＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳 | 団塊世代が雑学や面白い話を発信しています
The other day, I was casually watching TV and came across the story of “Fingerprint God” Tsukamoto Uhei and First Investigative Division’s Ogata Yasunori, who solved the “Second 300 Million Yen Robbery,” on a program hosted by Beat Takeshi (a rebroadcast of the September 13, 2018 episode).
I was well aware of the famous “300 Million Yen Robbery,” which never went unsolved, from seeing it on the news since it occurred in 1968, but I didn’t remember much about the “Second 300 Million Yen Robbery.”
What also caught my interest was the “Fingerprint God”‘s broad perspective, and Ogata Yasunori of the First Investigative Division, who led the investigation without belittling the Forensics Division, but rather with respect for them.
While the public is often filled with people who “fight for control,” “people who push the responsibility for scandals and failures onto their subordinates or others while trying to take all the credit for themselves,” “people who lack professionalism,” and “people who lack a broader perspective,” it seems that the “professionalism in investigations” and “spirit of cooperation” of these two police officers were outstanding.
1. What is the “Second 300 Million Yen Robbery”?
The “Second 300 Million Yen Robbery” refers to the 300 million yen cash robbery (the “Yurakucho 300 Million Yen Robbery”) that occurred on November 25, 1986, at the Yurakucho branch of Mitsubishi Bank (now Mitsubishi UFJ Bank). A cash transport vehicle was attacked by three men, and approximately 330 million yen in cash and securities were stolen.
Thanks to the efforts of “fingerprint god” Tsukamoto Uhei and Ogata Yasunori of the First Investigative Division, it was determined that the crime was committed by foreigners.
After comparing the fingerprints of the perpetrators collected in Tokyo with a fingerprint list sent by French police in October 1987, it was determined that the crime was committed by a French robbery group (three French nationals and one Algerian national), and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department issued an international wanted notice through the Intergovernmental Panel on Police (ICPO).
This group had also entered Japan several years prior to the same crime to smuggle paintings stolen from overseas art museums. The other three perpetrators were arrested in France, while the ringleader was arrested in Mexico, where he was hiding.
For the Metropolitan Police Department, the resolution of the “second 300 million yen robbery” (the Yurakucho 300 million yen robbery) was described as “revenge for the Fuchu 300 million yen robbery.”
2. Who is Tsukamoto Uhei, the “God of Fingerprints”?
Tsukamoto Uhei (1936- 2024), a native of Ibaraki Prefecture, served as a Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department police officer before retiring as Director of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s Forensic Science Research Institute. He was a “fingerprint specialist” in the Forensic Science Division for over 30 years, starting in 1967, and was known as the “Fingerprint God.”
He was also involved in the investigation of the “Fuchu City 300 Million Yen Burglary” as a “Forensic Science Division Officer.” He obtained a “visible fingerprint” found on a police motorcycle that he was certain belonged to the perpetrator, and urged the First Investigative Division to narrow down the investigation to this fingerprint, but his request was rejected, forcing them to carry out an enormous fingerprint matching task that would have expired by the time the statute of limitations expired. In fact, it seems that the fingerprint matching task was not even half complete when the statute of limitations expired.
He was also in charge of fingerprints in the “Second 300 Million Yen Burglary,” and the person in charge of the First Investigative Division at this time was Ogata Yasunori, an old acquaintance who had mentored Tsukamoto as a rookie officer.
From the fingerprints on the new 1,000 yen bill discarded by the criminal, he eliminates those of bank employees and Japan Mint Bureau employees who may have touched the note and finds six fingerprints that appear to belong to the criminal.
He uses an Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) to compare the fingerprints with those of all people with criminal records in Japan, but no matches are found. Incidentally, at the time of the Fuchu 300 Million Yen Burglary, AFIS did not yet exist, so it was a huge amount of manual work.
Therefore, because the crime seemed practiced and unlikely to be a first-time offense, he deduces that it was committed by a foreigner, and decides to collect fingerprints of people with criminal records overseas.
However, blindly comparing the fingerprints of foreign criminals is an enormous task that is likely to end in vain, just as it did in the Fuchu 300 Million Yen Burglary. It is absolutely necessary to narrow down the target.
This is where his teaming up with Ogata Yasunori of the First Investigative Division comes in handy.
3. About Ogata Yasunori of the First Investigative Division
Yasunori Ogata (1933-2020), a native of Kumamoto Prefecture, was a skilled detective known as the “Red Demon” of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. His unwavering convictions and risk-taking investigations led him to solve numerous difficult cases.
In July 1965, an 18-year-old boy carried out a rifle shooting rampage in Shibuya, Tokyo, and Ogata dodged a hail of bullets and attempted to ram into the boy. Working at Harajuku Police Station at the time, he was shot in the left shoulder and covered in blood, but he doggedly pursued the boy.
He divided the belongings left behind by the perpetrator of the “Second 300 Million Yen Robbery” into “items used for the crime acquired for this crime” and “items used for everyday life that had been used previously.”
He believed that items used for everyday life would bring him closer to the perpetrator. He focused on a “blanket” left in the getaway vehicle.
Deducing that the shape of the blanket’s tag could lead to the identification of the rental company, he investigated rental companies in the Roppongi and Akasaka areas, and after contacting companies that exclusively rent to foreigners, he found a blanket with the same type of tag. The blanket had been rented to 49 different companies. However, all 49 of them turned out to be innocent.
While investigating the blanket, the First Investigative Division under his command began interviewing embassies and real estate agencies specializing in foreigners. As a result, they obtained information that four foreigners had rented a weekly apartment in Azabu, Tokyo. Upon checking with the real estate company, they learned that a foreigner had come and offered to rent the room to them for 1 million yen. The foreigner did not speak Japanese.
From this information, he deduced that the culprit had exchanged money at a bank close to the real estate company, and investigated whether the culprit could be identified by the passport that was required at the time.
As a result, they were able to track down a French national they believed to be the culprit, and when they sent a copy of the national’s passport to French investigative authorities requesting their cooperation, they received the fingerprints of a French national with a criminal record that matched the photo in the passport.
When forensic scientist Tsukamoto Uhei compared the French national’s fingerprints with six other fingerprints, the result was an excellent match, leading to the arrest of the culprit.