Fukushima Toilet Death | The "Solved" True Crime Case That Everyone Disagrees With

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On a cold winter day in Japan, a woman settled into her quarters after a long day of teaching. However, her evening would be anything but peaceful. In her toilet, she would find a floating shoe. One that she would discover belonged to the deceased man trapped inside her septic tank. What unfolded after that led to local unrest and conspiracy theories denying the official story. Today, we're investigating the Fukushima Toilet Death. This is Red Web. Welcome back, Task Force. Before we begin today's episode, Fredo and I just wanted to address our second Indyversary, which Fredo is this Wednesday, June 3rd. Absolutely amazing. We started from a scary time. Dude, yeah. You know? Not knowing if the Task Force would be there to catch us. And you guys did. And now we're years into this, being cradled in your soft arms. Strong arms. Just really strong, though. Like, possibly vascular. A little too strong. You might want to get tested for steroids or something like that. I'm not quite sure about the Task Force arms right now. Whatever you're doing, just keep it up. Because genuinely, I remember those days when you, me, and Christian were sitting in a room before the shutdown of our previous home, and we were like, you know, we didn't know where this would go. We were like, let's at least try to finish out the year and go out on our terms or what have you. And now it's two years since we went independent. So Task Force, we just wanted to say, again, thank you so much. If you want to support us now, you can do so at redwebpod.com. But whether you've supported for two years, five, we're almost at six years, Fredo, or even just like six minutes, we really appreciate you being here, allowing us to stay true to ourselves, explore the unknown, and also just, like, have a good time. Over on the Patreon page, I love Fredo's movie club and break room and all sorts of stuff going on over there. Yeah, support what you love. Like, you know, it's just us doing this. And so, you know, it's all up to you guys. And we're flourishing because of you guys. Yeah. So thank you once again. And with that said, let's dive into today's episode. Welcome back Task Force to another episode of Red Web, the podcast all about unsolved mysteries, true crime, and the unknown. I'm your resident mystery enthusiast. Trevor Collins and joining me hearing this case for the very first time, Alfredo Diaz. What do you mean, man? Like, what do you mean? I was so eager for your first reactions to this one. But just so out there of a story. And of course, it's like there's a conspiracy behind it. Always. But like the shoe came up through the toilet. The shoe was seen in the toilet. And we'll talk about. How does that? Listen, I'll take you deep down. That toilet and tell you everything that's happening here. How wide is the toilet? Good question. I'll get that. How deep is the toilet? We'll get that, too. The pipes must like what it is. Okay. I'll address that up front because it is a pretty gobsmacking situation. This the okay. A normal toilet. You got like a little, you know, PVC pipe that you flush down through and off it goes. This is a simple toilet. It is a U shaped structure. So it is like a squatting toilet. That goes down into a septic tank that has another kind of access point outside. So it creates a U shape and you would pump that septic tank empty periodically. So it's a it's a very simple version of a toilet. Not so much like the modern plumbing that you might be thinking about. All right. So then that that solves that in my head. Otherwise, it's a very tiny shoe, right? Very tiny. But then also, I guess the you know. Like, I don't know. Open the septic tank. Is there is there not, you know, a person in the tank? But I guess we got a man in the tank. I'm very interested to see how or why it's turned into a whole thing. It is a very interesting predicament. And this case is wrought in all the discussion with the knee jerk reaction of a guy being in a toilet and what the implications might be. But as we kind of like, I'll unfurl this case. With all the details that we have. Again, it's one of those cases that especially due to time and translation issues, there are some blind spots in the case. And so we're going to kind of highlight some of those so we can be honest about the case. But then, of course, when you get to the theories, when you get to the the public outcry about the official response, because officially this case is closed, there is a solve in the official records. But what are the conspiracy theories? Why do people doubt the official record and report? And in all of that, that's where the case really starts to get interesting, because otherwise, yeah, you would you would just assume what the police concluded would be. Bang. That's it. It's a very interesting case. And of course, the name is very shocking. Toilet death. It doesn't sound very poetic in any way for anyone to die in a toilet. But that's what we're working with. No. Yeah. But then I guess like if you I'm assuming like, you know, someone got murdered and then shoved into the septic tank or whatever. They've got to be found right at some point in time. Maybe, you know. Yeah. I'm very interested to see like the thought process behind that that pops up or anything like that. It's just because I'm like, how did you think that that wasn't going to become an issue, a public issue? Right. Someone's going to find that. That's I think a very interesting thing that you've already latched on to is why was this person down there? And if it was to stash a body, it's so obvious because the way this toilet works, you would see it. So hold on to that question as we kind of unfurl this one. Of course, Task Force, if you want to support us directly, there's many ways to do that. One, you can go to store.redwebpod.com. We got some merch for moms and people that love moms, our newest stuff. We also have all sorts of other goodies over there. You can go to redwebpod.com support us directly. That is our Patreon page. You get all sorts of like you get this podcast ad free. Lots of exclusives like this week's movie club on the on the movie Hush, which we just recorded. Fredo's phenomenal film. Great. You watched it for the first time. I did. It was a great film. And if you're into like slashers or thrillers, totally worth the watch. Yeah. If you know the name Mike Flanagan, hop over. It is a great movie to watch. And then Christian turned us on to there's a different cut of this movie that we had no idea about called. What was it called, Christian? The Shush Cut. The Shush Cut. It's black and white. Black and white removes most of the score of the movie and then redoes some of the sound design and it amplifies the experience. Mike Flanagan and Kate Siegel, the director, writer and star, have said that that's their preferred version. Dang, I have so much FOMO now, having not seen that one. Anyway, so we talk about that this Friday. RedWebPod.com or you can simply review the podcast, share it with a friend, share it with your mom. We are mom's favorite podcast and the number one movie podcast about mysteries. And a real quick note for this episode. It does have some sensitive topics. So if you'd like those, they are in the description. All right. Well, with that said, let's dive into. The toilet. Okay. I had to say it. It is February 28th, 1989, Fredo and an elementary school teacher named Yumi Tanaka noticed something odd after returning to her teacher's housing in the small village of Miyakoji, Japan. So to give you an idea here, the elementary school is a bit unique. It's for a small village and her housing is pretty basic, but it's like right there on property. So that's where we're at. And at the time, Miyakoji is a very small, quiet village. It's in the Fukushima prefecture. And what makes it complicated when you look back on this town is the fact that in 2005, it merged with a bunch of other villages to create the city known as Tamura. So it's kind of hard to look back through the annals of history and really delineate some of the name changes of things, but I wanted to figure out, okay, it's small. It's quiet. How big is it? I saw, I think in 2003, the population was around. 