Abe's apartment was covered with scribbles that appear to be drawings of severed heads.
The area where Abe's apartment was located.
Michika's childhood home is in Abiko Village, ++ Prefecture.
Abiko Village is a small fishing village. It feels like a ghost town.
Michika's parents have already passed away. I tried asking around about their reputation, but nothing stood out as particularly unusual. Honest. Hard-working. Sincere. That's all anyone had to say about the father (Takeo), and the quiet, reserved mother (Yoshiko). These are the pair who raised Michika. They had adopted her. Her name, quite distinctive for the time, had apparently been given to her by her birth mother. Unfortunately, I haven't yet been able to figure out the identity of her birth parents. None of the villagers knew. What does seem certain is that they were from Abiko Village.
Though her adoptive parents are well respected, her birth parents are considered ne'er-do-wells, despite the fact that no one even knows their names. I find it utterly baffling. Perhaps this is a result of ugly rumours stemming from their abandonment of their own child, but still, it makes no sense to me.
I've spent the whole day sniffing around the entirety of this little village, and this is all I've learned. I've noted down the details for when I write up my report, but perhaps the client is already aware of all of this.
I'm making the journey across to Mikazuki Island, which I was informed about by the client. It appears to be deserted these days. The boatman seemed fascinated by me, and told me over and over how strange I was. He is a miserly man, and when I asked him to come and pick me up in the evening, he demanded a large sum of money. Mikazuki Island is a small place, too.
I should be able to meet up with Michika's mother here. I've already been in touch with her.
I'm on my way to Sokomushi Village, which is abandoned now. It's not too far from the harbour. This island really is tiny.
I wonder what might have caused the client to entertain such bizarre ideas. It's true that the abandoned village is unsettling, yes, but there's nothing more to it. In any other case, I would simply have told him to get seen by a doctor instead, but I was overcome by his enthusiasm (and somehow, it did not seem to me that he was unwell). I would be lying if I said that the island hasn't piqued my own interest.
I saw it.
Was that one of the "insects" described to me by the client? I can't believe it.
I regret coming here alone.
By the time I made it back to Abiko Village, the last train had already departed, leaving me stranded here. I'll look for a guest house and stay there instead.
I can't wait to get out of this place.
I didn't think it would follow me back across the sea. What's going on with it? I don't understand.
I'm leaving. Once I get home, I'll check with the client once more.
The investigation of Michika Abiko ends here. From these records, it's impossible to tell what happened. Right after writing this note - the day after he returned from Abiko Village - he went missing.
He continued to keep something resembling a diary in his notebook afterwards, but the details are utterly nonsensical. He repeatedly mentions words such as "umindo" and "fu-no-shin", accompanied by mysterious pictures and talismans. From there, his writings grow steadily more bizarre, the pages filled with unsettling talk of murder and severed heads, alongside pieces of the victims' clothing, hair, pubic hair, and even skin. Just reading through the notebook makes you feel like you might lose your mind.
In the notebook, he writes that his client - in other words, Shinichi Chikawara - had "bizarre ideas", but makes no mention of what those ideas are, here or anywhere else. If Chikawara is still alive, he'd be 83 by now. I wanted to know whether or not he was still alive. I was certain that Shinichi Chikawara lurked in the background of Abe's historic crimes.
To cut a long story short, Shinichi Chikawara was alive. I tracked him down to a retirement home called Shinnyoen. He was, however, wheelchair-bound, and barely capable of conversation. Strikingly, when I mentioned Michika's name, he momentarily became fiery and uttered the word "monster". He wouldn't respond to anything else.
Shinichi and Michika were married, but after only five years they divorced. During this time they had a daughter, but Michika took her and vanished. The daughter's name is Sayo. Everything I've described so far is data I've obtained from residence records. I tried tracking the pair down myself, but my attempts proved unsuccessful.
The "five severed heads murders" have one thing in common with the Shisui Park drowning incident, said to be the last and greatest mystery of Showa era crimes.
A young Shinichi Chikawara. Appears to have been taken around the time he met Michika Abiko.
Michika Abiko. Believed to have been taken just before she disappeared.
Chikawara as an old man.
Mikazuki Island from a distance.
