Timesuck with Dan Cummins - Short Suck #13 - The Tsuyama Massacre

Episode Date: July 10, 2024

The Tsuyama Massacre. The strange tale of one sexually frustrated man, Mutsuo Toi, who cut the power lines that fed electricity to his entire village one night, and then, armed with a samurai sword, daggers, a semi-automatic shotgun and 200 rounds of ammo, he wandered from house to house for 90 minutes, murdering roughly a third of his village's residents... WATCH THIS EPISODE:For Merch and everything else Bad Magic related, head to: https://www.badmagicproductions.com

Welcome to another edition of Time Sucks, Short Sucks. I'm Dan Cummins and today I'll be sharing the story of the Tetsuyama Massacre, the single deadliest massacre committed by a lone gunman in the history of Japan. On a warm spring night, 21 year old Mutsuo Tui cut the power line that provided his small village of Kamo close to Tetsuyama with electricity, leaving his neighbors in darkness. And then armed with a modified shotgun, a katana sword, an axe, several daggers, and 200 rounds of ammunition, he walked from home to home, butchering family after family after beginning his bloodbath by cutting his own grandmother's head off with an axe.

And we can't blame heavy metal music for this mass shooting. Or violent video games. We can't blame the proliferation of porn or any other supposed erosion of traditional family values and the alleged moral decay of modern society because this didn't happen in the last few years. Or even in the last few decades. It happened on May 21st, 1938. Words and ideas can change the world.

I hated her, but I wanted to love my mother. I have a dream. I plead not guilty right now. Your only chance is to leave with us. When most people think of places where there's a lot of violence, where violent crime is on the rise and there's a sort of a might makes right mentality, I highly doubt they think of Japan. At least not here in America they don't. For most Americans today I feel like the primary

associations we have with Japan is quality automobiles, awesome video games, cool tech companies that make our computers, smartphones, and video game consoles, captivating movies, TV shows, and sushi. Japan is the home of Toyota, Honda, Nissan, and Subaru. Also Nintendo, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic. It's where awesome horror movies like The Original Ring and The Grudge are made. It's the birthplace of both anime and manga. And it's the home of the city that frequently tops the list of the most futuristic cities on Earth, Tokyo. And it's safe. Japan has one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the world. In 2020, Japan had a homicide rate of 0.2 per

100,000 people compared to 5.3 in the United States. We have over 25 times the violence in America per capita than Japan when it comes to murder. Japan's robbery rate of 1.2 per 100,000 people also far far lower than most other countries such as France at 43.8, Germany at 43.2, and the US of A at 81.4. My god. Getting robbed over here almost 70 times more likely than it is for somebody in Japan. more likely than it is for somebody in Japan. Japan's serious assault rate of 15 per 100,000 people also much lower than most other countries, such as France at 460, Germany at 156, and the US at 278.

Getting assaulted over here almost 20 times as often. Thanks to his low crime rate and a cultural emphasis on honor, respect, manners, and more, Japanese society tends to be thought of as being extremely civilized. Visitors to Japan often talk about the lack of litter and graffiti, high levels of public order, and a general culture of rule following. The general public persona of the Japanese is in fact expressed by the word mana in Japanese

from the English manner. The expression has become so familiar in today's Japanese vocabulary that the vibrating mode of cell phones is known as mana mode. I love it. I wish more shameless shitheads over here in the States would do the same. Or at least stop holding zoom meetings or talking on their speaker phones in public like that's totally fucking normal. As a result the bustling super crowded subways of Tokyo are pervaded with a quiet, respectful, and civil atmosphere. And it's almost always clean and free of any food and drink debris. If there is litter, highly likely that a non-Japanese tourist left it.

The Japanese government even sponsors campaigns organized every 10 years where so-called manor posters are plastered around public places reminding citizens not to be dirty fucking animals to act civilized and treat their fellow citizens with respect. There are signs forbidding smoking on the street outside of designated smoking areas, signs reminding citizens that smoking around others we don't want to you know who don't want to smell like an ashtray when they get home and have their lungs damaged by cancer causing secondhand smoke is an act of incivility. It's rude you dumb fucking animal. You know class having ignorant low life, so stop being a public nuisance and learn how to act right. And

their signs don't use language like that because they have a lot more class than I do. There's a common theme in their suggestions. Put the needs of the group over the needs of the individual. Think of others and think of them first. So where does this cultural focus come from? Well, it's difficult to establish the the needs of the individual. Think of others and think of them first. So where does this cultural focus come from? Well it's difficult to establish the origin of the causal link. Do Japanese people, is there obedience to order? Excuse me, does it result from their compliance with their signs posted requirements or do the signs in question merely confirm a behavior already

solidly rooted in society? Which is a chicken? Which is the egg? I think it goes back to the age of the samurai. Some anthropologists believe that Japanese society relies largely on the notion of shame to keep civil order. And that fear of being shamed keeps individuals from stepping over the line. They don't want to attract unwanted notice and attention and be judged by others. And acting honorably has long been a deeply held value in Japanese culture. The way of the warrior. The code of Bushiro.

