was a

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

councilwoman who committed suicide following allegations of petty theft. The circumstances of her death were initially thought to have been "mysterious." Asaki was notable in Tokyo for making comments critical of

Soka Gakkai is a Japanese Buddhist religious movement based on the teachings of the 13th-century Japanese priest Nichiren as taught by its first three presidents Tsunesaburō Makiguchi, Jōsei Toda, and Daisaku Ikeda. It is the largest of the Japanese ...

Scandal and death

In July 1995, she was accused of stealing a T-shirt from a clothing store. Asaki was never actually convicted of shoplifting, but Soka Gakkai claims that she was guilty, explaining, "In recent years, shoplifting by housewives has become a social issue." She offered a restaurant receipt as an alibi, but police discovered that it was forged. Several newsweeklies reported that the clothing store proprietor was a member of Soka Gakkai who could have invented the shoplifting charge. All of the newsweeklies were later sued for

defamation Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...

for their reporting. On September 1, 1995, Asaki fell to her death from a sixth-story apartment building next to

Higashi-Murayama Station is a junction passenger railway station located in the city of Higashimurayama, Tokyo, Japan, operated by the private railway operator Seibu Railway. Lines Higashi-Murayama Station is served by the Seibu Shinjuku Line, the Seibu Kokubunji Line ...

. Police ruled the death a suicide. She was 51.

Conspiracy theory and lawsuits

On September 23, 1995, Asaki's widower and surviving daughter, as well as her coworker in the Tokyo city council, all made statements to the press to the effect that they believed Soka Gakkai was involved in Asaki's death. Their statements were reported by ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'' and several Japanese newsweeklies. Soka Gakkai's president compared the bereaved family to

Aum Shinrikyo , formerly , is a Japanese doomsday cult founded by Shoko Asahara in 1987. It carried out the deadly Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995 and was found to have been responsible for the Matsumoto sarin attack the previous year. The group says tha ...

, a religious cult famous for dropping poison gas into the Tokyo subway system. The Gakkai sued Asaki's family and the newsweeklies that reported their allegations, and in 2001, courts awarded the Gakkai 2 million yen. In 2008 and 2009, Asaki's coworker Hozumi Yano won two defamation suits brought by Soka Gakkai for expressing his opinion that she was murdered. The Gakkai continues to claim that it has "prevailed in every defamation case in which Asaki's death was at issue."The Asaki Case Resurfaces
/ref> The case was taken up by

Zaitokukai Zaitokukai, full name , is an ultra-nationalist and far-right extremist political organization in Japan, which calls for an end to state welfare and alleged privileges afforded to Zainichi Koreans. It has been described by the National Police Ag ...

and other right-wing groups.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Akiyo, Asaki Suicides by jumping in Japan 1944 births 1995 deaths 1995 suicides