Lindsay Ann Hawker (1984-2007)

This post is something slightly different to what I’ve talked about so far. It has little to do with myself, but I feel as though it does hit close to home in many respects.


In March 2007, a 22 year old English woman was brutally murdered by a man she had previously given private English lessons to. Lindsay Hawker was in Japan to do much the same as I, and many others set out to do. She arrived here to teach English with an initial plan to stay no longer than 6 months. She extended her stay and in the neighbourhood of Gyotoku (Chiba) she built a life and made many friends.
Sadly, Lindsay was last seen leaving a coffee shop with her killer on the 25th of March and her body was discovered shortly after on the balcony of the Japanese mans apartment where it had been beaten, strangled and buried in a bathtub.
This all happened as I said in Gyotoku, one station over from where I am currently living.

In recent months I have met a few of Lindsay’s friends and am constantly faced with images such as this displayed in stations throughout Tokyo:


Posters and news broadcasts are still around 18 months on. I was also at Gyotoku station recently when Lindsay’s father and friends visiting from the U.K were handing out leaflets to raise awareness of the killer who is still yet to be captured. (http://www.lindsayannhawker.com/)


I guess the point of this post was more to raise awareness in general of an ongoing problem I see in Japan. Japan portrays a clean and tidy image to the world, a low crime rate and long life expectancy. I am in no way bashing Japan as in my time here I have seen so many wonderful aspects of its culture. I merely want to point out that yes, Japan has a low crime rate. There is very little petty crime- muggings or robberies. If you were to leave your wallet on the train it would surely be returned to you. But this does not mean that Japan does not fall victim to brutal murders or bigger scale crime.

I believe that perhaps if the Japanese government and society would recognize mental illnesses as a very real yet treatable medical condition, not to mention if the police were trained to handle such situations we may see a lot less of cases like Lindsay’s and these appearing in newspapers:

“The body of a dead baby boy was found inside a coin locker near JR Okubo station in the Shinjuku area.”

“The body of a dead woman was discovered in a suitcase in a room at the Shinjuku Washington Hotel. The unidentified corpse was found after complaints of a foul smell, which led to the evacuation of dozens of hotel guests.”

Obviously nothing is ever this simple and I’m sure there are many factors which contribute to murders around the world. I just hope that we are learning from our previous mistakes.

And that concludes my rant for the day.