The codex of the samurai during feudal Japan which promoted the importance of loyalty and honor in addition to martial arts and dying for valor. Echoes of this code reverberate strongly in Japan to this day. Japanese children learn humility and dignity as soon as they enter kindergarten. If they haven't already learned it at home, which they probably have. And this cultural code is what made the Titsuyama massacre so incredibly shocking. Such a dishonorable act. It's likely what allowed Mutsuo Tui to walk from home to home dishing out death. His behavior was so foreign, so shocking that it likely didn't even seem possible,

didn't seem real to his incredibly confused and terrified victims. They probably couldn't truly process what was happening until it was too late. Mutsotui was born in the Okaiyama Prefecture to well-off parents on March 5, 1917, the second of their two children. But then both his wealthy parents died of tuberculosis when he was still a baby, so he and his older sister were then raised by their grandmother. When he was six, they relocated to his grandmother's hometown of Kamo, close to Titsuyama, a medieval Japanese city that was home to a massive castle, a castle whose ruins remain the town's primary

tourist attraction today. Kamo was a little village, further out from the city center. Today it's actually merged with Titsuyama into one metropolitan area. But at the time, Kama lay in a small valley, bounded by mountains to the east and west, a rural community like many in early 20th century Japan, isolated, insular, and agricultural. Young Mutsuo was officially the head of his small household, women not being able to be registered as such. Despite losing both of his parents, Mutsuo grew up largely in comfort. The toy family, or two,

excuse me, family, was well off. His parents, as I mentioned, were considered wealthy. His grandmother owned a large amount of land, much of which was farmed. And then while he grew up, his hamlet, like many in Japan, underwent modernization. Telephone poles reached high above parts of the hamlet, connecting to the outside world. Farmers had just begun to use modern hunting rifles to repel wild boars. Childhood education was newly formalized and compulsory. Mutsuo first studied at Nishikamo, that elementary school, where he generally excelled. He was considered a gifted child, healthy, fairly well-liked. But then when he graduated at the age of 14, he had his first brush with a long line of occurring illnesses that would plague him for the rest of his life.

He was struck with pleurisy, a condition that causes inflammation of the pleura, the thin tissue that lines the chest cavity and wraps around the lungs, often characterized by pain in the chest and a dry cough. His doctor ordered that he be relieved of any farm work. And for the next three months, he lived an idle, boring life before his illness took a turn for the better, and he was allowed to resume his studies and attend the next level of his education. He now continued to do well, and it was believed by many that he had a bright future ahead

of him. However, despite many of his classmates having generally positive feelings towards Mutsuo, he was not particularly close with any of them. Some would later say that there was a pessimism behind his gentle smile. Yeah, I bet there was. I'm not surprised. Dude lost both of his parents as a baby. I would imagine it'd be pretty damn hard not to feel a little pessimistic about life when

that's happened. Still, he had a pretty normal childhood and all things considered, he was a pretty normal kid. But then in 1934, when Mutsuo was 17, he stopped appearing so normal. That year his older sister, his lone sibling, got married and left his grandmother's home. And Mutsuo saw this as an act of betrayal. Is it possible he loved his sister as a little more than a sister? That he'd bonded to her as the only remaining member of his nuclear family and then somehow

that bond led to a sexual obsession. That's what some think. Or perhaps it was non-sexual and they were just bonded in some unique, powerful, and unnatural way thanks to their shared trauma. And maybe Mutsuo was bonded to his sister a little more than she was bonded to him. He had been outgoing and social before his sister's marriage but afterwards he became withdrawn. Stopped talking to most people, stopped going out. There was a massive nearly instantaneous shift in his demeanor and behavior

and shortly after his sister abandoned him, at least that's how he saw it, he became completely obsessed with the dark tale of Sada Abe. Let's talk about her. This story is pretty intense. Sada Abe was the seventh of eight children in an upper middle class family of tatame map makers in Tokyo's Kanda neighborhood. Sada would be the youngest of only four children who survived to adulthood, damned tuberculosis, killing all kinds of people in the early 1900s. The family was considered exceedingly upstanding, honorable, moral, which is why when Sada's brother Shintaro ran away with his parents' money, everyone was shocked. And then those who knew the family were shocked again when Sada's sister, Turuko, took on several lovers, something strictly forbidden by Japanese society, at least out in the open

it was. Sada's father then punish his daughter by literally sending Turuko to work in a brothel. Something that was actually not an uncommon move when it came to punishing young female sexual promiscuity in Japan. How fucked up is that? You want to get fucked out or fine? I guess I'll just have to sell my sweet baby girl into a brothel where anyone and everyone can pay to fuck her. This was a cultural norm at the time. Good reminder that the Abrahamic religions and values that come with them not needed at all for we meat sex to still impose the most fucked up patriarchal ownership based

punishments on the female members of our species. Why do we act like this? In moments, I hate our species and hope some extinction event just wipes all of us off the planet. The paradox of humanity, we're in so many ways the best most miraculous species on Earth and also simultaneously in so many other ways just the fucking worst. Thankfully, I guess, Turuko's past was not considered a hindrance to marriage for those of Abe's class at this time. His social class and or her social class, excuse me, and she soon married her way out of the brothel, bringing the family back somewhat to normalcy. Normalcy that Sada would soon tear down though maybe that was entirely her fault. Sada soon

began to court the stylish image of a geisha by skipping school and wearing makeup and real quick geisha not synonymous with prostitute common misconception in the West some geisha have engaged in sex work, but not all. Literally translated, Geisha means person of the arts. The term clearly indicates that the female entertainer possesses skills that have little to do with sexual services. Geisha culture has its origins in the 17th and 18th centuries when it was invoked to hire some highly educated, beautiful woman for an amusing evening and intelligent conversation. Sada's family dealt with various money and social problems. She was allowed to leave the house alone

and then she fell in with the crowd of other independent young teenagers. And then at the age of just 14, one of those teenagers would rape her. Her parents initially appeared to support her, but soon changed their response. Embarrassed by rumors of another daughter becoming promiscuous and bringing dishonor to their home her parents sold her to a geisha house in the seaport of yokohama 1922. Toku Abe, Sada's oldest sister, will later testify that Sada wished to become a geisha and her parents just allowed it but Sada herself will claim that her father made her become a geisha as punishment for being raped. What a great dad. Less like a brothel, more like a club, geisha houses

were run by a mother who handled her geisha's engagements, trained them in music and literature, funded her lifestyle. Under the system, under a geisha's, until a geisha, excuse me, debt was paid off, a process that usually took about two years years all of her tips and wages would go to the geisha house and she would be given an allowance in return the mother would then book the geisha for events somewhat like parties tea food music geishas had to be highly educated most of them would go back to school to succeed in their field you couldn't just bat your eyelashes giggle girlishly and call it a day the best most educated sophisticated geishas became highly successful, almost like celebrities today. Sada would not be

that successful. She lacked the training she needed to truly succeed, so she was beautiful but not refined, and thus she mostly got the jobs nobody else wanted, which was to provide sex for clients. Yes, while not all geishas are sex workers, some are. Sada will engage in sex work for five years, eventually contracting syphilis. After getting that STI, which was about two decades away from having a cure, she left to work as a prostitute in Osaka's famous brothel district, where she soon gained a reputation as a troublemaker. She stole money from clients, attempted to leave the brothel several times, but was soon tracked down thanks to a legal prostitution system that was pretty well organized at that

time. In October of 1934, Sada was arrested in a police raid on an unlicensed brothel where she was working. Kinosuke Kasuhara, a well-connected friend of the brothel owner, arranged for her release. Kasuhara was very attracted to Sada and with Abe's agreement he made her his mistress. As her sugar daddy he set up a house for Sada on December 20th 1934 and also provided her with an income. In his later deposition to the police he remembered, she was really strong, a real powerful

one. Even though I am pretty jaded she was enough to astound me. She wasn't satisfied unless we did it two, three, or four times a night. To her, it was unacceptable unless I had my hand on her private parts all night long. At first, it was great, but after a couple of weeks, I got a little exhausted. Ah, poor guy. It was hell, officers! She wanted to fuck my brains out, like some wild sex banshee all day every day, every which way. I started to feel like a piece of meat.

I'm not just a walking boner, you know. There's more to me. This is a hard dick constantly being brought to climax. I started to have to ice my balls every night. When Abe suggested that Kasahara leave his wife to marry her, he refused. She then asked Kasahara to allow her to take another lover, which he also refused. So he didn't want to fuck her all the time, but also didn't want anyone else to fuck her. Abe, not happy with his arrangement, left town.

She decided to go to Nagoya, another Japanese city, and then would return to Tokyo in June of 1935. Or she had a couple of different lovers before she decided to get out of the prostitution racket once and for all. Sada then began to work as an apprentice at the Yoshidaia restaurant on February 1st 1936. The owner of this establishment, Kichizo Isida, who was 42 at the time, had worked his way up in the business starting as an apprentice himself in a restaurant that specialized in eel dishes and he had opened up Yoshidaya in Tokyo's Nakano neighborhood in 1920. And he was known as a womanizer. So I'm guessing you can see where this is going. In mid-April, Ashita and Sada started fucking. Their sexual relationship began one night in the restaurant following listening to some romantic ballad sung by one of the restaurant's geishas.

And on April 23, 1936, Abe and Ashita met for a pre-arranged sexual encounter at a teahouse, that contemporary equivalent of a love hotel that might rent rooms by the hour. They would need a lot more than an hour. Planning only for a short fling, the couple instead remained in bed for four straight days. Sounds delightful. Then on the night of April 27th, they took the party to another tea house where they continued to drink and fuck each other's brains out, occasionally with the accompaniment of some geishas singing.

They wouldn't even stop fucking when maids entered their room apparently to serve them some more sake. Ashita didn't actually return to his restaurant until the morning of May 8th after an absence of two weeks. About him, Sada herself would later say, It's hard to say exactly what was so good about Ashita, but it was impossible to say anything bad about his looks, his attitude, his skill as a lover, the way he expressed his feelings.

I had never met such a sexy man. But now, after having a few weeks of fun, Ashita was ready to go back to his wife. Oh yeah, did I mention he was married? He was. You know, married men taking on mistresses, very much a cultural norm in Japan at this time. Not telling your wife where the fuck you were for a few weeks, apparently also somewhat acceptable. Fairly certain that my wife Lindsay would not welcome me

back home with open arms if I just like left for two weeks and just didn't say where I was. Sada Abe was really not happy about this. She thought she found the love of her life, but instead she just found another man who wanted to fuck her and then leave her. And then the day after Ashita essentially dumped her on May 9th, 1936, she attended a play in which a geisha attacks her lover with a large knife. And that gives her an idea. Feeling enraged, embarrassed, heartbroken,

she decides to threaten Ashita with a knife at the very next meeting. On May 11th, Sada Pond, some of her clothing, uses that money she gets to buy a very large, very sharp kitchen knife. She later described meeting Ashita the night after she bought it. She said, I pulled the kitchen knife out of my bag and threatened him, as had been done in the play I had seen. Saying, Kichi, which is what you called him, you wore that kimono just to please one of your favorite customers.

You bastard, I'll kill you for that. Ashita was startled, drew away a little, but he seemed delighted with it all. Yeah, apparently this confrontation turned Ashita on, because now they go to a hotel to have more sex. Sada, still enamored with Ashita, also still angry. During the second day of their wild lovemaking this time, she puts a knife to the base of Ashita's penis, says she will make sure he'll never play around with another woman. Ashita apparently laughs this off.

And Sada then puts the knife down and starts choking him. And he loves it. He tells her to keep choking him. Then he returns the favor. And they fuck some more. Playing some little sex games. But soon it stops being just a game. At around two in the morning, May 18th, 1936, while Ashita slept deeply after a few days of non-stop fucking and drinking,

Sada wraps her sash twice around his neck and strangles him to death. She'll later tell police. After I had killed Ashita, I felt totally at ease, as though a heavy burden had been lifted from my shoulders, and I felt a sense of clarity. And then after lying next to Ashita's dead body for a couple of hours, she used that big old knife of hers to cut off his dick and balls. Then she wrapped him up in a magazine cover and carried them around with her for the next three days, until she was arrested. So clearly she snapped just a bit

and is no longer doing very well mentally. Backing up a bit, directly after she cut off his dick, with his blood she wrote, "'We, Sada and Kichi Ishida, are alone,' "'on Ishida's left thigh and on a bed sheet.' She then carved the character for her own name into his left arm. Yikes, after putting on Ashita's underwear,

oh my god, she then left the inn at about 8 a.m. telling the staff not to disturb Ashita. After Ashita's body was discovered, a search was launched for Abe, who had gone missing. On May 19, 1936, the newspapers picked up the story and it became an immediate national sensation. Talk of the nation. Meanwhile, Sara was making a plan.

As she later said, I felt attached to Ashida's penis and thought that only after taking leave from it quietly could I then die. I unwrapped the paper holding them like his dick and his balls and gazed at his penis and scrotum. I put his penis in my mouth and even tried to insert it inside of me. It didn't work. However, I kept trying and trying. Then I decided that I would flee to Osaka, staying with Ashita's penis all the while.

In the end, I would jump from a cliff on Mount Ikoma while holding on to his penis. That's a fucking quote. Remember when I said earlier that she wasn't doing well mentally? I don't know why I said that. She seems fine. She seems great. 100%. Definitely thinking clearly. On May 20th, the police find her at her hotel. She doesn't make it to the mountain. When asked when asked why she cut off his penis, she calmly replied, demonstrating that she is obviously not insane, because I couldn't take his head or body with me. I wanted to take the part of him that brought back to me the most vivid memories. Man, dude must have had quite a wiener. Real championship level cock. This story became again Japan's most sensationalized story,

most sensational sex scandal in decades and in some weird ways sometimes. The judge presiding oversaw his trial admitted to being sexually aroused by some of the details. How hot was this lady? She was supposedly extremely sexy. Even the judge wants to get with her despite knowing she had just killed her most recent lover and taken his severed dick on a little road trip that she planned to end by jumping off a cliff with it. December 21st, 1936, Sada Abe is convicted of murder

and mutilation of a corpse and is only sentenced to five years in prison. So be released exactly five years after the murder. May 17th, 1941 and then go on to write an autobiography, become a mistress to a wealthy man for a while, work as a waitress and bartender for a while, and become a strange celebrity of sorts until she dies in 1971 at the age of around 66 after not cutting off any other dicks that I'm aware of. Now let's connect all this with Mutsuo Tui. Right after today's mid-show sponsor break.

