Episode 52: Kumazawa Father-Son Murder

Black Torii — Japanese True Crime · Aug 23, 2026 · 13m

On the morning of June 1st, 2019, a 76-year-old man picked up the phone and called the police. He told them, calmly, that he had just stabbed his son. And then he waited for them to arrive. The man was Hideaki Kumazawa — a retired senior official of the Japanese government, a former vice-minister of the Ministry of Agriculture, a one-time ambassador to the Czech Republic. His son, Eiichiro, was 44 years old. He lay on the floor of their Tokyo home with 36 stab wounds. The killing made headlines across Japan for a week. But the story it told — about isolation, about failing families, about the…