7-year-old Girl was Raped, Killed, and Left in a Cardboard Box

The brutal killing of Airi Kinoshita in Hiroshima, Japan.

Japan is known as a relatively safe country. The crime rate is low, violent crime, murder, and robbery are rare, especially in the small towns and communities where everyone knows each other. And children are quite safe as neighborhood watch, mother’s groups and local community patrol constantly watch for children going to and from school.

But despite the lack of danger, sometimes a horrible and senseless crime happens that shocks the community, country, and even the world. This case is one of those stories that involves a small town in Hiroshima Japan and the abduction, sexual assault, and murder of a 7-year-old girl who was heading home after lunch from her elementary school.

Find out what happened to Airi on that day, who was responsible, and what happened to the killer.

The death of Airi

“Sexually assaulting a 7-year-old girl is equivalent to torture,”

Father of Airi, Kenichi Kinoshita

On November 22, 2005, 7-year-old Airi Kinoshita was walking home from school. In Japan, it’s quite common for children to commute to and from schools alone as the community is safe and neighbors are watching out for kids. The children also wear colorful backpacks called randoseru which often have a buzzer alarm attached that can be pulled during an emergency to let off a loud buzzing sound.

Unfortunately, no one must have heard that buzzer as Airi, who had left her elementary school after lunch was walking her usual route from school to home. While walking, she passed by an apartment building with a stone wall that she passed hundreds of times going to and from school. At this building, a man resided who often sat on that stone wall people watching decided to target Airi.

The man who called himself Juan Carlos Pizarro Yagi was a Peruvian-Japanese man who immigrated from Peru and had been working at a number of jobs, getting fired and eventually working at a car plant in Hiroshima.

Somehow, as Airi was walking by that day, he was able to take her without being noticed and bring her back to his apartment. Here, he sexually assaulted her, strangled her, and then shoved her inside an empty cardboard box that was originally for a stove range oven. An autopsy showed that she died within 90 minutes of when she left school.

He then dumped the box near his place in a parking lot. A local resident spotted the tape-bound cardboard box and contacted police. Her school bag was also found alongside a road about 300 meters away from her body. But the buzzer alarm was missing.

Juan then fled to Mie Prefecture where he previously had resided with his sister and her husband. News of Airi’s death caused mass panic in Japan as crimes against children were popping up frequently and there had been a string of killings by “otaku” killers. Otaku is a Japanese word that can be roughly translated as a nerd or geek.

The funeral of Airi brought over 300 people including colleagues of Airi’s father who was part of the Japanese self-defense force. “I was deeply shocked when I was told by police that she was probably murdered,” her father said in an address during the funeral. “I feel animosity toward the person who committed the crime. I hope the culprit is caught soon.”

Despite fears of an Otaku child killer on the loose again, within a week, police were able to not only find the killer but capture him. Juan Carlos Pizarro Yagi was not who he said he was and police were quickly able to investigate his true identity.

Using his fingerprints, it was revealed that his real name was Jose Manuel Torres Yake, a 33-year-old man from Peru who was wanted for two charges of child sexual assault. Jose, who had a wife and two young children of his own in Peru, confessed to the killing quickly after his arrest.

“I felt my daughter might look like this if she carried a satchel on her back,” police quoted Jose as saying. They also reported that Jose said he had a sort of mental blackout and didn’t remember committing the murder.

Originally Jose had claimed he found and killed Airi outside, however, after an examination of his apartment was conducted, bloodstains and hair found inside his apartment matched the DNA of Airi Kinoshita. Furthermore, Torres originally said he blacked out, but later he claimed that he heard “voices of the devil” which told him to sexually assault and kill Airi.

The Killer

Jose Manuel Torres Yake, a Peruvian of Japanese descent first came to Japan in April 2004 with a fake passport in the name of Juan Carlos Pizarro Yagi. Born in Guadalupe in 1972, Jose was the youngest of four children.

