40 Days in Purgatory: The Case of Junko Furuta
TRUE CRIME: How Junko Furuta became known as the “concrete-encased high school girl”
WARNING: Content includes violence against women, rape, sexual assault, and torture. This case is particularly cruel and sadistic. Please continue at your own discretion.
The Victim
Our story starts in 1988, center stage: Saitama Prefecture, Japan. Junko Furuta (17), known to her friends as Jun-chan, attended Saitama Yashio-Minami High School. She led a relatively standard life for a young woman at the time: working a part-time job to save up money for after graduation, maintained excellent grades, and stayed out of trouble.
She was well-liked by her peers, but didn’t drink, smoke, or do drugs. This gave her a reputation for being naïve and a “good girl” among the rowdier folks. Despite her reputation preceding her, however, it didn’t stop her from garnering the attention of one Hiroshi Miyano.
The Perpetrator
Hiroshi Miyano (18) was one of Junko’s classmates who had earned his own reputation: the school bully. Going beyond just the standard high school tyrant, he was a low-level yazuka gangster (chimpira). Unaware of this, when Shinji asked Junko to be his girlfriend, she declined.
Japan’s Mafia
Originally, the word yakuza was synonymous with gangster, and it still is, but it now also serves as the umbrella term for organized crime syndicates in Japan. The mafia’s reach ranges from prostitution and gambling to notable sway in politics.
There are multiple “origin stories” for the yakuza clans, some claiming to descend from honorable ronin, or wandering samurai, who served a Robin Hood-type purpose, others of samurai who terrorized villages, called kabukimono. The truth of the matter is that, following the decrease in need for martial prowess during the Edo Period, a time of profound peace and prosperity, many samurai turned to art and teaching, and others resorted to crime.
During World War II, yakuza organizations gained a foothold in society when nationalistic opinions were on the rise. This gave them access to politicians, which sometimes meant eliminating their allies’ political opponents, such as the 2007 assassination of Nagasaki mayor Iccho Itoh.
The yakuza follow strict rules of etiquette, which generally includes never harming innocents, and go as far as cutting off the tip of their pinky as punishment. The practice of yubikiri, or pinky promising, originates from this.
The Crime
On November 25, Hiroshi Miyano and his friend, Nobuharu Minato (16), were wandering the streets of Misato, Saitama. The two were practiced criminals by this point. Intent on using their day to rob and rape women, they spotted the victim, Junko, biking home from her part-time job. Here, they quickly devised and executed their plan.
Nobuharu approached Junko and kicked her to the ground while she was riding past. By sheer “coincidence,” Hiroshi happened to have seen this transpire, and offered to walk Junko home to protect her. Accepting the offer, Junko walked with him, unaware that he was guiding her to a warehouse, where he would rape her.
Eventually, Hiroshi dialed up his friends to brag. Nobuharu, Jō Ogura (17), and Yasushi Watanabe (17) were brought in on the crime to help hide Junko away. Junko was also not the first to be gang-raped by the group. Another victim, not long before her, had been caught before eventually being released. The primary difference between her and the women before her was that she had rejected Hiroshi’s romantic advances, a choice that would provoke Hiroshi to retaliate.
In order to keep her captive for continuous exploitation, they took Junko to a vacant house Nobuharu’s family owned in Adachi, Tokyo. She complied, threatened by the boys that the yakuza would kill her family if she didn’t. After two days, Junko’s family contacted the police about their missing daughter, and the boys deterred any further police investigation by forcing Junko to call home and say she’d run away. She was safe, she told them, and she’d be staying with friends.
The Junko family didn’t know this would be the last time they would hear their daughter’s voice. The call would hinder any possibility of rescue.
40 Days
Once the boys successfully absconded away with Junko, the true extent of their cruelty came to light.
Locked behind closed doors, they subjected Junko to daily rapes by numerous people, sometimes multiple times in one day. The worst day involved 12 different men raping her, leading to a grand total of approximately 100 different men over the course of over 400 different instances.
Sometimes, Nobuharu’s parents would come to the house and see Junko, who was being forced to play the role of their son’s girlfriend. Even after they realized the truth of what was happening, they feigned ignorance out of fear of repercussions from the yakuza. Once the boys realized Nobuharu’s parents would not call the police, they no longer needed to put on a façade.
Within 20 days, it’s said Junko could no longer walk from the excessive beatings she was facing daily. The gang of boys would assail her various bludgeons and mutilated her body. Because this took place during the winter months, she was left to sleep outside on the balcony several times or locked in the freezer for hours.