3,100 and so you can imagine in 1989, it's give or take about that size. So Tanaka was a teacher, like I mentioned at the elementary school there in the village. And after she finished teaching that day, she decided to use her private bathroom in her teacher's quarters around 5:00 PM. Though some sources say it was later around six. We do have an image of Tanaka's teacher housing. So you can get an idea of what this housing looks like and kind of where we're at in this first image, Fredo. Oh, wow. That's an old, old photo. Yeah. Yeah. It looks like a really small. Simple house, thin walls, single story, maybe a little attic you got going on there. Very straightforward. Yeah, rudimentary, kind of cabin-like, but it's got everything you need. Nothing like, no bells and whistles or anything, but pretty standard. And Task Force, as always, if you want to watch the video version of the podcast, head to Spotify or to YouTube, or if you want the images on social media, at Red Web Pod on Instagram. So like I said, and you know I like to do this, I want to be forthcoming about the gaps in our knowledge here. There's the discrepancy on time, which isn't a game changer, 5 p.m., 6 p.m., but there's a small difference on what the name of the elementary school was. I've seen it be Miyakoji Village Elementary School or Furumichi Elementary School. I've also seen Dulu Village Elementary School. Either way, we know that we're working with a small, local elementary school. Now at this time in Japan, it was common for bathrooms to have what's called squat toilets, again, I'll have an image for you to reference here, but the idea is that you kind of stand over the toilet and you go to the restroom in the squatted position rather than sitting down on the porcelain throne. I mean, like, I just don't think everyone's physically capable of doing. Yeah, that's a good point. Not everybody can have that balance. Yeah, that's the whole balancing act. I don't know, man. I just feel like you're just making the floor really, potentially make the floor messy. That's very interesting. Interesting, yeah. Put this in the guy's room and you know you're slipping and sliding. I'm sorry, guys, but we got to be honest about the urinal situation. That thing is supposed to be convenient, and why am I dodging puddles, okay? It's nasty, man. It's nasty in there. I, like, wipe down my shoes and stuff and, like, throw them in the wash because it's just, like, some public restrooms are just disgusting. Yeah, I need socks for my shoes before I go in these places. Ugh. Now, I know that, you know, obviously in modern times, when you think about Japan, you think about toilets, you think about bidets and the cleanliness. But, Christian, I'm actually really curious because you know much more about Japan than I do. Is the squatting toilet much more common? Maybe not modern-wise, but is this kind of, like, a frequent kind of toilet structure in Japan? Do you know? Yeah, they're typically found in older places, older buildings. Okay. And kind of as time wore on, they modernized and started having, you know, modernized. traditional toilets that you'd see you know anywhere else but squat toilets are still they are still very common they do have modernized versions like i've seen them where you know it looks like a everyday version of one so it's slowly shifted but they are still very common there if i had to guess i would i would imagine that this is about ergonomics you know it's the same reason why people got squatty potties so even when you are sitting you're closer to that natural squatting position of of you know your primordial ape and so maybe just going in that position is more natural i don't know and sometimes you know you could bring a handful of leaves in there make it really feel like i'm sorry this is a handful of leaves like you're good in there trevor you just hear rustling around i'm eating my paleo diet i'm crapping outside in the squatting position i want it to feel like my roots you know oh man i feel like just go outside you feel like yeah okay so this is the toilet we're talking about this is the structure we're talking about because it is a relatively rudimentary setup as compared to your your typical modern toilet right so this toilet as i mentioned earlier it's connected to a small sewer tank of sorts so this squatting toilet goes straight down and then there's kind of a u-bend at the bottom is a reservoir where the human waste will go and then at the other end it comes back down and it's going to be a little bit of a dead end and then at the other end it's going to be a little bit of a drain and then at the other end it's going to go back up and there's a manhole cover there where someone can eventually come and pump that system out every now and then so it you know it would eventually build up somebody pumps it out etc etc now you asked about the dimensions and let's talk about that so the toilet side of the opening was about 20 centimeters in diameter so just shy of eight inches and the outside access point was a little wider at 36 centimeters in diameter or just so again this is sealed with a manhole cover i actually i have a diagram we can look at later but i do have an image of the exact pipe system that this case is talking about because as we'll talk about it had to be excavated so take a look at this third image here so that's just the plumbing part oh agnostic of the toilet in the ground oh big old tubes big old tube well relatively yeah yeah so for this particular image the left side would be the toilet side it's hard to tell but that's what the caption of the image says and in this image it's also a replica because it had to be remade we'll talk about that and why the right side would be the exterior side so this gives you a rough idea now of the sizes we're talking about and how big the u-bend is right so yeah it's very massive it's a decent size but also the two openings aren't too far apart so like essentially the toilet would be on one side of the wall just on the other side is where your manhole cover acts and that's where the toilet would be on the other side of the wall would be so coming now back to the teacher tanaka it's after hours and she felt the call of nature right and so as she enters the bathroom this is where she notices something off before she goes to the restroom she peers down into the opening of the toilet and she sees a black shoe floating down below in the dregs of the water and so she's like well this is very strange how did this shoe i don't own this shoe how did it get into my toilet and she decides to go around back which is wise to check the sewer tank side of this whole apparatus and she notices that the manhole cover is off so she looks down in it and she screams in horror because she sees the bottom of of a person's feet someone is down in this septic tank setup and so she yells for her colleagues who then rush to the scene they confirm what she is seeing right they look down in there and they go okay yeah that is a guy or someone they immediately call police we don't know exactly when they arrived but i'm sure it was sometime soon just after but sometime later on after the scene was discovered the police arrived they began excavation efforts first they did try to pull the person up out of the pipe but it seemed almost immediate that this guy was was stuck down in there and eventually they do list the help of firemen because they realized there's not much we can do with the person given the diameter of the pipe and given the position they are so they get the firemen to essentially start digging it up they need to cut this pipe system out so they can cut it open and get the person out that way and this is why i think the toilet parts had been broken off from the house and so that part was essentially damaged as they went to get the person out and later on the father of this person as we'll talk about needed to create a replica of of that portion of the pipe and again we'll we'll explore that but once it was unearthed authorities took a closer look and what they found only seemed to raise more questions which is already a very confusing scene but first of all you've got a man inside