Authors: Jake Adelstein
Tokyo Vice (26 page)
“What’s this for?”
“I don’t go to Roppongi much,” explained Yamamoto, “but I know one thing. It’s an expensive playground. Get receipts, if you can.”
I had no idea where to start looking, but I figured Lucie’s old club would be the best place. Unfortunately, when I arrived, there was a sign on the door stating
CLOSED FOR RENOVATION.
Not an auspicious start.
On July 12, the TMPD officially announced that it was conducting an investigation into the disappearance of Lucie Blackman. The Japanese newspaper coverage was subdued, but within days it became a major story in England.
I was spending every night in Roppongi scouring the streets for anyone who knew Lucie. I came across as so horribly geeky and uncomfortable that no one would talk to me. I had spent so much time immersed in an all-Japanese environment that I was having trouble speaking English. I stuttered. I probably sounded like a Japanese person trying to speak English. I must have given off a cop vibe.
And then around July 20, 2000, a very strange letter was delivered to the Azabu police, supposedly from Lucie Blackman herself.
The letter was postmarked from Chiba Prefecture, where Lucie was supposedly undergoing spiritual training. It told the police and her family to give up searching for her. The Azabu cops thought it was either a cheap prank or an attempt by the assailant to divert the investigation. One of the cops on the squad, whom I knew from the Fourth District, showed me the letter and asked me for my opinion. The cop had a strange name for a Japanese guy, so weird that he had to write the reading of it on his meishi so that people could make sense of it. I also think he had a thyroid condition, because his eyes literally bulged out of his head. His fellow cops, noticing this as cops are prone to do, nicknamed him Googly.
It was clear to me that the letter had been written by a Japanese person posing as a native speaker. The misuse of
“a”
and “the” and the stiffness of the prose, combined with a penchant for double negatives, clearly indicated that it had been written by a Japanese national. It was not a bad attempt but not a convincing one either. If I’d gotten anything out of teaching English conversation in Japan, it was a working knowledge of the quirks of Japanese English, aka Japlish. I explained as much to Googly, and he seemed convinced.
The next day Tim Blackman set up a special hotline to collect information regarding Lucie.
The first week of August came and went. Lucie had come to Japan on a ninety-day tourist visa. If she was still in Japan, she was now an illegal alien.
Tim Blackman came back to Japan, and it was a media circus. At a press conference at the British Embassy, he announced a reward of 1.5 million yen (about $15,000) for information leading to the rescue or discovery of Lucie. Meanwhile, the police were slowly uncovering the true identity of the mysterious Akira Takagi but still had no information on the current whereabouts of Lucie.
Lucie’s birthday came on September 1. She would have been twenty-two.
I still had nothing solid on Lucie either. The only thing that sounded promising was information about a man who went by the name of Yuji. Yuji had long hair tinged with gray. He was a frequent customer at the foreign hostess clubs in Roppongi, Akasaka, and Ginza. He dressed well and spent copious amounts of money in every club he visited; he preferred blondes. No one had seen Yuji since late June. No one had his business card, and no one had a photo of him either.
• • •
Getting information about Lucie would require fitting into the Roppongi nightlife. It couldn’t be done by declaring myself a reporter. A lot of the foreigners there were working illegally. They didn’t trust cops or journos. So I created a fake identity.
I couldn’t pretend to be a counterculture, hip, cool gaijin guy/DJ/English teacher on the prowl in Roppongi. I’m not the type. The best I could hope for was to be perceived as another well-paid, sleazy foreign businessman. The phenotype was in ample supply, so it wasn’t hard to learn to imitate them. I got a better suit, took off my necktie, chatted up the girls in the bars, and stopped asking too many questions. I contemplated getting an earring, but that seemed as though it would be too much.
I made up a fake name for myself and an occupation that was close to what I was really doing: an insurance investigator. I made a fake business card, got a second cell phone, and spent every weekend in the dregs of Roppongi looking for someone who knew Lucie or the customer who’d taken her to the seaside.
I took the information about Yuji and passed it to my boss; I also passed it along to Googly. I thought about sharing my source with Pablo but couldn’t get myself to do it. Sources are things you can’t help but hoard for yourself.
The only other solid piece of information I had was that Yuji used to frequent a place called Club Codex. I went to check it out. It was run by a Japanese man called Slick.
