Suspect says he has “absolutely no memory” of incident after victim dies in hospital.
The Kabukicho neighborhood of downtown Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward is the city’s largest bar district, with many establishments staying open all night long until the trains start running the next morning. A late night of getting liquored-up took a deadly turn last weekend, though, according to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police and eyewitnesses.
At around 1:20 in the morning on Sunday, a 33-year-old French man was out on the sidewalk in Kabukicho’s Icchome section. Witnesses say the man, visibly intoxicated, approached a woman he was not acquainted with and began following her, prompting a verbal altercation between the two. It was then that Akihiko Nogami, a 67-year-old Japanese man, stepped in, trying to get the French man to leave the woman alone. The French man, apparently taking issue with the attempted intervention, responded by shoving Nogami with both hands, causing him to fall and violently hit his head on the ground.
Nogami was rushed to a hospital, where he was diagnosed with acute subdural hematoma, a type of internal bleeding where blood collects between the brain and skull. Passersby subdued the French man and called the police, who placed him under arrest for assault. Those charges have now been revised to manslaughter following Nogami’s subsequent death in the hospital.
Reports describe the French man as a company employee living in Tokyo’s Nakano Ward, indicating that he’s a resident of Japan, not an overseas tourist. He claims to have “absolutely no memory of the incident” and is denying the charges.
Though Kabukicho has a reputation as one of the seedier parts of Tokyo, on-the-street violence and deaths are few and far between. Likewise, while there have been a number of high-profile incidents of inappropriate behavior by foreign nationals in Japan over the past few months, cases of foreign nationals assaulting Japanese citizens are rare, and incidents that lead to death are especially so, and so prosecutors are unlikely to be clement.
Source: Tele Asa, TBS News Dig, Yomiuri Shimbun Online, Asahi Shimbun Digital
Top image: Pakutaso
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