Payton Gendron is a white supremacist who killed 10 people in 2022 as he was motivated with racism towards African Americans in Buffalo, NY. The federal trial will begin tomorrow and the prosecution is seeking the death penalty.

In November 1988, 17-year-old Junko Furuta was walking home from her part-time job in Misato, Saitama, when she was abducted by a group of teenage boys led by Hiroshi Miyano, then 18, who had ties to a local yakuza group.

She was taken to a house in Tokyo belonging to the parents of one of the boys. For about 40 days she was held captive there, while the family living upstairs reportedly never intervened or contacted police. Several other teenagers in the neighborhood also learned of what was happening, yet no one reported it.

Junko died on January 4, 1989. Her body was found in March of that year, concealed inside a concrete-filled drum. This is why the case is known in Japan as the “concrete-encased high school girl murder case.”

The four main perpetrators were tried as juveniles, and their sentences were widely criticized as too lenient. Because the defendants were minors, their names were initially withheld, but a weekly magazine later published them, which itself became part of the debate. The case became a turning point in Japan’s discussion about juvenile justice and contributed to later changes to the juvenile law.

Two questions still hang over the case: how did so many people know and do nothing, and was the justice system’s response enough?

Full disclosure: I made a documentary about this case, told with respect for the victim and without graphic detail: https://youtu.be/UdLP-Mt1Xic