a very small septic tank he's curled up in the fetal position and his hand seems to be near the opening of the toilet but otherwise his left hand at least is curled to his chest his feet are also pulled in but they're pointing to the outside opening and he's holding he's holding a shirt that's folded up neatly against his chest now to help with this visual i actually have a diagram of the person down in the tank here if you want to take a look at this this will also clarify a lot of the dimensions of this entire system oh they really did squeeze a body in there yeah it's very tight yeah he's kind of in the fetal position with his hands tucked in really the whole body is pinned in there like the feet are up against the wall the head's up against another wall his back is on the bottom pinched in and then the knees are also tucked in hitting a wall as well so there's like no wiggle room in there now what does your instinct say and this is just me gauging what your thoughts are about the knee position right assuming whether he came in on his own volition or was shoved down in here how does one get those knees around that 90 degree turn how did he get his knees because you think he'd come in through the 36 was a centimeter side yeah which because the thicker side the other side is like also as thick but it narrows down to like 20 centimeters and so he'd have to come down head first and come down and yeah i don't know he tucks his knee without scraping his shins yeah i mean it's one of the mind-boggling parts of the case and it's really one of the first cracks in the story because people are of many minds right and we'll talk about all the different theories but the real divide is did he do this on his own volition or was this an external party a third party that did this and then just like violently cranked his feet down in there which forced him into the fetal position it is a cornerstone of this particular mystery or the conspiracy here yeah because it's it's very much like how you definitely question it like how did you get in there for sure it's it's very difficult however you slice it yeah and so in addition to this experience i'm going to tell you a little bit about how i got into the fetal position and how i got into the fetal position and how i got into the fetal position and how i got into the fetal position body here's a few other things that were noted one shoe was found right she saw the shoe from from the toilet side and it was floating or covering his face was the description description and again he was found shirtless with his dress shirt neatly folded up clutched in his hands against his chest which is just a very peculiar detail yes and the next part is a bit graphic but due to the sheer amount of waste here in the septic tank that's the nature of the location he's found he had to be washed several times before any sort of physical or forensic examination could happen on his body geez that's true he's in a septic tank now i will say many conspiracy theorists point to this exact detail the fact that he had to be washed several times could offer whoever right the man an opportunity to scrub any sort of forensic evidence off his body or kind of hide evidence so to speak but either way facts are facts he's gonna have to be washed off there's you have to you have to so forensics looking at the body concluded that his cause of death was interestingly not drowning or anything it was hypothermia and they noted that he had a circulatory issue in his chest so basically he's down in this pipe it's late winter he's losing body temperature faster than his body can recover it and so because of this you know your heart your nervous system and or your respiratory system can fail and regarding the circulatory issue we couldn't really find a lot of evidence to state that he may have suffered from some sort of thoracic circulatory failure this would lead to positional asphyxia which is just like a severe lack of oxygen so your body kind of in this position in the cold is just shutting down it is just failing to thrive and because of this and the fact that he's in this position for so long one could kind of see why like that's why he would have have passed away here that's why or because i thought i mean i i assumed because of the fact that he was in there he was just dead and then shoved in there yeah not yeah not like oh we like you were alive in there which is so much more gruesome yeah i mean that's what it does seem to indicate and honestly i'm glad you pointed that out because you know i started getting so in the weeds of the conspiracy theories sometimes it's it's hard to stay grounded and in the actual narrative and not like the questions of the narrative and so if you do take the face value and you don't say that someone behind the scenes is lying or manipulating it would seem that yes this would be where he died rather than like you said dying somewhere else and moving into this position in addition to that you actually pointed out the idea of maybe getting scrapes on the shins getting into this well it turns out he did have minor scrapes on his elbows and on his legs but seemingly no defensive wounds or anything that would indicate a sign of struggle a defensive wound being like scrapes on your dominant hand or on your hand certainly like on your palms like if you're hands out defending yourself and someone's slashing or whatever could be fractured forearms sometimes cuts on your feet things that you know you're trying to push someone away got it um and it doesn't seem like any of that is on him so again if he were attacked it would have been a surprise but otherwise it does seem forensically that this is where he died this episode of red web is sponsored by 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now streaming only on disney plus now stacking on the tangibilities here the the body had a level of rigidity to it you know we've all heard of rigor mortis this is the post-mortem stiffening of the body due to the depletion of atp and the muscle cells and because of that no atp the muscle cells are not going to be able to become very stiff they lock your body up so from this forensics analysis kind of presumed that he died somewhere like two days prior to being found because of just like his level of decomposition and kind of where his muscles were at this would make it february 26th that he would have died which for all intents and purposes that was a sunday that year now i wanted to look more into rigor mortis because i don't often hear about it very often according to britannica rigor mortis sets in typically between two to six hours after death it peaks very quickly at 12 hours after death is when it's at its maximum stiffness the body and then it fades over time so somewhere between 24 and 48 hours it starts to dissipate as those very muscles that are tensed up begin to decompose and can no longer hold that very tight stiffness that makes sense it wouldn't just be tight and oh okay yeah which is funny because i you know i've been doing this for a long time and i've i don't know if it was cartoons or like movies as a kid but for some reason i had this in my head that when you die you just become a plank you just become this like stiff board yeah but i mean you do i mean you're just seeing movies all the time or like you know they have a tight grasp on something someone's a pry they're you know hands open i'm stiff and dead it's a very good visual thing for movies but it doesn't last very long so they could tell you know ultimately it had been about two days that he had died now quickly the man died and he was dead and he was dead and he was dead and he was the man was identified as 26 year old naoyuki kano we do have an image of this gentleman as he was when he was alive now what's interesting as you take a look at his face here his surname has also been reported as sugano and kano but regardless he worked nearby at the nuclear power plant and that will play a key detail in one of the conspiracies did he know too much do you know something he wasn't supposed to know there's some shady stuff going down at this power plant could be i mean the photo of him he has a nice big fluffy frow of hair he's got a suit he looks you know a very well put together young man yeah nothing comes off as alarming or it's like a normal guy i mean otherwise just a regular guy until one day wound up here now police ruled this death accidental though it's unclear when exactly this decision was made when this call was made they stated that he was like a peeping tom and had entered the tank to spy on her as she was using the restroom now by the end of march 1989 just over a month after the discovery the case was filed as solved and this was the official report so i mean just for the future i'm gonna let you guys know right now i would never be doing some wild stuff like that okay you find me somewhere weird it's because i got shoved down there okay not because i'm a weirdo but because i'm a weirdo and i'm a weirdo and i'm a weirdo and because i was trying to peep on like what i listen a guy who's got to defend himself like that christian i don't know how you feel like when someone comes out so strongly saying i wouldn't do something like that let me just put that caveat out there it almost makes me think maybe he would do something we didn't have the idea in our heads man you put the idea there i just feel like i just need to make it perfectly clear have some clear lines of dialogue he's like oh no man i think he was peeping that's why he was hanging hang paragliding up there above the new beach i'm like running for my life or dying heroically also probably in a duster oh yeah he's in a duster looking cool but there's a a non-zero chance it's in its septic tank though i mean that's because spy on anybody who would do such a wild but yeah i don't know man like that's unfortunate it is unfortunate i mean sure maybe maybe he was but also it's just like man to be like you you passed away you're down there but then he was alive when he was down there so i don't know yeah and and hold on to this one because again i'm not out here to character assassinate a man i've never met in my life and i've only seen his image once like we'll talk about this in more detail it's going to be the first theory we talk about but before we get there you know you need to know that the the verdict from the police was deeply unsatisfying to his community i mean now yuki was very well known amongst everybody in the village you need to know that the verdict from the police was deeply unsatisfying to his community and he was a very active member of his community he worked at the nuclear power plant part of the maintenance company i should say and he was active in the village youth club he also reportedly excelled in public speaking so he had a lot of charm a lot of riz on him which so do nefarious individuals but you know he enjoyed poetry he enjoyed music composition these are all things that is vivid in the minds of the village now this doesn't discount the the much more difficult for the village community to kind of believe it or want to believe it and and this is the foundation with which we'll talk about the other theories all in all he was ultimately viewed as a standout member of the town known for always being willing to help a neighbor in need and that doesn't really you know connect well with the idea of like violating someone's privacy and doing something a little bit more perverse so as i kind of implied it's it's for those reasons that the villagers couldn't expect to be able to help a neighbor in need except the police's conclusion that he was some sort of creeping out peeping tom looking at tanaka climbing down through a literal pipe of feces in order to do so uh and their doubts raised many questions i'm gonna go through all these questions with like some meandering and then at the end i'll come back and button them all up so you know what the the list of confusing elements are okay but it seemed to many people that several of the factors just didn't line up for starters people wondered how he ended up in the tank in the first place right let's go back to the shape and the size this u-shaped bend is a very kind of it's not huge but it's not small at the at the end of the day for a body it's quite shallow and the opening is like 14 inches maybe 14.2 inches 36 centimeters it would have been nearly impossible for anybody to climb in from the toilet side because that's like almost half it's 20 centimeters 7.8 inches so like we know that they likely didn't go down that way but even still like 14 inches is difficult for your average gentleman to go squeezing down into yeah it's i mean we saw from the photos it's tight in fact now yuki's shoulders were approximately 40.6 centimeters so 16 inches in diameter uh or wide and obviously you don't need to go diving in without like flexing you can kind of fold your your chest in as much as you can but it's still though a lot of people are saying this would be extremely difficult for anybody with that kind of shoulder dimension or certainly more to fit down into this small space right i love the fact they got the dimensions and they're figuring it out and also like for someone who's like oh i want to peep in i'm going to squeeze into like that's a big hurdle to get through it's a very dedicated hurdle to get through and it would point to a very sexually frustrated man in order to push through something so recklessly and and that is very valid it's possible that that is the case but check out this next image i don't know who this gentleman is in particular but i do know now yuki's father built a replica of that side of the pipe out of wood in order to demonstrate just how tight like getting into it would be almost to kind of clear his name and say this is essentially impossible i mean look at that man like already his one shoulder is half in the other shoulder still popped out and he's tight he's like pinned in and imagine like getting down there and be like you know what i'm so lonely i really really want to see this and then pin yourself in there and contort yourself like oh no man that's a big mental hurdle to get through it is a big pill to swallow but it seems like also like he was alive when he was down there at least for some time we don't know how long yeah the timeline starts to get a little hairy because and we'll talk about it he wasn't seen by his father or anybody that we know for a few days prior so again more wiggle room for conspiracy but from our understanding from the official conclusion yes he was still alive as he was in the tank i don't know it's all so weird yeah it is very weird and a lot of people are also pointing to the fact that they're like look you had to dig the pipe out in order to get him out yes you you couldn't pull him up out of the pipe so why would he be able to get into the pipe but then i'm sitting here i'll be honest like maybe it's a situation we're going in one way it like officially i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't it goes in easy one way it comes out hard the other yes because clearly he's in there it's not like someone dug this up built him into it and dug it back down in like somehow he got down this pipe that's just facts yeah i guess was and there wasn't any like broken bones or scrapes or anything like he was like just shoved in there just scrapes on his elbows and legs um and i mean this is where you could say anyone's a liar but we don't have the forensics analysis that says broken or dislocated shoulders or anything else like that no it doesn't seem like he was just like jammed in there yeah scrapes like there'd be a bunch of bruises points in which they're like maybe he has some fractures because they're just like trying to jam him in there like i don't know right that's what i would think or or more scrapes i'm surprised there weren't scrapes because he was shirtless on his like shoulders oh yeah did he get down in there with his shirt on and then take it off i don't know man because i feel like that would be the highest pressure point would be your shoulders you're tightly trying to get in there we're seeing it from the photo it's like you could barely get like one shoulder in i don't know man like like i said there's a lot of thoughts to be had here but um further questioning the narrative that he was willingly entering the tank people started to ask why he removed his shirt so neatly folded it and then brought it down with him right you know yeah for context like the winters in japan are known to be quite cold and on this particular day the one that he is presumed to have died there was roughly 20 centimeters or 7.8 inches of snow on the ground and so ah man okay if he left it outside would that be evidence if he took it in with him why take it off in the first place maybe he took it off because it's easier to get in the pipe but he took it with him to hide the evidence or was this you know what i mean like you can cut it all sorts of different ways yeah none of it's straightforward and all of it's just really weird because again i thought there would be like a dead person in there and even then i thought it'd be like mangled up maybe yeah there's a lot of assumptions we can make that go left right and center but i think what is interesting is that he decided to take his shirt off in the winter while there's snow out while it's cold and then climb down in there even if that made it easier or what have you i mean i'm trying to think if he was shoved down in there how did they keep it folded nicely and tucked into his arms yeah it's all weird it's all very weird that he's like as nicely packed in as he is and to be honest yeah i think one thing i could think of is getting in is easier without all the buttons on and you fold it up and you take it with you because you hide the evidence but you also take it off because maybe deceptively i'm gonna guesstimate that this septic tank in a house that's not occupied for a few days we'll talk about that maybe the septic tank felt warmer than it actually was because you know like if you're cold enough even cold tap water feels room temperature so maybe he thought he like he felt in there and he's like oh my god i'm like oh it's warm like that desperate yeah i don't know yeah maybe maybe he's just so desperate that there is no logic and there's no sense in like analyzing it that deep now ultimately i don't think any of these are really bulletproof questions but they are worth asking the officials and trying to get the officials takes on because they focus on some key details that do raise some like yellow flags okay but there are still some other strange circumstances like the missing shoe right remember there was one down in the tank where's the other one well wait so the shoe would have come up on the 20 centimeter side yeah so if you think of the u there's the two entrances and then the bottom like rectangular tank the shoe was just down there with him seemingly by multiple reports one said it was covering his face one said it was floating but obviously there wasn't enough waste in the tank in order for him to drown so ultimately yes it was just seen on the on the toilet side so maybe it went in first i don't know how that shoe gets to the other side then yeah was it wide enough for it to float around him i mean doesn't seem i mean yeah maybe it's wide enough but i was just like how does that shoe get from that tight side of the because his legs are coming in last that's weird it's a great question it's a great question so okay but that's just one shoe where's the other shoe and also how did he get there yuki's car let's start with that the car was found parked near the teacher's housing with his still inside the ignition. Specifically, some reports state that the car was not even really hidden but rather parked in the elementary school parking lot so it's like okay why was it parked in broad daylight if he's trying to peep and not get caught i'll address some of these questions in the theories my with my own take but a lot of this like doesn't just doesn't add up it doesn't add up and the biggest part to me is where the missing shoe was the missing shoe was eventually found quote few hundred meters and quote from naoki's car resting on a riverbed in a river that kind of runs not too far from there so how did his how did his second shoe end up in a river yeah hundreds of meters away so so now we're kind of thinking like did he get pushed in there did he get forced was he like threatened to jump in you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah i don't know we'll we'll we'll go through each particular lens in the theories here because there's so many i have my own like gut instincts and assumptions and what have you but there's another layer to this okay tanaka the teacher uh yumi tanaka and now yuki kano they were actually close friends that doesn't make you know necessarily disarm the crime here maybe this is he felt comfortable going after this person or what have you i don't know but the fact that they were close friends meant that he would have known a few things right he knew that she would have been out of town prior to this incident because she was she was traveling from february 24th through the 27th visiting family and so let's contextualize it away from dates and in the week so she's a teacher she's traveling friday through monday these are the days that she's out it would seem that now yuki expected her to return on the 28th to resume teaching that would be a tuesday now since she was the sole user of that bathroom which he also would have likely known it seems implausible that he would have entered the tank on the 26th the day that he died in there to spy on her knowing that she wouldn't be home for two more days it's a pretty long time in the cold to wait yeah that wouldn't make sense at all and he has a job so in terms of just like a place to stay you know yeah talking about how it's cold but i mean he has a car he just stayed in the car right right i i don't think he got in there willingly is kind of what i'm at right now yeah okay i don't know where i put this in my notes but the reason why i wanted to break down the days is because i had a thought again i'm going with what ifs i'm building on assumptions that's you know to be fair but if she's a teacher you can assume that she's working monday to friday i know that february 27th that monday at least from a quick search is not a a holiday in japan so she would have had work what if he knew that she was out of town for the weekend but didn't know the days what if he knew that she was out of town for the weekend but didn't know the days and so what if he got in there sometime on the 26 maybe the late afternoon on the 26 a sunday expecting her to arrive sunday evening to go back to school on monday but instead she waited an extra day got back sometime late 27th to then go to school on the 28th and then the end of that day is when she found him what if there's just an extra day because he didn't know when she returned and assumed it would be monday damn you got in there early though still still relatively early but again if she's coming back for school on monday you'd have to think that she's not arriving the day she's going back to teaching so maybe he popped in there you know okay let me kick off these shoes throw one in the river for some reason fold my shirt climb down in there 3 p.m boom she'll be here in a few hours i peep away i somehow get out he's already in the ignition i'm ready to rumble you know what i mean it still seems like a big stretch it is a big stretch but but that's where my mind went i i was like i was trying to to see if there was anything i could build yeah you're trying yeah you're trying to make sense of it and like yeah you could have gotten the dates wrong for sure okay before i like kind of consolidate these list of interesting questions there's one last thing here that adds a lot of intrigue so now yuki's father was the last to see him and he says that the last time he saw his son was on february 24th this raised alarm as to what he was doing those full two days before he died again assuming that he died down in the tank and not some sort of like getting caught up in something you know but he disappeared or was last seen on friday like found dead in the toilet on on tuesday it's an interesting gap in our case here that i don't think we'll ever be able to fill out oh okay so we kind of like i said explored let me just give you the rundown the laundry list of all the community pushback and questions okay he was viewed as an outstanding member of the community people considered it nearly impossible for him to fit in the pipe the motive for him going into the pipe wasn't widely believed and then the questions why did he take his shirt off in the cold and why did he take it down with him why were his shoes separated by such a great distance one being down in the tank the other being quote a few hundred meters away in a river why was his car nearby if he was trying to be secretive why were his keys still left in the ignition why did he climb in so early like you said if he knew that she would come back on the 28th that's a long time to wait down in there and where was he and what was he doing between the 24th and his death presumed forensically on the 26th ultimately we will never know because the case was officially closed closed in 2004 and i was going to save this for the conclusion here but ultimately this case is long past japan's statute of limitations and so it can never be reopened again even for murder because i think all cases of murder but before 1995 i i don't want to misspeak but i know 1995 is a particular cutoff for like a new law statute of limitations and then it's 35 years from there i think something like that it is a good amount of time actually christian i don't want to misspeak is the murders statute of limitations like indefinitely starting at 1995 but was 35 years prior to that i don't know if you mind checking that out but but you're right fred it's it's still a good amount of time but yeah it's it's not going to be reopened and while christian looks that up uh since then since 2004 the case being closed petitions to reopen this case have gained over four thousand signatures which would be more than the village worth of people there yeah that's a that's a lot of signatures but i mean like even if the petition does that do anything though not necessarily especially legally now that it can't be reopened but it does show the fervor from the community to say hey we understand that you have a conclusion here we think you should reinvestigate this before the statute of limitations is hit because all of us kind of universally agree something else happened here so it's up to then authorities to you know it's not a legally binding petition but it's up to the authorities if they if they listen to that yeah i guess like legally they don't have to and so just let it be well i think they'd rather have an answer in a closed case than open it up and have an unanswered or an unsolved case for better or worse right uh conviction rates in japan are extraordinarily high um and that is a pretty well-known statistic but uh but yeah christian let us know if you if you were able to kind of clarify that statute of limitations answer so in taking a quick look it looks like in 2010 japan abolished the statute of limitations although some people are saying it was just revised uh looks like essentially for crimes in which the maximum penalty is life in prison the statute of limitations used to be 15 years but is now 30 and then for crimes that would be equivalent to first-degree murder in the u.s where the maximum penalty would be death the statute of limitations used to be 25 years now there is no statute of limitations so okay you're totally right i think it was revised retroactively to 1995. so either way let me just like distill it it's passed all sorts of known statute of limitations just factually 1989. yeah wild case wild uh questions i think valid questions worth exploring but honestly as far as we could find at least the statute of limitations was revised retroactively to 1995. it's passed all sorts of known statute of limitations just factually 1989. yeah wild case wild uh questions i think valid questions worth exploring but honestly as far as we could find at least as far as we could find at least uh questions worth exploring but honestly as far as we could find at least as far as we could find at least officials never answered or quelled any of those concerns or questions this episode of red web is sponsored by quince this episode of red web is 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Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com slash RedWeb. That's BetterHelp.com slash RedWeb. You sure about that? Now streaming only on Disney+. Do you have any thoughts before we dive into the theories or are you just eager to kind of like. No, I'm eager to get into the theories just because so far it just seems like at least the authorities are leaning towards it. He just went in there himself. How? How is that possible, you know? Yeah, I mean, it's a very valid question and let's talk about that. So that theory, the Peeping Tom theory, is the one that says that the police got it right right out of the gate. Support for this theory comes from the fact that there's no indications of foul play on the body, only scrapes on the elbows and legs, which forensics presumed were from entering the pipe. Now, here's what's interesting. Now, Yuki himself was never reported to have shown any sort of perverse behavior or perverted behavior. Any sort of voyeurism or anything like that. But there was unfortunately one or two trends of this type. I won't dive into the weeds of this, but through the 60s into the 80s, there was like a peeking up the skirt kind of phenomenon happening. But then also in the 80s, apparently there was like a groping and sexual harassment kind of. I don't want to say trend is the wrong word, but maybe phenomenon happening. And so culturally, it could fit the time. But again, a lot of people point to the fact that this seems so out of character for now, Yuki. But I do want to attempt to pass this theory through the community's questions to see what possible assumptions we can make to see. Again, I kind of did this along the way, but I wanted to see if any of this passed the vibe check because police didn't answer them. Obviously, we can't do it definitively, but I want to explore it. So rapid fire, the shirt. Maybe to enter the pipe more effectively, he took his shirt off. It could have been deceptively warm. Down in the septic tank. And so maybe he didn't think he needed the shirt. Why would he take the shirt? Maybe to hide the evidence if he was going to be peeping on anybody and didn't want to be found out before he could do the deed. But then you ask about the car. Why is the car there nearby? Is it a getaway car? So that way, if he is or when he is found, he can get up out of the pipe. I don't know how, but he gets up out of the pipe, runs to the car. Keys are already in the ignition and he's just ready. He's ready to rumble. I don't know. But as far as the tight squeeze, how that's this is the biggest question, because either way, he's down there. So many have said it's possible that he may have been flexible enough to kind of contort himself down into the pipe more readily than your average person. This is an easy assumption to make, and it's a common discussion across many of the Internet discussions on this mystery. But like I said, now, Yuki's father created a replica of this pipe and tried to demonstrate it to the public. Tried to demonstrate the impossibility of it himself. Yes, it's a biased source. It's a man trying to clear his son. But at the same time, you know, it's a worthy exercise. Yeah, I don't know. I just feel like even then it's a worthy. Right. I agree. Worthy exercise. It's like, man, you gotta be like some kind of contortionist. Yeah. Yeah. Just get in there like that. And I don't know. I just feel like I don't think he had this hidden talent of being a contortionist. It's still such a tight space, such an extreme to do something like that. I mean, granted, yes, there, you know, there was that kind of stuff being rampant in terms of people trying to do sexual things. But I'm like, that's I mean, you know, right now it's an extreme, but who knows? Yeah. I mean, again, if you assuming the truth of the theory, you know, people will go through some dramatic hoops in order to do some perverse stuff. I mean. Simple as that. But again, you know, it doesn't recuse them of the crime. True. Because I'm not here to clear anybody, but it is a it's worthy of the analysis of like how he got in there and all of that. You know, I don't know. The biggest thing to me, the biggest smoking gun for this particular theory is the fact that the manhole cover was left off. Because if he were hidden in there, I would assume somebody would have replaced that manhole cover. If it was him getting in there intentionally. One could probably surmise that it would be nearly impossible for him to then reseal the whole shebang. Right. It's a good point. Because as far as I can tell, through various sources, through various translations, it does seem that the manhole cover was off and that like the teacher came over, saw it was open, looked down in and that's how she saw his feet. Now, this then comes back, though, to the the dates. OK, so he's a close friend of the teacher's to Yumi's. If he knew she was out of town, did he know the dates specifically? No. I don't think that is an assumption people make. If you go out of town, I mean, I guess I work with you, but if a good friend of mine goes out of town, I'm not always going to know the whens and wheres of maybe I know the day, but not the time. There is a valid question. Why did he get in so early if he knew she was coming back on the 28th? But I think there's wiggle room that maybe he assumed she would be back the day prior. And so then the 26th kind of becomes logical in order to peep the shoe in the river. Oh, man. I don't know. The thing is, there's just small little details all over the like again. I know, I know, you know, especially right now, the theories are leaning so hard that he got in there. But man, that's a big hurdle to get through right now for me. Yeah. Yeah. OK, I think we've steeped in this peeping Tom theory quite a bit. And again, it's it's hard to move on because there's so many things to think about and kind of wager as to what might be going on. Like the is the car an escape vehicle? What happened? Did he care if he was seen? You know, we don't know. No. Other than all of this, it's hard to attempt an answer to some of these questions, especially when there's a huge gap in the records of his whereabouts in the two days leading up to his death. So ultimately, the stacking of enough inconsistencies in this theory have made this theory the least common theory among many. I think that's worth mentioning. Let's move now into the more conspiratorial realms and why they exist, because there's some mind blowing stuff in here. So some have speculated that now Yuki's cause of death was a little bit more sinister and stemmed from political tensions. Around this time, the village had an intense election for the position of village head. Some villagers supported the nuclear power plant where now Yuki worked, believing it was good for the economy and provided jobs to the village. Others, however, were concerned about the adverse health effects. Some have wondered if now Yuki may have uncovered some sort of election secret, making him a target for murder. Other sources have reported that now Yuki was friendly with a candidate named Tadashiro Watanabe. Now, Yuki supported Tadashiro until he reportedly learned of corruption happening behind the scenes. It appears that Tadashiro had been buying votes, again, by reports here, and this was reportedly how he got elected as village head. So now Yuki, feeling betrayed by this, he's like, hey, you were my friend, I supported you, now I hear you're buying votes. He starts to become outspoken about all of these facts, or these, again, reportedly details. But it would seem that Tadashiro, despite buying votes, had enough supporters regardless of all of that, and therefore most people simply didn't believe now Yuki. In fact, people began to turn on now Yuki for being so outspoken about the popular candidate. He's essentially calling for election interference, and most people, paid or not, didn't believe him. In 2026, you can kind of see how this would easily become a very heated situation and lead to a lot of unrest. So because of this, it is a little bit of a leap, and there's not a lot of clarity on this next part, but because of this, many people, or some people, have speculated that this incident may have led to now Yuki's death. It could be suicide, it could be organized murder from Tadashiro, or it could be an impassioned murder from one of Tadashiro's supporters. That part is left a little bit more ambiguous. Yeah, I was gonna say, like, how are we gonna tie this together? Bring it in there as, like, uh, like, this is what drove him. Which is, like, interesting, and that's a very particular, like. suicide i think is a very interesting choice there because it's just would that be the way that someone choose to go yeah yeah you know now political reasons it was he forced in there it's like getting that whole whatnot then why would they cover it up well oh my gosh what if they wanted it to look a certain way what if they what if they wanted to make sure it looked like the soon-to-be official version peeping tom what if it was all again it's all what if it's all assumption yeah it's all it's all assumption that's the worst part about conspiracies is that when it's stuff like this you can go i can make sense of it but does that mean it's you know you can't even want to fall down each little rabbit hole yeah yeah so that one was interesting again given the heightened political climate of today you can kind of you can kind of like understand it a little bit because otherwise it might feel outlandish but hold on to some of the nuggets of that because this next theory i think evolves from that even further so others have speculated that now yuki might have been silenced after uncovering secrets at his work after his death it was revealed that the nuclear plant had been in talks to expand so this expansion right building more reactors more power output etc the expansion of the nuclear plant was threatened by a major mechanical incident that happened several weeks prior to now yuki's death on january 6 1989 wherein a massive recirculation pump impeller shattered in one of the reactors this required the reactor to shut down for quite some time there's not a whole lot of other information about this but suffice to say from what i could find this created a landslide of pr and financial disaster for the power company and this is where corporate conspiracy comes in so they blamed human error basically pointing to the mechanics team and saying this one's on you guys for letting this happen and well we'll unpack that here in a second interesting so five weeks after this incident a friend and co-worker of now yuki's who also happened to be the head of maintenance at the nuclear plant unfortunately committed suicide then now yuki's death came exactly two weeks after that so now you can start to see there's a bit of a trend happening here there is while it's unclear what specifically now yuki might have discovered many in the community considered this to be a strange pattern and thought the circumstances surrounding both deaths were quite mysterious building on this many suspect that this human error excuse was simply that an excuse and used to cover up the company's negligence of ignoring a known mechanical defect we've seen this in many air disasters that we've covered but basically if the mechanical team is saying this thing is old or has a known defect it's it needs to be replaced and the company is saying that's going to be costly ignore it and then that thing fails in order to save face the company is going to then blame the people who were kind of pointing it out wild i mean the fact that someone committed i mean it just there there seems to be pretty heavy evidence right that like stuff was going on there it it's yeah reportedly i i don't want to speak as if this is raw facts but there's a few different titles it all comes through different translations but uh ignoring his exact title i do believe he was the head of the maintenance team and his name is kind of redacted out of respect for the bereaved but um he was the the lead of the mechanics team and he did commit suicide just a few weeks i think five weeks after the incident and many people read into this and said well is this because he's taking this blame and it's really hard on him or some other people then say it's because his team was negligent and air quotes guilty and so that guilt weighed on his conscience i can understand how you see it both ways but what's interesting