44 Days Of Torture

The murder of Junko Furuta is one of the most often requested by my readers; it is also one the most horrific murders I’ve ever researched – and believe me, that is saying a whole lot. There are brutal crime scene photos within this article, so if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing, you may wish to skip this one.

This case takes place in Tokyo, Japan. Junko had just celebrated her 17th birthday only 3 days before she was kidnapped. By all accounts she was a beautiful young lady with a shining future ahead of her; Junko was well loved by her classmates, and she didn’t drink, smoke, nor did she partake in any drugs. She was only murdered because she refused to date a young man by the name of Hiroshi Miyano; he was a known bully with ties to the Yakuza (the Japanese mafia) and Junko had not wanted any part of that. On November 25th of 1988, Junko was kidnapped while on her way home from her part time job by Hiroshi and three of his teenaged friends: Kamisaku Jo, Yasushi Watanabe, and Nobuharu Minato.

The group initially took Junko to an abandoned building, but soon decided that it would be better to take her to Nobuharu Minato’s home instead. In the beginning Nobuharu’s parents were told that Junko was just a girlfriend, but that lie didn’t last long. The group soon dropped the act, and the adults were told that Hiroshi was a member of the Yakuza; if they attempted to help the girl or alert the police, then they would be murdered as well.

Soon after she’d arrived at the home, Junko was forced to call her parents and tell them that she had run away; this is when the torture began. What this poor girl lived through is simply unimaginable.

Junko was beaten with weights and golf clubs, and they hung her from the ceiling and used her as a punching bag. They smashed Junko’s hands, forced her to drink her own urine, to eat cockroaches, and to sleep outside in the dead of winter. The men dripped hot wax upon her face, burnt her eyelids with a lighter, and stabbed her repeatedly in the chest with needles. Junko was starved, weights were dropped onto her belly, she was repeatedly urinated on, and often kept inside of a freezer.

Junko tried more than once to get help; she pleaded with her captor’s parents, but they flat out refused to help. She attempted to phone the police, but was caught before the call could be connected. For these acts the poor girl was severely punished, lighter fluid was poured on her legs, and then they were set on fire.

As awful as all this was, the sexual torture must’ve been the worst. Not only was she forced to masturbate in front of an audience, but the innocent teenager was raped (both vaginally and anally) over and over again – it is estimated that Junko was sexually assaulted between 400 and 500 times. The 4 teenagers weren’t the only ones who partook in this, it’s said that up to 100 different men, mostly members of the Yakuza, came to rape and torture of this sweet young girl. Still, her story gets so much worse.

These monsters shoved a hot lightbulb up inside Junko, then they pushed on her stomach until it burst. Various objects were placed inside both of her orifices included lit cigarettes, glass bottles, piping hot grilled chicken skewers, scissors, an iron bar, and needles. They even set off firecrackers from her anal cavity, burnt all of her nether regions with a lighter, and ripped one of the poor girl’s nipples off with pliers. Her internal organs were subjected to so much damage that she eventually lost all control of her bladder and bowels.

At one point one of the young men who had raped Junko felt so guilty about what he’d done that he told his parents, and in turn the parents called the police. Officers visited Nobuharu’s home, but his parents swore that nothing out of the ordinary was going on. To prove their point they even permitted the police to enter the residence. This was enough for authorities to believe that it must’ve been a false report. Had they only bothered to really look around, who knows what may have happened. Junko may have survived – at the very least her torture would’ve ended sooner.

The 17 year old endured this torture for 44 days, but for Junko it must’ve felt like decades. Halfway through the ordeal the girl was begging her captors to kill her, and finally they did; on January 4th of 1989, they poured lighter fluid on Junko and set her on fire. Afterwords they stuffed this precious girl inside of a 55 gallon drum, filled it up with cement, and took that to a remote area in Koto, Tokyo.

Junko was just a missing person for approximately a year before her corpse was discovered. The case may never have been solved, had ringleader Hiroshi Miyano kept his mouth shut. He was picked up by police to be questioned about another girl, but Hiroshi had mistakenly believed that he’d been brought in because of what he’d done to Junko, and he confessed.

Finally the 4 killers were brought to justice, and they were tried as adults but instead of being charged with torturing this poor girl to death, the charges were reduced to committing bodily injury which resulted in death. The largest amount of time which any of these monsters served was 8 years, and today each and every one of these brutal rapists and murderers are free.

As far as Nobuharu’s parents, they were not prosecuted for protecting the killers while Junko was being tortured and murdered in their home. They were, however, ordered to pay $425,000 to Junko’s parents. It’s reported that the victim’s family has yet to receive a dime. Amazingly Hiroshi Miyano’s mother blamed Junko for her son’s prison sentence, and even went so far as to desecrate Junko’s grave! Seriously what is wrong with people?

Happy New Years, y’all. Please be safe tonight, I don’t want to write about any of you 💚 I truly hope 2021 treats all of us better than 2020 has! Oh! As of last night there’s a brand new Patreon post up, in case you missed it. I’m trying to post there more often.