If you don't want to hear these ads, you can sign up for our Patreon, become a space user for $5 a month, and get the entire catalog ad-free and more. And I'm back, and now it is time to reconnect with Mutsuo Tui. Mutsuo Tui became obsessed with Sada Abe's story during the years of 1936 to 1938. While she was still in trial in prison shortly after the police record of her interrogation became a national bestseller in 1936. A bestseller that Mutsuo undoubtedly read over and over again. He was even planning to write his own novel inspired by her story.

He loved it. And his obsession on top of him now being socially withdrawn from following his sister marrying and leaving his grandma's house led to him being perceived largely in his village as a weirdo. Strange for his area, where most people led simple lives, mainly focused on farming, and didn't obsess over women who cut off dudes' dicks. Being a diehard, obsessive true crime fan, today, pretty normal. Back then in Japan, not as normal.

Also Mutsudo is still having problems with his health. Pain in his lungs. A constant cough. Fatigue. All this keeps him inside a lot more than other young people his age in the village, where he spends a lot of time reading, working on some kind of novel about Sada Abe. He becomes increasingly more isolated, still living with his elderly grandmother, and now he makes some new, not very realistic

plans about his future. In the 1930s, much of the reading material available for young Japanese men centered around tales of masculine heroism. Both real life and fictional columns and magazines presented stories of rugged Japanese men going on bold adventures of all kinds. It was a colonial expansionist time in Japan's imperialistic history, and the idealized male was one who left his home to join the Emperor's fighting forces. As he lay alone in his darkened room, Mutsuo dreamt of the day that he would make his mark on the world as an honorable soldier, and he wouldn't have wanted to join the Imperial military out of a growing sense of honor and nationalism alone for the women of his village, make his mark on the world as an honorable soldier. And he wouldn't have wanted to join the Imperial military

out of a growing sense of honor and nationalism alone for the women of his village, military men, and especially those who passed their military conscription exams with flying colors, were considered especially appealing, very desirable. During meetings with prospective marriage partners, the potential bride's parents would commonly ask to see the young man's conscription exam results. Concerned as Mutsuo was regarding his relations with the women of his hamlet,

a lot was riding on this for him when it came to this test. A test he was very nervous to take. He kept getting sick, and his sickness seemed to center on his lungs, which made him real nervous because his parents had died so young with tuberculosis. He worried he also had it. And if the real source of his chest problems was what he feared most, then all his dreams, military and sexual conquest, they would die. And soon so would he. So before taking his test, he decided to try and sneak in some sexual conquest, uh, you know, in case it didn't work out with his exam. When he starts engaging in a very interesting, ancient, no longer existent Japanese practice known as yobai or night crawling. And this is so fucking weird. Yobai was usually practiced by young unmarried people. It was once common all over Japan and was practiced in some rural areas until the mid 20th century. And here's how it went.

At night, young unmarried men would silently enter houses where young unmarried women lived. Houses that they were not invited to enter, to be clear. These dudes would silently crawl into a woman's room and make their intention known. And by intention, I mean that they wanted to fuck. Then if the woman consented, they would quietly fuck. Her parents, other family members would be be asleep in the home, and then the guy would sneak out of the house before sunrise. And after a few sessions like this, the couple might decide to get married or they might not.

According to Japanese ethnologist Akamatsu Kaizuki, the practice varied from place to place. In some places, any post-pubescent woman, married or unmarried, could be visited by any post-pubescent man, married or unmarried, from the village and also by men from other villages and travelers. Yeah, in some areas, it was somewhat normal as a dude to just sneak into a stranger's home where some woman lived that you wanted to bone. Some woman you might not have even ever met. And you would just sneak on in, find her asleep, wake her up, and just politely ask if she wanted to fuck. And sometimes she would say yes.

What a world. I'm sure that no creepy dudes ever abused this practice and became serial rapists. No way! That never happened. Not even one time. In some parts of Japan, only married women and widows could be visited. It varied from region to region while single girls could not. And there were still more variations. For example, the clothes type you'll buy was a custom which only men from the same village had the right of visitation. How fucking paranoid would this practice make you if you wanted to be monogamous? Right? So secretive? You know, you just be walking around in your village, wondering who's been sneaking into your house.

