was a Japanese serial killer who murdered four young girls in Tokyo and Saitama Prefecture between August 1988 and June 1989. He abducted and killed the girls, aged from 4 to 7, in his car before dismembering them and molesting their corpses. He also engaged in cannibalism, preserved body parts as trophies, and taunted the families of his victims.
Miyazaki was arrested in Hachiōji in July 1989 after being confronted while taking nude photographs of a young girl. He was diagnosed as having one or more personality disorders, but was determined by authorities to be sane and aware of his crimes and their consequences. Miyazaki was sentenced to death in 1997 and was executed by hanging in 2008.
Miyazaki was dubbed the "Otaku Murderer" due to his extensive collection of anime, manga, horror videotapes and hentai as well as various other forms of pornography. This triggered a widespread moral panic against otaku in Japan, similar to the Satanic Panic in America.
Early life
Tsutomu Miyazaki was born on 21 August 1962 in Itsukaichi, Tokyo, the son of a wealthy family. He was born premature and had the rare birth defect radioulnar synostosis that caused his hand joints to be fused together, making him unable to bend his wrists upwards. Miyazaki's family operated a regional newspaper company and were well known in Itsukaichi, where his grandfather and great-grandfather had served on the town council. Due to his parents being busy, he was mainly raised by his grandfather and an intellectually disabled man the family hired as a nanny.
Miyazaki was ostracized when he attended elementary school due to his deformity, and consequently kept to himself. He attended in Nakano, a prestigious high school associated with Meiji University, and was a star student until his grades began to drop dramatically. He was ranked 40 out of 56 in his class and did not receive the customary admission to Meiji University for students of the school. Instead of studying English and becoming a teacher as he originally intended, Miyazaki attended a local junior college and studied to become a photography technician. In the same confession, he said that by this period in his life he had begun to consider suicide. Miyazaki felt he only received support from his grandfather, to whom he was close, and was rejected by his two younger sisters.
In May 1988, Miyazaki's grandfather died, which served to deepen his depression and isolate him even further. These crimes—which prior to Miyazaki's apprehension were named the and later the —shocked Saitama Prefecture, which had few crimes against children.
On 22 August 1988, one day after Miyazaki's 26th birthday, Mari Konno, aged 4, vanished while playing at a friend's house. Miyazaki had led Konno into his black Nissan Langley, then drove westward of Tokyo and parked the car under a bridge in a wooded area. There, he sat alongside Konno for half an hour before murdering her and molesting her corpse. He dumped her body in the hills near his home, departing with her clothes, then allowed the body to decompose before returning to remove her hands and feet, which he kept in his closet. Miyazaki burned Konno's remaining bones in his furnace, ground them into powder, and sent them to her family in a box along with several of her teeth, photos of her clothes, and a postcard which read, ("Mari. Bones. Cremated. Investigate. Prove.") Konno's hands and feet were found in Miyazaki's closet after his arrest almost a year later.
On 3 October 1988, Miyazaki abducted Masami Yoshizawa, aged 7, after spotting her while driving along a rural road. He had offered Yoshizawa a ride, which she accepted, then drove her to the same place he had killed Konno. Miyazaki killed Yoshizawa, engaged in sexual acts with her corpse, and took her clothes with him when he departed. Two months later, on 12 December 1988, he abducted Erika Namba, aged 4, as she was returning home from a friend's house. Miyazaki forced her into his car and drove to a parking lot in Naguri, where he forced her to remove her clothes in the back seat and began to take pictures of her. He killed Namba, tied her hands and feet behind her back, covered her with a bedsheet, and placed her body in his car's trunk. He disposed of her clothes in a wooded area and left her body in the adjoining parking lot, where it was discovered three days later. On 20 December, Namba's family received a postcard sent by Miyazaki with a message assembled using words cut out of magazines: ("Erika. Cold. Cough. Throat. Rest. Death.")
Arrest
On 23 July 1989, Miyazaki saw two sisters playing in a park in Hachiōji and managed to separate the younger of the sisters from the older one, who stayed behind. He was taking photographs of the younger one, whom he had convinced to strip nude, when he was caught by their father, who attacked Miyazaki but was unable to restrain him.
Moral panic
Japanese media dubbed Miyazaki the "Otaku Murderer", in reference to otaku culture.
Keigo Okonogi, a psychoanalyst at Tokyo International University, told the Shūkan Post that: