Tsutomu Miyazaki

In the late 1980s, the quiet suburbs of Saitama, Japan, hid a darkness that few could imagine. Behind pastel houses and trimmed hedges, a reclusive photo technician named Tsutomu Miyazaki began a killing spree that would horrify a nation and forever alter Japan's relationship with its own innocence. Drawing from police records, trial transcripts, and eyewitness accounts, Tsutomu Miyazaki: True Crime Serial Killers reconstructs the crimes that shocked the world—the abductions and murders of four young girls, the chilling details of Miyazaki's methods, and the psychological and cultural forces that shaped one of Japan's most infamous predators. Author Johann Bachmann blends meticulous research with haunting narrative power, following Detective Hiroshi Sato's desperate pursuit of the killer, the agony of parents like Kenji Takahashi, and the crushing guilt of witnesses who stayed silent. As the investigation unfolds, so does a portrait of a society unprepared to confront the darkness within its own borders. This book goes beyond the headlines to examine the deeper questions: How does a culture of silence and conformity enable evil to thrive? What happens when obsession blurs the line between fantasy and reality? And what price does a nation pay for looking away too long? More than a retelling of horrific crimes, Tsutomu Miyazaki: True Crime Serial Killers is a psychological autopsy of fear, alienation, and the hidden fractures of modern Japan. It exposes how a single man's depravity became a mirror for an entire society—and a warning that monsters often grow in the spaces we refuse to see. For readers of true crime, criminology, and psychological nonfiction, this book delivers a chilling and deeply human exploration of one of the darkest chapters in Japan's modern history.