Did you fuck my wife? Did you fuck my wife? What about you? You fucked my wife? Like, how afraid would you be to ever leave your house? Unless, of course, you were also sneaking out trying to fuck other dude's wives, which probably happened a lot. This is wild.

In many areas, the girls or woman's parents would most likely know about the nighttime visitations and then pretend they didn't Giving the couple an opportunity to get to know each other before formal intentions were declared And now for another detail that makes all this even crazier It was important for the man entering the house to be butt-ass naked so that no one would mistake him for a robber What the fuck I just picture some dad living in a home with teen daughters, hearing somebody creeping around the house in the middle of the night. He's scared, jumps out of bed, grabs his sword or his gun. Then when he sees a naked strange man, he's like, oh shit, thank God. I thought you were a robber. Oh my God, that gave me

a heart attack. My girl's room is down the hall to the left. Just try and be quiet. I have to get up early for work tomorrow. This is insane. So Mutsuo apparently did a lot of yobain. He was willing to this. And this practice will soon help him kill a lot of people. He becomes very good at sneaking into local villagers houses at night. But first the true catalyst for the murders he'll soon commit. Failing his military test. In late 1937, when Mutsuo was 20, the true catalyst for the murders he'll soon commit. Failing his military test. In late 1937, when Mutsuo was 20, the time for his military conscription exam had arrived.

Everything had been built into this moment. He pinned his hopes and dreams on the possibility of being granted the A rank or at least a B rank. Either would mean he was physically fit and suited for conscription and, you know, suited for eventual love, marriage, and more sex. A military official in his district was also suffering from some kind of lung ailment and took pity on Mutsuo which got his hopes up even more. He sent a letter ahead of the youth's conscription examination asking that he be well taken care of. Mutsuo then set off down the

mountain road to the examination center at the in this local hub at Titsuyama. Mutsuo stripped naked in front of his military doctors. The physicians took his height, weight, checked him for disease, and then at last the moment of truth arrived. The attending physician told him that, just like both his parents, he did have tuberculosis. Mutsuo was devastated, right? This is a death sentence. He sent home with a conscription rank of C, a reserve for those with significant physical defects. He was not fit for military duty.

He would never see glory on the battlefield. This not only meant the end of his dreams of military service, also meant an end to his social prospects in his home Hamlet. An excerpt from the writings of post-war psychopathologist Nakamura Kazua, quoted in an interview for an article for the Japanese website Bunshin, explains the situation well. There were not a terribly large number of lung disease sufferers in the hamlet. Yet there was a strong customary social aversion to tuberculosis and leprosy. Mayor Mishima of Kamomachi was somewhat a great passion for public health.

According to Mayor Mishima, the level of disgust townspeople held in this hamlet for tuberculosis was even beyond the run of the mill. They believed it to be hereditary and when passing in front of the house of the diseased, they would cover their mouths and noses with a handkerchief. Now as a result of this diagnosis, the women visits at night, you know, they're over. Women consistently reject his sexual advances because of the stigma of his disease. His diagnosis truly made him an incel. He was now a social outcast.

No one wanted him around. No one in his village would ever want to marry him. His career prospects had also been destroyed. Isolated in such a terrible way, depression and darkness now consume him. He'll spend nearly all of his time alone, inside. When he does go outside, he gains a reputation for making creepy, unwanted sexual advances towards neighboring women and girls. The people of his hamlet begin to see him as an increasingly dangerous man. They shun him further, which makes him that much more dangerous, more isolated. He becomes the perfect

storm of a man seemingly destined to violently lash out, feels like he has nothing to lose, and he's got a heart full of hate. Soon after his diagnosis, Mutsuo walks over into Tetsuyama using a newly registered hunting license to purchase a firearm. Then he trades that gun for one of the weapons he will eventually become associated with, a Browning Auto V recoil-operated semi-automatic shotgun. And now Mutsuo spends his days up in the mountains training for mass murder. By night he prowls through his hamlets, gun in hand, mentally preparing himself for this upcoming rampage. These nighttime practice sessions, you know, arouse unsurprisingly

the suspicion of his neighbors. His grandma also becomes increasingly worried about her grandson's erratic behavior and his increasingly self-righteous attitude. He takes out loans on the family house and farmland, mortgages the field she owns and also still works in so we can buy more weapons. This guy's a ticking time bomb. Then one day Mutsuo's grandma sees him putting some kind of powder into her soup and convinced that he's trying to kill her, she reports her grandson to the local police. Mutsuo will claim that the powder had only been medicine, but the police search the house

anyway and they find his cache of weapons. And they end up confiscating a huge stash of various swords, knives, and guns. And they revoke his hunting permit. And that should have been the end of it. But it wasn't. He now manages to secretly purchase more weapons from an acquaintance. He's angrier, more bitter than ever. And then Mutsuo hears through the village grapevine about Terumoto Yukiro. Yukiro was a former lover who had left Kamo to get married and would soon be returning to the hamlet to visit her family. And Yukiro is one of the women whose house he used to sneak into for some midnight trysts before it was revealed that he had tuberculosis and she then refused to see him any longer.

