Just before closing time at the Teigin Bank in the suburbs of Tokyo, on January 26th, 1948, a nondescript and middle-aged man walked in through the front entrance. He was later identified, possibly incorrectly, as artist Sadamichi Hirasawa, but claimed to be Dr. Jiro Yamaguchi and had a business card to prove it. He left less than an hour later, but what happened between his arrival and departure was to shock the whole Japanese nation and reverberate through the Japanese courts for decades to come.
‘Dr. Jiro Yamaguchi' arrived wearing an armband bearing the label ‘Metropolitan Office, City Hall of Tokyo' and carrying a bag over his shoulder. He explained that dysentery had broken out in the area and that he had been sent to deliver inoculations to the bank's staff. Tokyo having been very heavily bombed during the later stages of World War II meant that dysentery (and other diseases) could still pose serious public health problems and, the Japanese being a people who are usually deferential to and respectful of authority, the bank staff accepted his story. None of them suspected, even slightly, that ‘Dr. Jiro Yamaguchi' was not from the Occupation's General Headquarters as he claimed to be.
Most of them would pay for this trust with their lives.
‘Dr. Yamaguchi' explained that the ‘inoculations' would be in the form of two doses of liquid, to be swallowed one after the other. He administers the ‘inoculations' to 15 staff members and a child of one of the employees and waits for them to take effect.
Within minutes, all sixteen victims are collapsed on the floor of the bank. Out of the sixteen people administered high doses of what prosecutors claimed was potassium cyanide, only four survived. Ten (including the child) died at the scene and another two were to die later in hospital. ‘Dr. Yamaguchi then scoops up only 160,000 yen (worth $1392/£754/1000Euro's), leaving another 180,000 yen untouched. He leaves as quietly and discreetly as he arrived, leaving behind him a scene of utter devastation in his wake.
It is not until August 21st that a suspect is brought in for the horrific crime. A painter named Sadamichi Hirasawa is under suspicion owing to the common Japanese habit of businesspeople swapping cards with their personal details on them. The poisoner has caused two other, much smaller, incidents since the mass killing at the Teigin Bank in January, using the names ‘Dr. Jiro Yamaguchi' and ‘Shigeru Matsui.' ‘Dr. Jiro Yamaguchi' is swiftly proven to be an entirely fake identity, he doesn't exist. Shigeru Matsui, on the other hand, is very much alive. When questioned, he tells police he has swapped 593 business cards including one with Sadamichi Hirasawa. Hirasawa has since been identified by two witnesses from the bank.
On being arrested, Hirasawa's home was quickly searched and he was found to be in possession of a large amount of cash that he refused to account for. It has been suggested that this money came, not from the proceeds of mass murder, but from the highly secretive (and equally illegal) market in pornographic artwork that Hirasawa has been accused of producing. He was swiftly brought in for questioning and spendt the next three weeks being questioned all day, every day. He also alleged that the confession he gave, and quickly retracted, was extracted unwillingly and under torture.
At his trial, Hirasawa's lawyers offered a defence of partial insanity based on the fact that Hirasawa admitted to suffering from Korsakoff's Psychosis. Korsakoff's Psychosis is most commonly associated with chronic alcoholism and can severely affect a sufferer's memory and also make them prone to frequent bouts of dishonesty. This plea has little to no effect with the court.
Hirasawa was quickly found guilty as charged, the court taking his confession (in accordance with Japanese law at the time) as being a solid piece of evidence in spite of Hirasawa's swift retraction. Until 1949 a confession was considered solid evidence in a Japanese court, irrespective of how that confession was obtained. Hirasawa's allegations of having been tortured cut no ice at all with the court. He was then sentenced to death by hanging for the murders of the twelve people at the Teigin Bank.
The death sentence was upheld in 1955, Hirasawa's case having taken that long to come up for appeal. Successive groups of Japanese lawyers filed no less than 18 appeals over the next 32 years, which was how long Sadamichi Hirasawa waited on Death Row.
There remain a great many doubts over whether or not Hirasawa was really a mass-murderer. For starters, there was no conclusive evidence to link him directly to the crime. Out of the 40 or so employees at the bank who witnessed the poisonings, only 2 could positively identify Hirasawa as the guilty party.
