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The Sendai District Court on Thursday sentenced a man to life in prison, as demanded by prosecutors, for killing his wife and one of his daughters while injuring another daughter as well as his son in Sendai in January. Toshinobu Yonezawa, 53, strangled his wife, 45, and younger daughter, 14, with a necktie, and injured his elder daughter and son with a knife at their home in Sendai on Jan 28 before setting fire to the house, according to the ruling.
Presiding Judge Akiyoshi Yamauchi said that while the crime almost merits capital punishment, the defendant ''should spend the rest of his life in expiation'' as his elder daughter says she does not want to lose another family member. Yonezawa, who had borrowed money from consumer loan finance firms that he pretended to his family was salary, planned to kill himself and his family out of fear of being found out, according to the ruling.
© Japan Today
10 Comments
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Kevin Lee Brooke
"planned to kill himself and his family out of fear of being found out, "
Maybe they should give him one more shot at it.
borscht
As the new justice minister said, Japan is a shame-oriented society. Being dead is preferable to being shamed. Sad, though, that this man's shame-evasion strategy included killing his wife and daughter. Fourteen is too young to die, especially murdered by someone who is supposed to love and protect you. I hope this man lives long and shamefully.
romulus3
correct. redevelop your education system from kindergarten all the way up to avoid family killings in the future.
Dennis Bauer
well the world found it out not? what senseless deaths
ChimpsAhead
Awful crime. I see as in many cases, that the murderer didn`t have the guts to end his own life. Sad case , and a faimly dedstroyed. Only in Japan!!!
ronaldk
Why not give a go at robbing a bank first. Then at least you have a chance of success and paying off debts.
WilliB
ChimpsAhead
Alas, not only in Japan. They had case just like that a few weeks ago in Austria, for example. I don´t understand the mindset of these people that tells that that murdering their family is preferrable to losing face, but no, not only Japanese suffer from that.
lipscombe
I cant live with the shame of demotion, faggit I'll take 'em all with me so they dont have to suffer the shame of my demotion too. it has taken centuries of Japanese logic and peer pressure to reach this point. As mentioned above the government are quite willing to let buffons say crap along the lines of "death is better than shame". right down the crapper, headfirst without a deep breath.
Molenir
Umm, no theres no almost here. It definitely deserves capital punishment. And every news article should refer to him as the coward he is. Not because he failed to end his life, but because he would rather murder his family, then deal with his problems like a man. What a coward!
knews
Actually, it appears to be quite rare for capital punishment to be applied in Japan when someone kills his or her own family member/s. There is supposedly a big difference between killing those "inside" one's family and those "outside" one's family. But more than this, it would probably be his daughter (the elder one who survived) who most likely "saved" him from the hangman by her wish that no one else in her family die an unnatural death. As selfish as it may seem, some fathers do feel that the shame of failure (i.e. wrong business/investment choices) will also shame the family so it would be better to "save" the family from future shame. Those who say he should just bump himself off are of course right, but we say that because we can't understand how someone could do it. The reality is that it does happen all over the world but tends to be more prevalent in Japan (and possibly Korea and China, too). Learn about history and old stories of these countries and you will see that this kind of behaviour is thousands of years old.