Based on the Wikipedia entry on Norio Nagayama, this chapter traces his early life: poverty, neglect, separation from his mother, his move to Tokyo through group employment, his work at a high-end fruit shop, and the unstable years in which he moved from job to job and place to place. It introduces Nagayama as both the former death-row inmate responsible for a series of pistol murders and a novelist who continued writing while in prison.

June 17, 2020

He was small in stature, about 160 centimeters tall, had large eyes, and, having grown up in Hokkaido, had no “Tohoku dialect complex.”
At the fruit shop, he handled customers efficiently.
Among the shop’s regular customers at that time was the actress Shima Iwashita.

On Norio Nagayama, from Wikipedia.
Emphasis in the text is mine.
Norio Nagayama, June 27, 1949 – August 1, 1997, was an executed prisoner, a former death-row inmate, who committed the series of pistol murders from 1968 to 1969, known as National Police Agency Important Designated Case No. 108.
He was born in Abashiri, Hokkaido.
He dropped out of the night course at Meiji University Nakano High School.

From his arrest in 1969 until his execution in 1997, he was also a novelist who continued creative writing while in prison.
In 1983, he won the 19th Shin Nihon Bungaku Prize for his novel “Kihashi.”
He was born in the outlying district of Yobito, Abashiri, Hokkaido, as the seventh of eight children, the fourth son.
When he was three, the family moved from suburban Yobito to the center of the city.
His father was a skilled pruner of apple branches, but he spent most of his earnings on gambling, and the family was in a state of collapse.
Nagayama was a victim of what would today be called neglect.
His eldest sister, who served as a substitute mother, became mentally ill after a broken engagement and an abortion, and was hospitalized for four years at a local psychiatric hospital.

In 1954, when he was five, his mother fled back to her family home in Itayanagi, Kitatsugaru District, Aomori Prefecture.
She could not prepare enough train fare for all of her children, and she left home while leaving four of them, including Norio, behind in Abashiri.
In a notebook written later, his mother regretted this.
The four siblings left behind, including Norio, lived in extreme poverty by picking up fish at the fishing port and rummaging through garbage bins, but the young Norio was constantly abused by his older brothers and sisters.
However, in 1955, after nearby residents reported the situation to the welfare office, the four children were taken in by their mother in Itayanagi.
After that, his mother made a living as an itinerant peddler and raised the siblings.
Even afterward, during his time at Itayanagi Junior High School, Norio ran away from home to Hakodate and Fukushima.

In March 1965, he went from Itayanagi to Tokyo as part of a group employment program.
He found work at a high-end fruit shop in Shibuya.
He was small in stature, about 160 centimeters tall, had large eyes, and, having grown up in Hokkaido, had no “Tohoku dialect complex.”
At the fruit shop, he handled customers efficiently.
Among the shop’s regular customers at that time was the actress Shima Iwashita.
Eventually, he gained enough trust that there was talk of putting him in charge of a new shop.
However, while he had been in Itayanagi, he had stolen clothing for the purpose of group employment, and he convinced himself that the store manager had learned of it.
Unable to bear this, he quit after only six months.
Also, while he was working at this fruit shop, the juvenile rifle-shooting incident occurred near his workplace, and he witnessed it.
After leaving the fruit shop, he attempted to stow away to Hong Kong but failed.
He was taken in by his eldest brother, who lived in Oyama, Tochigi Prefecture, and worked at an automobile repair shop in Utsunomiya.
He was caught stealing at a butcher shop in the city, but the Utsunomiya Family Court dismissed the case without disposition.
After that, he continued to move from job to job and address to address, including a milk delivery shop in Utsunomiya, a rice shop in Moriguchi, and the Tokyo Air Terminal Hotel at Haneda Airport, whose dormitory was in Kawasaki.
Three months after he began working at the hotel, he committed theft at the Yokosuka U.S. military base and was placed on probation.
Through the introduction of his probation officer, he worked at a cleaning shop in Kawasaki, but quit after one month.
This article continues.