Her return was apparently the last straw for Mutsuo and he decides to put his dark plan into action. At around 5 in the afternoon, May 20th 1938, now 21 year old Mutsuo Tui scales one of the local electrical line towers, cuts the lines, and severs power to his hamlet. The entire district goes dark. Mutsuo then returns home, waits for nightfall, and puts on his creepy chosen outfit, which will soon become synonymous in the minds of many Japanese with the concept of a mass murderer. He put on his school uniform, so he dressed up like a schoolboy, with a stand-up collar. He also affixes military gators to his shins and wears workmen's boots. Then he straps a Hachimachi headband, or Hachimaki headband, around his forehead.

A traditional symbol of courage worn most often by men in the military, or before that the samurai. I think of Ralph Macchio in Karate Kid when it comes to this kind of headband just to visualize it. And then this fucking maniac secures a flashlight to either side of his temple. So he's got a flashlight on each side of his head pointed forward around his neck. He hangs another light. So he's got like three lights now kind of surrounding his face. Lastly, Matsu gathers his weapons. He slips a full-length katana samurai sword through his sash at his waist. Slings two daggers from his other side. Then picks up a new semiotic shotgun. He bought a replica of that first one.

With his nine shot capacity and finally 200 rounds of ammunition. Holy shit. And Matu is now ready for a night of mayhem and murder. But before he wanders out into the hamlet to kill those he felt had shunned or disrespected him in some way or another, he wants to kill the woman who had raised him. The woman who had also contacted the authorities that ended up taking all the weapons he initially gathered. And now he proceeds to not just murder his grandmother, but to literally decapitate her. He chops the head off of the woman who had cared for him nearly his entire life with a fucking axe, first striking her while she slept. And then, Mutsuo moves on to his first non-familial victims. Sneaking into a neighbor's house, he first murders a woman and her three children.

The sudden roar of a shotgun reverberated through the village. Some in the hamlet started to wake up, but not many got alarmed. Most didn't understand what was happening, couldn't fathom that Matsu, or anyone, could possibly do what he was about to do, what he was doing, and they didn't flee. He walks over to the next house, shoots yet another woman and her two daughters to death. Already having killed eight people, now Mutsuo marches on towards the next house. There he finds a married couple, the husband's mother and a random elderly relative who help with fieldwork. He shot three of them down in quick

succession as they begged for their lives. At last, only the elderly woman remained breathing. On her knees, she pleaded for her lives. At last, only the elderly woman remained breathing. On her knees, she pleaded for her life. Mutsal then explained his rationale for her murder to her calmly. He didn't have a problem with her, but the head of her household's son had married a girl from a family he very much disliked. Therefore, she and her old family had to die. And with that, he shot the old woman at point blank range. Miraculously, she would survive and was able to tell all, tell of the horrors that she witnessed that night.

Mutsuo now stalked back out into the darkness of his hamlet, leaving a third family devastated. And his night is far from over. In a fourth house, yet another family will come face to face with the now bloody Mutsuo Tui. He coldly shot down the father, mother, and two of their daughters. A third daughter managed to flee and Mutsu gave chase. She ran into a neighboring house where the father of the household quickly hid her under the floorboards

alongside his own daughter. Mutsu then entered. The triple headlights on his head and chest blazing into the darkness. He finds the father and shoots him to death. He hears the two girls scream, who are hiding under the floor, shoots them through the floor. They will both sustain injuries, but will both survive. He leaves again inside the sixth house soon. Mutsuo murders the owner and his mother. He moves on to another house. In the seventh house, he shoots down a mother and two daughters, but then lets the father live. He tells this poor bastard, after killing his wife and both of his children, you never spread rumors about me.

Suppose I'll give you a reprieve. And then he moves on to the 8th house. In the 8th house, he kills a daughter and her grandmother. The girl's father escapes, running to the closest police station and becomes the first to report the massacre, a massacre that is still ongoing. Inside the 9th house now, he slaughters four people, three adults and a child, and he is still ongoing. Inside the ninth house now, he slaughters four people, three adults

and a child, and he is still not done. Moves on to a tenth house now, where Muto finds a woman peering out through her storm shutters. He shoots her through the window, kills her, moves on. At a final eleventh home, he makes his way inside and kills a husband and wife. And now after around an hour and a half of unspeakable violence, the shotgun blasts and death screams have ceased. Mutsuo sneaks out of his village before the police arrive. Heading for a neighboring town, he leaves behind him a shattered community. 111 people had lived there before. He had just killed 30 of them, almost a third of the population. Shortly before Mutsuo leaves Kamo, the door to an isolated house on the edge of the hamlet slides open.

