History on the march – Lindsay Hawker’s alleged murderer arrested

The police have finally arrested Tatsuya Ichihashi for the grisly murder of Nova teacher Lindsay Ann Hawker. You can find the details from any number of sources. I am very glad the police followed through and finally brought him to justice after initially letting him get away. He was on the run for around two and a half years.

This is a minute detail, but Ichihashi’s arrest means that from now on there will be no more wanted posters with Ichihashi’s face. Ever since I arrived in Japan around two years ago his face has been plastered just about everywhere. In fact, the murder occurred just a month before I touched down. Now I’ll miss not seeing him at every police box. It’s not that I was fond of him – I will just instinctively feel a sense of loss. Today he was there, and at some point in the next few days he’ll be gone from everywhere but the TV. And all this time, he didn’t even look like that anymore because of the plastic surgery!

It’s the same with the Tokyo Olympics 2016 signs. From the time I arrived here (as far as I can remember) until just a couple months ago they were all over the place – but now that the games were awarded to Rio they are gone, too.

9 thoughts on “History on the march – Lindsay Hawker’s alleged murderer arrested”

  1. I’m glad they finally caught him. I guess the police’s recent media push really worked. One thing I still don’t get: Why didn’t they release the alias he’s been using?

  2. It is a bit odd isn’t it? But given that there aren’t many advertising posters around Japan, Ichihashi’s face was pretty prominent. One member of an American group I took to Japan in September asked why he was everywhere.

  3. He’s just lucky they caught him before they had to reprint all those posters with his new face and tack the costs onto his fine!

  4. What if…

    …the guy that they arrested is someone that the real Ichihashi paid to pretend to be Ichihashi. The helicopters swarm over the fake Ichihashi while the real one is halfway to Guam on some fishing boat. They grill the fake Ichihashi for months, while he doesn’t really say much, and only after months have passed do they realized that they’ve nabbed an imposter. Hawker’s father is on a plane to Japan, and the detectives on the case are staring at each other saying, “If he’s not Ichihashi, then where the f—…”

    [CAMERAS PAN OUT TO TOKYO, WITH HELICOPTERS SWARMING. CUT TO REAL ICHIHASHI ON TROPICAL ISLAND, WEARING PANAMA HAT AND BLUE BLOCKERS.]

    Sorry, on second thought, I have nothing to add.

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