In addition to all of this, Junko remained naked the entire time as a humiliation tactic. For their amusement, the boys had her dance naked and masturbate for them.
Partway through the ordeal, Junko had somehow gotten her hands on a phone and dialed for emergency services. The boys caught her before she could say anything and hung up the phone, though, and punished her accordingly, which meant pouring lighter fluid on her legs and igniting it. When the police called back, Hiroshi assuaged their concerns, saying it had been an accident.
Junko regularly begged her captors to kill her, but they would never grant her the mercy.
The Extent of the Damage
By the latter half of her captivity, Junko’s captors had broken her beyond repair. Blood filled her nasal cavity, so she could only breathe from her mouth, and her stomach would no longer accept water. She would immediately vomit it up. Even crawling from the upstairs to the bathroom downstairs took her the better part of an hour until extreme weakness left her confined to Nobuharu’s room. Resulting from the endless assaults, her brain had also shrunk in size.
Her Final Day
The gang was beginning to lose interest in Junko. Her beautiful appearance had become so swollen that it was difficult to make out her features, and a foul, rotting odor wafted off of her. To regain sexual gratification, the boys kidnapped and raped another woman (19), who, like Junko, had been on her way home from work. After they were finished with her, they released her.
After challenging Junko to a game of mahjong and losing, Hiroshi enacted his final brutality. Over the course of two hours, he had the group beat her various ways and forced her to drink her own urine. One of them kicked her with so much force that she collapsed backwards into a stereo and succumbed to a convulsive fit. They continued to beat her incapacitated body, before dousing her entire body with an accelerant and let the fire finish her off.
Wrapping her body in blankets, they discarded it in a 55-gallon drum and filled it with concrete.
The Arrest and Prosecution
Only weeks after Furuta’s death, police arrested Hiroshi and Jō for their involvement in the kidnap and rape of the 19-year-old woman in December. She had reported them to the authorities. During the investigation, police found a pair of women’s underwear in one of their homes, and mid-interrogation, they begun to inquire about the murder of another woman, unrelated to why they had been arrested in the first place. Incorrectly suspecting the police already knew about Junko’s fate, or that Jō had confessed, Hiroshi confessed her body’s location. Jarred, the police had been talking about a different murder, of woman and her son that occurred several days before Junko’s kidnapping, not Junko herself.
Junko’s body was found the following day, and she was carefully extracted from the concrete. DNA evidence in and on Junko’s body implicated the four boys responsible for her kidnapping, as well as a handful of other perpetrators.
All four boys pled guilty to a lighter sentence akin to third degree murder. Their premise: they had willingly battered Junko, but her death had been unintended and accidental.
Originally, during the trial, the boys’ identities were sequestered away from the public because of their young ages. All of them were juveniles at the time of the crime, but were still tried as adults. Legality didn’t prevent the press from releasing their names, however, and Shūkan Bunshun journalists published their names in their magazine.
During sentencing, Hiroshi received the severest of punishments between the four. He would do a whopping 17 years in prison (which the judge later increased to 20), and the other three would serve between 3–9 years. The light sentencing was controversial, as it was significantly inconsequential for the extent and cruelty of their crimes. Japan’s prison system is also generally more geared to rehabilitate criminals rather than punish them, especially in youth cases. Though, many suspect this was due more in part to their ties to the yakuza.
Junko’s murderers were out of prison by their mid-30’s and some changed their names.
Hiroshi re-involved himself with yakuza activities and was arrested again in 2013 for fraud. He’s known to vanish once someone discovers his past. Jō regularly brags about his involvement in the case and that he got away. Yasushi shut himself off and little is known about him now. And finally, Nobuharu (who changed his name to Shinji Minato) was tried for an attempted murder in 2019. Anyone familiar with the Junko Furuta case would feel déjà vu when hearing his plea: “I beat and hit [the victim], but I did not intend to kill him.”
In Memoriam
Junko’s funeral was held on April 2, 1989, one month after she would have graduated from high school. Her principal presented Junko’s high school diploma to her parents. Finally, at her funeral, her future employer gave her uniform as a gift, which was placed in her casket with her.
Hiroshi’s parents paid Junko’s parents 50-million yen ($425,000 USD) as compensation ordered by the court, which required them to sell their family home.
Jun-chan, welcome back. I never imagined we would see you again this way. You must have been in so much pain… so much suffering. The happi we all made for the school festival looked really good on you. We will never forget you. I heard the principal has presented you with a graduation certificate. So we graduated together — all of us. Jun-chan, there is no more pain, no more suffering. Please, rest in peace.
— Junko’s memorial address from one of her friends