As soon as I walked into Club Codex, I knew there was something a little different going on. Oh, it appeared to be a typical hostess club. It had the low lights, the fake potted plants, the velvety sofas and tables, the crystal decanters of whiskey and water perched on tables. However, the clientele seemed a little scruffier than most and the Eastern European women there did not seem to be enjoying themselves. Their smiles were forced; they seemed skittish. At that time, I had no idea what was really going on in the club; later I did. I casually mentioned Yuji to one of the girls and was asked to leave almost immediately. I took that as confirmation that Yuji had been there and that they were aware he was under investigation or going to be under investigation. I had one other piece of information from the trip. The Estonian girl who’d been chatting me up had said, “Yuji? It sounds like you’re talking about Georgie.”
Georgie? Yuji? The same guy with different aliases? I had no idea.
I’m not sure the police made contact with Slick after I passed on my information to them or whether Slick made contact with the police on his own. In any event, around this time, Slick began spilling his guts to the TMPD.
A few years before, one of Slick’s girls had been raped by “Yuji,” a frequent customer at the bar. Yuji had invited her on a leisurely drive to the coast, then taken her to the Izu Marina in Yokohama. Finally he took her to his apartment in Zushi, plied her with wine that was drugged, and then raped her. She’d been furious and wanted to go to the police. Slick had apparently talked her out of it. He had not forbidden Yuji to come to the club after the incident but had warned the girls to be wary of him. He passed along the name of the marina where his employee had been taken and all the information he had. It turned out to be a break for the investigation.
The other name that kept coming up in talks with the locals was Joji Obara. Obara was a rich real estate owner and property developer, age forty-eight, who frequented the foreign hostess clubs in Roppongi on a regular basis. He sounded a lot like Yuji. I passed on what I had heard to the cops. They had already heard about him.
By October 1, Obara was definitely a suspect. On October 12, the police arrested him for sexual assault in a different case.
The press release was very succinct:
During the course of the initial investigation, a number of assaults against foreign women came to light. In these cases, the perpetrator would approach the foreign women and suggest, “Let’s go look at the ocean” and skillfully verbally entice them into going on a drive. He would give them alcoholic drinks laced with drugs and, after clouding their consciousness, would rape them. We were able to identify the man responsible and arrest him on the twelfth of this month
.
The use of narcotics to incapacitate mostly foreign women and rape them repeatedly is an extremely malevolent crime. The MO used on these women bears a strong resemblance to the circumstances of Lucie Blackman’s disappearance
.
The impact of this crime within Japan and internationally is huge. Therefore, we are expanding the original special investigation unit into a full-fledged Special Investigation
Headquarters and devoting more than a hundred officers to getting to the bottom of these cases
.
The man believed to be responsible is Joji Obara, age 48, a company executive
.
He was arrested for sexual assault against a person unable to resist. He is charged with sexually assaulting a foreign woman (age 23 at the time) in March 1996. He met the women at a hostess club in the Fifth Section of Roppongi. He suggested they go look at the ocean, inviting her for a drive, and took her to his apartment in Kanagawa Prefecture. He convinced her to enter his apartment, where he made her drink alcohol and caused her to lose consciousness for several hours and, during that period, sexually assaulted her
.
After the press release was issued, a very short press conference was held. Here’s how it went:
C
HIEF
D
ETECTIVE:
Lucie’s connection with Obara’s offense has not been established yet. However, the method of approach is similar, which is to invite women to go to the ocean. This is why it is necessary to build up our formation to about one hundred detectives. It will be a large-scale operation because there are many sources of evidence.
Q: How many other complaints have there been?
A: A number. Some women have called in. If we expand the investigation, someone may press charges with the police.
Q: What about the victims all being foreigners?
A: There are some Japanese, too, who are in the middle of discussion. They are debating whether to make a report or not.
Q: Are they all hostesses?
A: They were at the time.
Q: How many articles have been confiscated?
A: A lot. About a few thousand. About a one-ton truckful. I can’t say how many precisely.
Q: What is there most of?
A: Some books that are thought to have enticed him. Some documents and videos. We are not dealing with simple sexual assault here but serial assault. Keep that in mind.
Q: What are the drugs?
A: Sleep-inducing drugs have been confirmed.
Q: Halcion?
A: That and other kinds.
Q: Where were they found?
