Black Torii — Japanese True Crime

Black Torii

Deeply researched, respectfully told stories of Japan's most infamous crimes. Each episode reconstructs what happened, how, and why — the people, the timeline, and the psychology behind the case.

  1. 21h ago

    Episode 124: Osaka Movie Theater Arson

    Just before three in the morning, inside a narrow building in Osaka's entertainment district, twenty-six men are sleeping. Not in beds. In booths — tiny, two-square-meter cubicles designed for watching adult videos in private, rented by the hour. Some of them have been there for hours already, curled up on the floor or in a chair because this is cheaper than a hotel and the trains stopped running long ago. The venue is called Cats. It is the kind of place that doesn't advertise, that most people don't talk about, that the city mostly pretends doesn't exist. Then the fire alarm goes off. The duty manager hears it. He walks over and turns it off. He thinks it is a false alarm. He is wrong. By the time the sun rises over Osaka, sixteen men will be dead. This is the story of the Osaka Movie Theater Arson. Osaka Movie Theater Arson · 2008-10-01 · Naniwa Ward, Osaka, Japan

  2. 1d ago

    Episode 123: Amagasaki Derailment

    Nine-nineteen in the morning, April 25th, 2005. A Monday. Rush hour in the suburbs of Osaka. A seven-car train is rolling along the Fukuchiyama Line, packed with hundreds of commuters heading to work, to school, to the kind of ordinary places people go on ordinary mornings. In about two seconds, it is going to enter a curve at nearly twice the speed limit. The driver's name is Ryujiro Takami. He is twenty-three years old. He has been on the job for eleven months. In this moment, he is not panicking. He is not confused. By all accounts, he is doing arithmetic — calculating how many seconds he has lost and whether he can get them back before the logs are reviewed at the end of the line. He is running 90 seconds late. And at the company where he works, 90 seconds is not a small thing. One hundred and seven people died when that train left the rails. And almost every one of them died not because a young man lost his nerve — but because a company had spent years building a system that made him afraid of the wrong thing. This is the story of the Amagasaki derailment, Japan's worst train disaster in over forty years. And while the crash took two seconds to happen, the conditions that caused it were more than a decade in the making. Amagasaki Derailment · 2005-04-25 · Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan

  3. 2d ago

    Episode 122: 1995 Okinawa Rape Incident

    September 4, 1995. Three American servicemen rent a van, drive to a quiet village on Okinawa Island, and abduct a twelve-year-old girl on her way through the neighborhood. They tape her eyes, hands, and feet. They rape her and beat her. Then they leave. Japanese police identify all three suspects within days. But here is the part that turned this into a political explosion: they cannot arrest them. Not yet. Under the US-Japan Status of Forces Agreement — SOFA — American military personnel accused of crimes outside duty hours remain in US military custody until Japan files a formal criminal indictment. That paperwork takes twenty-five days. By the time the three men are handed over, Okinawa has already begun to shake. This is the story of an attack that exposed fifty years of unresolved tension between a small island, a military alliance, and the question of whose safety actually counts. 1995 Okinawa Rape Incident · 1995-09-04 · Kin Village, Okinawa, Japan

  4. 3d ago

    Episode 121: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Bombing

    It is twelve forty-five on a Friday afternoon in Tokyo. August 30, 1974. The streets around Marunouchi — the financial heart of the city, pressed between Tokyo Station and the Imperial Palace grounds — are busy with lunchtime crowds. Workers are stepping out for noodles. Shoppers are passing through. Inside the lobby of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries headquarters, hundreds of people are going about their day. Eight minutes earlier, the switchboard rang. A caller said there was a bomb in the building. The operator decided it was a prank and hung up. Four minutes earlier, the phone rang again. Same warning. Same dismissal. At 12:45 PM precisely, the bomb detonated. Eight people were killed. Somewhere between 376 and 380 were injured. And Japan had just experienced the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in its postwar history — carried out not by foreign agents or organized crime, but by a group of young Japanese citizens who had decided that their own country's corporations were legitimate military targets. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Bombing · 1974-08-30 · Marunouchi, Tokyo, Japan