is that the general consensus is that if any of this had gotten out that the human error was a cover-up and that it was actually the company's fault and not the mechanics fault if any of that had gotten out their plans for expansion would have been crushed and that's why people think that naoyuki was just one of two people silenced in the aftermath of the nuclear plant incident so maybe one or both of them were silenced maybe one or both of them knew the truth of this now yuki being friends with this maintenance worker maybe he was told and so from there you know people presumed that naoyuki's body was hidden or even staged to make it look like he was a peeping tom in order to make this an open and shut case yeah so i guess his home would just like get in there and then they you know his shoe maybe slipped off while he was trying to jump in there and then they just threw that shoe in the river oh no i can picture that oh man they left his car there set it up like he wanted to be there i hate that i could make sense of that too you know i don't make sense of that yeah that is one of the prominent theories is that there was some sort of some sort of he knew something some people have said that he was lured out there and that's why you know or like you said coerced to go down in there some people think he was killed and then staged especially since he knew this teacher it's really hard to say but honestly i had a natural inclination that i wanted to kind of tie this into the previous theory because there's they feel like they rhyme a little bit so it's worth knowing that nuclear plants in japan do pay subsidies to local areas like this plant would have paid to this village especially if it were expanding those subsidies would have increased so it's not impossible for my mind to connect the dots and say what if a local candidate knowing this money might be coming and if he won this election as village lead could kind of help coax this expansion along decided to invest in himself let me pay people to vote for me they will then be on my side because they have money in the game and then i'll make sure that this expansion comes to fruition in which case more subsidies come to the village i get more subsidies maybe i can pocket more of that money and then now yuki is over here going i put village over everybody i found out about this i'm trying to turn on this candidate and i know about the power plant for my friend and pretty much everybody except for the common person has a motivation to end his life oh man the political game and sending people up yeah yeah yeah i could see that i mean honestly that's yeah i lean more towards that than anything i would think that yeah they're just the political powers and ties that's tough that's oh that's a hard one to kind of all of these are hard pills yeah you either have somebody who betrayed the trust of the entire village because they were one type of person and then they did something that violated someone's privacy in a way that shatters that trust or you have on the other side they maintain that trust and they realized that village leadership was working with a a sinister power plant that had hidden some sort of like failure and blamed somebody else and and somebody died from that and he wanted to expose all of this and instead he became you know he was punished for it you know he was punished for it so that they could go on with power money and controller what have you yeah continue yeah yeah woof that's that's wild i mean but it makes the most sense it makes some sense and that's why this case is just like it is solved but it's not popularly solved it is you know so many people are unsatisfied with the outcome of this particular case that's why it's considered unsolved and that's why it's still like so on people's minds right yeah i would say so i mean there's no clear-cut answer here and it's so ambiguous and there's so many little details and it's so hard for it to all piece together i think that's what makes it so intriguing as a mystery in a case yeah long story short man you got another frustrating case on our hands that's kind of the mo of this podcast though you know you you get cases that are so close to an answer frustratingly so and will never hit that finish line then you have cases like this that you feel like cool we have some closure i think that you know this might make sense wait a minute something ain't right and then it ah then it just smells fishy from there yeah i agree it's rough man that's just the nature of the game and uh you know that's why they're mysteries yeah that's why they're mysteries which is why i greatly appreciate when you know we do have cases like oh actually this one's solved that we feel like for the most part this one so i'm like ah okay yeah because there's so many that aren't and so to get some that are as nice yeah to get that answer that little dopamine hit of like oh okay it's nice to know things rather than shatter our trust or knowledge of reality but you can see now i i want to now that we're at the close i want to sandwich this episode you can see now how it feels one way right at the outset you saw fukushima toilet death and you're going huh and now you could see how deep the well goes it it just kept going in ways i didn't think it would i mean i mentioned this before earlier in the episode but i thought there'd be a dead body in pieces in there not a full person let alone a full person that was alive while they were in there for some time and then the whole mystery of like were they here doing something perverted was it this big conspiracy with like where he worked or the you know the political stuff and it's a spiral to this whole thing i was like i thought it would be like there's a dead body in there yeah who is it who killed him and put it in there put him in there whatnot not like did he crawl in himself yeah what yeah what do you mean yeah dude i i can totally get that you know like uh there's there's times where we find body parts and it's always about okay what's the road to the suspects this one blew your expectations up immediately and so it feels like it gets so tight and narrow that you go well i guess i don't know how it could be anything but that given there's this trend going on this phenomenon of other perverse things but then when you start talking about okay this is what the community is saying you start to go well hold on a second i get it now i get it but yeah that's the realm we live in that frustrating narrow realm of just tinfoil hat you know what i mean the world is round okay everybody we know that but the aliens are out there okay and they're coming they're coming as we come to a close i want to thank a few of our task force members jordan cartwright as our newest task force member of uh at redwebpod.com we also have james russell thank you for being a buff scientist shout out to you and then of course our squonks for the week we got zarathustra holster and jordan chase just to name a few if you want to join the likes of these fellows head over to redwebpod.com or you know chuck us up the bat signal the web signal if you ever want to you know get something solved we've got a form that we've posted about on our patreon page where you can submit topics this one was actually submitted to us by an anonymous task force member who knows maybe they know more about this case than they let on leading on otherwise like i said before you can share this podcast with your mom with your friends with yourself i don't know listen again uh just just crank it back to the beginning or or review us wherever you listen to us you know it's another free way to support us um but with that said fredo thank you for exploring another frustrating and interesting case but with that said i'll see you right back here next monday for yet another mystery from the studio that brought you wandavision i was an avenger but i'm not a hero anymore the vision returns for the final chapter of the groundbreaking trilogy that family wasn't real you sure about that i had a father called vision how is this possible don't miss the two episode premiere of marvel television's vision quest nothing bonds a family together quite like mortal jeopardy now streaming only on disney plus Thank you.