A Little Safer For Vice Ministers of Health and Welfare

The biggest news in Japan these days has been the murder of a former Vice Minister of Health and Welfare and his wife, an event which shocked the usually peaceful country with its violence. Last Monday, a man disguised as a delivery company employee entered the home of Takehiko Yamaguchi (66) and his wife Michiko (61) and stabbed both to death with a “survival” type knife, and the next day, the individual attacked the wife of another former head of the ministry, although she fortunately survived. Since the attacks were both directed at former heads of the Welfare Ministry’s Pension Bureau, there was widespread speculation that the crime might have been perpetrated by someone angered over the loss of millions of pension records in the 1980s, which effectively robbed a huge swath of workers of some of the pension benefits they’d receive later in life. The real motive for the slayings may have been a bit more mundane, however. According to an email sent to the Tokyo Broadcast System, which had been reporting on the incidents, the killer committed the murders because his dog was put to sleep at the “health care center” (aka the dog pound), also operated by the Welfare Ministry. “This was revenge for having ‘my family’ [dog] killed at the health care center 34 years ago,” the man said in his email, which also complained that Japanese municipal authorities are putting 500,000 stray dogs and cats to sleep each year. When I saw that police had arrested one Takeshi Koizumi (46) and recovered the murder weapons from his car, I knew instinctively that his occupation would be listed as mushoku, or unemployed, since the Japanese news always announces what job a certain suspect does (even if it’s no job), so that viewers can categorize him in their minds properly. With this dangerous killer behind bars, hopefully the world will be a little bit safer for Vice Ministers of Health and Welfare for a while.