The Shisui Park Drowning
The most mysterious crime of the Showa era
March, 1985 (Showa 60).
Kamitsuga District, Tochigi Prefecture. Kenzo Sakai (aged 60 at the time), who was taking a walk in Shisui Park, discovered a woman's body on a shrine path at the park's rear. Officers attending the scene located another body, this time male, approximately five metres away.
Using her belongings, the woman was identified as Mitsuko Miyazaki (29), who had gone missing two months prior, while the man was determined to be Yoshio Hayashida (35), who had vanished along with her.
The issue lies with the two bodies. They had suffered no physical trauma, and their clothing was neat. However, their decomposed faces had swollen to near twice their normal size in what is referred to as "giant-face", their reddish-brown skin a classic example of the "red oni" phenomenon seen in drowning victims. That's right - they had apparently been drowned and left in the water for two weeks.
Due to the plankton and sludge that had accumulated in their lungs, it was clear that they had drowned in seawater. Wherever that had been, whoever moved the bodies would've had to transport them a considerable distance to the park. Who would do that, and why? As yet, nobody knows the answer.
Shisui Park, the site of the incident.
Mitsuko Miyazaki.
Yoshio Hayashida.
Let's retrace their movements leading up to the disappearances.
Mitsuko Miyazaki was an OL who worked for a construction company in the city. Yoshio Hayashida worked at an advertising company with whom they did business. There were no rumours of them being an item. No one knows what their relationship was. All we know for certain is that they were acquaintances, and were friendly enough to go on a trip together.
On the day of their disappearance, the pair were heading for Abiko Village, and records show them having stayed at a local guest house. Then, they hired a ferryman to take them across to Mikazuki Village. The ferryman went to fetch them at the agreed time, but they were not at the bay. He searched all over the small island, but they were nowhere to be found. Returning to Abiko Village without a boat would be impossible. The ferryman, however, left.
Later, he stated that he believed the two had committed a lovers' suicide, claiming they had "that sort of tragic air about them". The owner of the guest house echoed this.
Not wanting to become embroiled in a complicated issue, the ferryman never reported them missing. The families hired an investigator, who followed their trail and arrived here. As a result, local police became involved and began a search, but they were unable to locate the pair. Their families travelled to the island and investigated, but found not a single trace.
Let's rewind to a little bit before the couple headed to Abiko Village. How did they meet, and why did they have to go to Mikazuki Village?
In short, they were both separately searching for the same person. Yoshio Hayashida was looking for a woman. He was a fairly famous commercial designer, who revelled in his bachelorhood. However, he fell in love at first sight with a woman he saw whilst near one of his regular clients. He didn't appear to be his usual self at the time, and, to borrow the phrasing used by his friends, seemed "confused". Obsessed, he managed to figure out, based on what scant clues he had, that the woman's name was Moeko Abiko.
Moeko Abiko was Mitsuko Miyazaki's younger brother's fiancée - in other words, she was set to become her sister-in-law. The Miyazaki siblings had lost their parents at an early age, and Mitsuko had become a mother to her brother, Junji. According to everyone who knew them, they had a very good relationship.
Junji stated that he was going to visit the home of his fiancée's parents, and was never seen again. Moeko Abiko went missing at the same time. Through records her brother had left, Mitsuko learned that the house was said to be on Mikazuki Island. It seems that she met Hayashida during the course of her search.
The pair headed for Mikazuki Island, and two months later, they turned up drowned in Shisui Park in Tochigi. The only link tying this case to the five severed heads murders is Mikazuki Island. But it seems certain that the case, still unsolved to this day, is connected to something that substantiates Mutsuhisa Abe's actions. Out of my own personal interest, I'd like to continue investigating these two cases.
The Book of Bizarre Showa Crimes
Shigeru Mizutani
Editor's note: The Book of Bizarre Showa Crimes, written by Shigeru Mizutani, was published in 2000. A year later, the author was found drowned in his bathtub. His death was ruled an accident due to an alcohol-related heart attack.
Moeko Abiko. She disappeared at the same time as Junji Miyazaki.
Junji Miyazaki, her fiancé. He went missing after saying he was to visit Mikazuki Island.