Episode 9: Wakayama Curry Poisoning

Black Torii — Japanese True Crime · Jul 9, 2026 · 14m

July 25, 1998. A Saturday evening in the quiet Sonobe neighborhood of Wakayama City. Families are setting up folding tables in a parking lot. Children are running around in the humid summer heat. Elderly neighbors pull up chairs. Paper lanterns sway overhead. This is the annual summer festival run by the local residents' association — the kind of community gathering that happens in thousands of Japanese neighborhoods every year. There is cold barley tea, conversation, and a big pot of curry simmering in someone's garage. By morning, four of those neighbors are dead. Sixty-three others are…