  5. 4d ago

    Black Files: The Red Army Years — Swords, Rifles, and Ransom

    In 1960, huge crowds filled the streets of Japan to protest the US-Japan Security Treaty. The treaty went through anyway. Out of that defeat came a radical fringe that decided marches had failed, and that only armed action would do. This is the Black Files, and tonight we follow that fringe across seven years and three continents. It starts on March 31, 1970. Nine young members of the Red Army Faction, the youngest just sixteen, hijack a domestic flight called the Yodo with swords and what was described as a homemade bomb. They demand to go to Pyongyang. What follows is a fake North Korea staged at Seoul's Gimpo Airport, and a government minister who offers to take the passengers' place. Then, May 30, 1972. Three members of the newly formed Japanese Red Army, allied with a Palestinian militant network, open fire in the arrivals hall at Lod Airport in Israel. Twenty-six people die. Most of them were Puerto Rican pilgrims. And finally, September 1977. Five Red Army hijackers take a Japan Air Lines DC-8 to Dhaka and demand prisoners and six million dollars. Japan's Prime Minister reportedly answers that a single human life outweighs the earth, and then pays. In the middle of the standoff, a military coup breaks out at the airport itself. Three operations, one movement, and some of the people involved have still never faced a Japanese court. In this compilation: • Episode 42: Yodo-go Hijacking • Episode 101: Lod Airport Massacre • Episode 119: JAL Dacca Hijacking

  6. 4d ago

    Episode 120: JAL Flight 350 Deliberate Crash

    February 9, 1982. A Japan Air Lines DC-8 is on final approach to Haneda Airport in Tokyo. It's carrying 174 people — businesspeople, families, commuters — on a short domestic hop from Fukuoka in southern Japan. The landing is supposed to take a couple more minutes. The most dangerous part of the flight is supposed to be behind them. Then the captain reaches forward and reverses the thrust of two of the four engines. In the air. At low altitude over Tokyo Bay. The first officer feels the aircraft go wrong and pulls hard against his side of the controls. The flight engineer leaves his seat to grab the captain with his hands. Neither of them can stop what happens next. Twenty-four people do not survive. And the man who caused it walks free from court. This is the story of Japan Air Lines Flight 350. JAL Flight 350 Deliberate Crash · 1982-02-09 · Tokyo Bay, near Haneda Airport, Tokyo, Japan

  7. 5d ago

    Episode 119: JAL Dacca Hijacking

    Five people boarded a Japan Air Lines flight as passengers. They sat in their seats, like everyone else, as the DC-8 lifted off from Bombay. And then, somewhere over the Indian subcontinent, they stood up — with pistols and grenades — and told the crew to change course. The destination they chose was Dhaka, Bangladesh. A city that was, at that exact moment, beginning to come apart from the inside. What followed was five days of negotiation, a military coup erupting inside the airport itself, and a decision by the Japanese government that no democratic country had yet been willing to make quite so openly. Japan would pay the ransom. Japan would free the prisoners. Because, in the words of the Prime Minister, the life of a single person outweighs the earth. This is the story of the 1977 JAL Dacca Hijacking — and why, nearly fifty years later, one of the people responsible has never been caught. JAL Dacca Hijacking · 1977-09-28 · Dhaka (Dacca), Bangladesh

  8. 6d ago

    Episode 118: Kariya Abduction Case

    It began with a sister trying to escape a doomsday cult. On the afternoon of February 28, 1995, a 68-year-old Tokyo notary officer named Kiyoshi Kariya stepped out onto the street near his home and never came back. He had been seized in broad daylight by a team of operatives working for Aum Shinrikyo — the same organization that would release sarin gas on the Tokyo subway just twenty days later. The abduction of one ordinary government employee set off a chain of events that reshaped Japanese history. And to this day, Kiyoshi Kariya's physical remains have never been recovered. --- Kariya Abduction Case · 1995-02-28 · Tokyo (abduction) / Kamikuishiki, Yamanashi Prefecture (death)

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Deeply researched, respectfully told stories of Japan's most infamous crimes. Each episode reconstructs what happened, how, and why — the people, the timeline, and the psychology behind the case.

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