Born into an underprivileged family, his father ran a drink stall, his parents were divorced and Jose lived with his mother. He was also not a very good student as he failed exams and was left behind two years according to a former teacher.

Dropping out of junior high school, Jose started working odd jobs at construction sites or helping his father at the drink stall.

Having trouble with the law, he escaped from Guadalupe and moved to Lima where he met his wife and had two children. His wife wanted to move the family to Japan where they had relatives and could find work and enough money to buy a house. Unfortunately, because of Jose’s legal issues, he was not able to leave the country.

To thwart detection, he paid $4000 to acquire a fake passport and illegally changed his name. He then used that passport to gain entry into Japan and moved to Mie to live with his sister and her husband. With the help of his sister’s husband, he worked in a packing plant.

A month later he moved to Hiroshima to live with his older brother but then moved back to Mie two months later, this time to live with his other sister. He then found work at an auto parts factory but was fired after six months. His supervisor is reported as saying, “His attitude at work was very bad. He even threw his work gloves at us.”

Then in January of 2005, he moved to an apartment his sister found for him but because he couldn’t find steady employment he was running late on rent payments. But Jose was once again able to find work at an auto plant on the east side of Hiroshima.

Unfortunately, he was reported to often miss days, have a poor work attitude, and difficulty getting along with workers. A former colleague of his stated, “he wasn’t popular with his Peruvian colleagues and he only spoke to female employees.” Some colleagues even reported his strange and aggressive behavior to the police but nothing was done as no crime had been committed.

He was later fired again for his poor behavior and moved to the Aki Ward of Hiroshima, to live near his cousin. This would be the last place he would live before sexually assaulting and killing Airi Kinoshita.

Arrest and Sentencing

“The culprit effectively killed her twice (by sexually assaulting her). I believe he deserves the death penalty,”

Jose Manuel Torres Yake was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting, murdering, and dumping the body of Airi Kinoshita. The prosecution was seeking the death penalty as Airi was only 7 years old and Jose brutally raped and murdered her and dumped her body in a box.

Jose’s lawyers asked to get a psychiatric evaluation because of Jose’s claims that he heard voices telling him to commit the crimes but the request was denied. His lawyers also said Jose did not intend to kill Airi, felt remorse for her death, and apologized for the crime.

On July 4, 2006, the Hiroshima District Court sentenced Jose to life imprisonment for sexually assaulting and killing Airi. Prosecutors appealed against the leniency of the sentence, demanding the death penalty but on December 9, 2008, the Hiroshima High Court upheld the life sentence.

Judge Hiromichi Iwakura of the Hiroshima District Court felt, “The crime by Jose Manuel Torres Yake was vicious and coldblooded and he had intended to molest and kill Airi Kinoshita.” But he also stated, “The crime was not premeditated and the number of victims remains at one. We cannot say it is impossible for the defendant to be rehabilitated.”

After the ruling, Airi’s father expressed strong disappointment saying, “I have been working hard for revenge all this time, but the death sentence was not given to him. It’s like a defeat in the court battle. I feel so frustrated that I couldn’t have any vengeance.”

Whether justice was served or not can be debatable between those who are for or against the death penalty, but capturing and ensuring that a vicious killer like Jose Manuel Torres Yake can not find any more children and kill again is good news. Despite the two children who were sexually assaulted in Peru by him not getting justice, at least in the end he was captured and will pay for his crimes his entire life.

This case was quite unique as the culprit, though of Japanese descent, was a “foreigner” and killed a native Japanese person. The media and public opinion on foreigners and immigrants coming to Japan became a hot topic of discussion. The image of foreigners running havoc on a country and harming the locals created a panic that is familiar with other countries and continues to this day.

Whether Jose is a foreigner or Japanese, one thing that was thrust upon Japanese society was the realization that crime and criminals are everywhere, and whether a big city or small town, we need to protect our children.

If you enjoyed this article, here are some more true crime stories from Japan: