FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 2): Tokyo, Friday: – “The news papers and TV claimed that the whole place stank terribly,” the landlord of the small apartment building said. “But there was no smell at all. In the messiest room I found a bag, and it was only when I opened it that the smell came out, and after that — horror.”
It was left to the police and
pathologists to work out exactly what the horror was: the bodies of seven dead babies, carefully sealed into vinyl bags.
The cheap apartment, in the anonymous
dormitory town of Kashiwa, north-east of Tokyo, had been rented by a local taxi
driver and his wife. Last June, she died of uterine cancer; two months later,
her husband disappeared with 10 months’ rent unpaid. She had never appeared to
be pregnant in the nine years the couple had lived there, ac cording to
neighbours.
The babies, moreover, were judged to have been dead for at least a decade. The mysterious
couple had apparently moved to their new home carrying with them a bag of dead
babies.
It seemed like a ghastly freak –
until last weekend, when an equally grim discovery was made in a company
nursery in Tokyo. An employee called police after noticing a strange smell.
Inside a cupboard were five paper bags containing eight plastic-wrapped infant
corpses, ranging in age from a few days to a few months. Yukiko Mika mi, a
married 43-year-old mother of two daughters, had worked in the creche as a
part-time nurse until last year.
She was arrested, confessed and was
charged with abandoning the babies. Yesterday, two more were discovered in a
trunk at her home. She has told police that all the children were her own.
What do the incidents mean?
Infanticide has never appeared to be a problem in modern Japan, although during
the famines of the feudal period it was common for children to be smothered or
exposed simply to conserve food for their siblings. These days rates of legal
abortion are low, but the true figure is believed to be much higher largely
because of the lack of efficient contraception.
Japanese Buddhism has a special
deity, Jizo, who watches over and protects the souls of mizuko, as they are
called — miscarried or aborted children — and most neighbourhoods contain a
small shrine to him.
Details of both cases have still not
emerged, and will no doubt be thoroughly picked over when they do by Japan’s
sensational weekly magazines. The most obvious conclusion seems to be that
Japanese society is becoming as splintered as that of most industrialised
countries – a place where babies could be born, left to die, and remain
completely unnoticed.
[Richard Lloyd Parry, “Horror in Japan as long-dead babies found in bags,” from The
Independent (London, England), The Canberra Times (Australia), Oct. 28, 1995,
p. 10]
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Tokyo – Police searching
the home of a woman arrested in the deaths of eight babies found two dead
infants there today.
The bodies were found in a trunk in a closet at the woman's
apartment in Yokohama, south of Tokyo.
Police wouldn’t discuss the discovery in detail.
They had arrested Yukiko Mikami on Tuesday after the remains
of eight babies were found at a Tokyo nursery where she once worked. The
bodies, wrapped in plastic, were found in a paper bag.
A note on the bag said, “I will come to pick up it later.”
Mrs. Mikami says she is the mother of the eight babies.
Police would not say whether she also claims to be the mother of the two dead
infants found today.
Mrs. Mikami, 43, is married and has two daughters. She last
worked at the nursery in 1994.
[“Two More Dead
Babies Found, Total Climbs to 10,” Oct. 26, 1995]
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For more cases of this type, see Serial Baby-Killer Moms.
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[1010-1/14/21]
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