Inside, a father and son cower as the blood soaked, almost inhuman at this point form of Mutsuo's strides towards them. Instead of shooting them, he asks the father for a pen and paper. The man simply sits and stares at him stunned into silence. His son, who had heard rumors of Mutsuo's strange behavior, understood who they were speaking with and, after just hearing the screams and the gunshots, he had a pretty good idea about what had just happened. And he rushes off to grab the requested stationery. Mutsuo takes the pen and paper and then exits. Although not before this mass murder, admonishes the boy, telling him to mind your studies. That's cool. As soon as dawn breaks, Mutsuo is now

reaching a mountain peak several miles away. I'm sure he wondered why couldn't they have taken him into the military? Motherfucker could massacre a village and climb a mountain in the same night. On the mountain peak, he now makes use of that borrowed pen and paper and writes a note explaining his motivations. He wrote about feeling a lot of regret for murdering his grandmother, not because he felt bad about killing her or thought she was a good person. He just felt bad for placing his surviving older sister whom he loved so much in such a shameful family situation. He also expressed regret that Teramoto, Yukiro, and another woman he had formerly been romantically involved with had fled, escaping his vengeance.

Society, he wrote, needed to treat those with tuberculosis much more kindly. He strongly felt that those he had killed that night had brought their fates upon themselves. His note reflected zero remorse and a lot of self-pity. And the last words of his missive read, really bummed, I didn't remember to cut anybody's dick off to bring with me like Sadaabe did when she planned on jumping off that cliff. That would have been a super fucking cool callback. No, he wrote, already dawn is breaking, time to die. And then he pointed the shotgun towards his chest, pulled the trigger, and blew out his own heart. And with that, the nightmare was over. And now almost a

century later, the Titsuyama massacre remains the worst mass murder incident by a lone gunman in Japanese history. The community at Kama was utterly shattered. In all, as I mentioned, 30 individuals died, and then there were three survivors who sustained major injuries that would cripple them. Out of the 11 households Mutsuo broke into, three families would be completely wiped out, four families left with only a single survivor. And to make matters even more fucked up for the village, survivors viewed those families

who had been totally spared with suspicion. Perhaps they thought those spared were in league with Mutsuo, and so those lucky enough to escape his wrath were now ostracized. The village would truly never ever be the same. As for survivors who lost family members, they had to deal with more than immense grief and trauma, reduce manpower, and the local agrarian economy made life very difficult for them in the coming years. Before long, most of the survivors left the region. Discussing Mutsuo, or the massacre, became a local taboo. Reports of the horrific spree killing quickly spread throughout Imperial Japan's mass media, casting a dark shadow on the bereaved community.

Then World War II happened, and Japan had other atrocities to deal with. But then after the end of World War II, the Titsuyama Massacre re-emerged back into the national discourse. A newly liberated press fed a new true crime industry that thrived off of the bizarre nature of the massacre, the cloistered mountain village setting, the huge body count, the sexual intrigue, the mix of modern and ancient murder weapons, and the striking outfit of the murderer. It all felt like a strange mix of modern horror and folk legend. Like Mutsutui was a half modern gunman, half ancient demon. In 1949, renowned Japanese mystery novelist Seishi Yokomiso reworked the horrific events

of Titsuyama into his book, The Village of Eight Graves. In his tale, a horrific mass murder of some 32 people in a village perched amid the desolate mountains on the border of Tottori and Yokoyama prefectures is the inciting incident for the uncovering of a sordid local past. The murderer's outfit is patterned directly on Tui's real-life appearance during the murders. With three films already based on it, The Village of Eight Graves continues to reintroduce this dark story of the boogeyman of Mutsuo Tui to more and more modern audiences. Nearly a decade ago in 2015, after nearly eight decades of disuse, the rotting house in which Mutsuo Tui lived, where he murdered his own grandmother to kick off a mass murder,

was finally torn down. Any physical remnant of Mutsutui is now gone. But the story of his Tetsuyama massacre is so extreme, it will likely never fully die. And that is it for this edition of Time Suck Short Sucks. I found that to be a wildly captivating tale. Hope you did too. If you enjoyed this story, check out the rest of the Bad Magic catalog. Beefier episodes of Time Suck every Monday at noon Pacific time. New episodes of the now long running,

long running paranormal podcast, Scared to Death every Tuesday at midnight. With two episodes of nightmare fuel, some fictional horror written by myself thrown into the mix each month. Thank you to Sophie Evans for the initial research on this one and just for finding this topic that I was unaware of and presenting it to me and

thank you to Mr. Logan Keith recording and uploading today's episode. Please go to BadMagicProductions.com for all your bad magic needs and have yourself a great weekend. Add Magic Productions