A: Some places related to him.
Q: How large is the investigation?
A: About one hundred detectives.
Q: Who are the principal detectives?
A: (Names four principal detectives.)
Q: Who are the section heads?
A: (Names four section heads.) That is how much effort Division One is putting into this.
Q: Is the special investigative headquarters set up at the Azabu police station?
A: Yes. The confiscated articles are at the TMPD headquarters. Azabu is for information gathering.
I think Googly summed Obara up best: “He’s a sick fuck.”
The prosecutors would later conclude that “from as early as 1973, Obara would repeatedly lure women into his apartment in Zushi and give them drinks laced with drugs that caused sleepiness or impaired functioning, and when they would lose consciousness he would engage them in illicit sex (or sexually assault them) and then record the acts on videotape or other medium. He called this ‘subjugation play.’”
The case of one of the first victims to come forward was a template of Obara’s crimes. It’s dry and detached, but this is the pattern.
From the Prosecutor’s Opening Statements in one of the Obara trials:
Relationship Between the Defendant and the Victim
The victim of this case (hereinafter referred to as “victim”) came to Japan on February 20, 1998, and resided in the Shibuya Ward of Tokyo. She worked part time at night as a hostess in Roppongi, Minato Ward
.
The defendant met the victim in early March of the same year, when he went to the club she worked at and was served by her
.
Situation of the Crime
The defendant told the victim, “I have an apartment along the coast right outside Tokyo, so I’ll take you there. I’ll cook for you, so let’s go on the weekend,” and on March 31, around noon, he met the victim in front of the Akasaka Tokyu Hotel and drove her to his established address in Zushi, videotaping her with the ocean in the background
.
Afterward, the defendant and the victim went to his apartment at Izu Marina Building Number 4, room number 4314. After eating seafood together in the living room, the defendant told the victim, “I have some wine made from Philippine herbs,” and poured her a drink with a sleep-inducing drug. The victim took one sip and gradually lost consciousness
.
The defendant carried the unconscious victim into the bedroom and laid her on his bed on her back. After taking off her pants and her underwear, he placed a cloth soaked in a drunkenness-inducing drug over her mouth and prolonged her unconscious state. In this state, he raped her, videotaping the entire thing
.
Situation After the Crime
The next night, April 1, the victim regained consciousness on top of the bed in just a bathrobe. She had a severe headache and was dizzy and nauseous. Moreover, she did not have any strength in her body and crawled from the bed to the bathroom, vomiting into the toilet bowl
.
In order to conceal the assault, the defendant said to the victim, “What a fun girl you are. You drank an entire bottle of vodka and threw up all over yourself. That’s why I took off your clothes and put you in the bath,” and made her listen to a tape recording of somebody bathing and her groaning
.
Afterward, the defendant drove the victim home and she threw up twice during the ride. The defendant said to the victim, “You won’t be able to work at the club for two, three days in that state. Let me pay you for the work you’ll miss,” and paid her for three days of work at 60,000 yen
.
The victim’s dizziness and nausea continued, and she was absent from work at the club from April 1 to April 4 for a total of four days
.
Steps to the Prosecution
The victim did not know the defendant’s name or address and was not even aware that she had been raped because she had lost consciousness. In the beginning of July 2000, she met with an acquaintance who manages a restaurant in Tokyo, who told her about a British woman who said she was going to go see one of her customers who offered to take her to the ocean and has been missing since. At that time, the victim told the acquaintance, “A while back, a guy named Kazu invited me to the ocean and I went with him. He made me take a drug, and I lost consciousness.” After explaining the events that had followed, the acquaintance advised her to go to the police
.
On August 9, 2000, the victim went to the Azabu police station and reported the circumstances of the crime. On August 13, the victim identified a photograph of the defendant, and on the twenty-ninth, although the circumstances of the crime were still uncertain, the defendant was charged with assault against an incapacitated person
.
On October 12, 2000, a search and seizure of the defendant was ordered, and among the defendant’s many videotapes was a recording of the circumstances of the crime. On the twenty-third, the victim was informed of the details of the crime by a prosecuting counsel at the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor’s Office and for the first time acknowledged the circumstances of
the crime as a sexual assault against an incapacitated person. On the same day, the prosecuting counsel of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutor’s Office charged the defendant with sexual assault against an incapacitated person
.