The Monster with 21 Faces
Encyclopedia
The was the name taken from the villain of Edogawa Rampo
's detective novels, and used as an alias by the person or group responsible for the blackmail letters of the Glico Morinaga case
in Japan
. Variations of the name's translation, including “The Mystery Man with the 21 Faces” and “The Phantom with 21 Faces”, have also been used in articles and books featuring the case.
following the kidnapping and escape of Katsuhisa Ezaki, president of Glico. The letter stated that it had laced the company's confections with potassium cyanide
soda, and it later threatened to put them on store shelves. None of these poisoned candies were found, but Glico products were removed from stores, resulting in a loss of more than $21 million and the laying off of 450 part-time workers.
Meanwhile, The Monster with 21 Faces also sent letters to the media, taunting police efforts to capture the culprit(s) behind the scare. An excerpt from one such letter, written in hiragana
and with an Osaka dialect, reads, “Dear dumb police officers. Don't tell a lie. All crimes begin with a lie as we say in Japan. Don't you know that?” Another taunting letter was sent to Koshien
police station. “Why don't you keep it to yourself? You seem to be at a loss. So why not let us help you? We'll give you a clue. We entered the factory by the front gate. The typewriter we used is PAN-writer. The plastic container used was a piece of street garbage. Monster with 21 faces.”
On June 26, The Monster with 21 Faces issued a message proclaiming its forgiveness of Glico, and subsequent harassment of the company ceased. However, it began targeting Morinaga
, another confectionery company, and food companies Marudai Ham and House Food Corporation with similar criminal campaigns, using the same alias.
In October 1984, a letter addressed to "Moms of the Nation" and signed by The Monster with 21 Faces was sent to Osaka
news agencies with a warning similar to those sent to Glico. It stated that 20 packages of Morinaga candy had been laced with deadly sodium cyanide
. After receiving this letter, police searched stores in cities from Tokyo to western Japan and found over a dozen lethal packages of Morinaga Choco Balls and Angel Pie before anyone was poisoned. These packages had labels, such as "Danger: Contains Toxins", put on them. More tampered confections were found in February 1985, making a total of 21 lethal sweet products.
Unable to capture the suspect believed to be the mastermind behind The Monster with 21 Faces, the police superintendent Yamamoto of Shiga Prefecture
committed suicide by self-immolation
in August 1985. Five days after this event, on August 12, "The Monster” sent its final message to the media:
"Yamamoto of Shiga Prefecture Police died. How stupid of him! We've got no friends or secret hiding place in Shiga. It's Yoshino or Shikata who should have died. What have they been doing for as long as one year and five months? Don't let bad guys like us get away with it. There are many more fools who want to copy us. No-career Yamamoto died like a man. So we decided to give our condolence. We decided to forget about torturing food-making companies. If anyone blackmails any of the food-making companies, it's not us but someone copying us. We are bad guys. That means we've got more to do other than bullying companies. It's fun to lead a bad man's life. Monster with 21 Faces."
After this letter, The Monster with 21 Faces was not heard from again. The statute of limitation for the kidnapping of Katsuhisa Ezaki, president of Glico, ran out in June 1995, and the statute of limitation for the attempted poisonings ran out in February 2000. No suspect was ever caught or convicted of the crimes, and the identity of The Monster with 21 Faces remains a mystery.
baseball cap was caught placing Glico chocolate on a store shelf by a security camera. This man was believed to be the mastermind behind The Monster with 21 Faces. The security camera photo was made public after this incident.
, police came close to capturing the suspected mastermind. An investigator disguised himself as a Marudai employee and followed The Monster's instructions for the money exchange. As he was riding a train to the money's drop point, he noticed a suspicious man watching him. He was described as a large, well-built man wearing sunglasses and with his hair cut short and permed. He was also quoted to have "eyes like those of a fox." As investigators tailed him from train to train, the Fox-Eyed Man (キツネ目の男, kitsune-me no otoko) eventually eluded them. In a later incident, investigators saw the Fox-Eyed Man again, accompanying the alleged "Monster" group during another secret money exchange with House Food Corporation. Once again, he was able to elude police and avoid capture.
Tokyo Metropolitan Police at first identified Manabu Miyazaki
, a known yakuza
, as the Fox-Eyed Man and the Videotaped Man because of his resemblance to these suspect, but after his alibis were checked, he was cleared of the Glico-Morinaga crimes.
Edogawa Rampo
, better known by the pseudonym , was a Japanese author and critic who played a major role in the development of Japanese mystery fiction. Many of his novels involve the detective hero Kogorō Akechi, who in later books was the leader of a group of boy detectives known as the .Rampo was an admirer...
's detective novels, and used as an alias by the person or group responsible for the blackmail letters of the Glico Morinaga case
Glico Morinaga case
The , also known by its official designation , was a famous extortion case in 1980s Japan, primarily directed at the Japanese industrial confectioneries Ezaki Glico and Morinaga, and currently remains unsolved...
in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. Variations of the name's translation, including “The Mystery Man with the 21 Faces” and “The Phantom with 21 Faces”, have also been used in articles and books featuring the case.
Letters
The Monster with 21 Faces sent its first letter on May 10, 1984, to the giant food company Ezaki GlicoEzaki Glico
is a Japanese confectionery company headquartered in Nishiyodogawa-ku, Osaka.The company manufactures the traditional Glico caramel candy, as well as Pocky and many others. The company name, Glico, is derived from a shortening of the word glycogen. The first candy produced by the company was known...
following the kidnapping and escape of Katsuhisa Ezaki, president of Glico. The letter stated that it had laced the company's confections with potassium cyanide
Potassium cyanide
Potassium cyanide is an inorganic compound with the formula KCN. This colorless crystalline compound, similar in appearance to sugar, is highly soluble in water. Most KCN is used in gold mining, organic synthesis, and electroplating. Smaller applications include jewelry for chemical gilding and...
soda, and it later threatened to put them on store shelves. None of these poisoned candies were found, but Glico products were removed from stores, resulting in a loss of more than $21 million and the laying off of 450 part-time workers.
Meanwhile, The Monster with 21 Faces also sent letters to the media, taunting police efforts to capture the culprit(s) behind the scare. An excerpt from one such letter, written in hiragana
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...
and with an Osaka dialect, reads, “Dear dumb police officers. Don't tell a lie. All crimes begin with a lie as we say in Japan. Don't you know that?” Another taunting letter was sent to Koshien
Koshien
Kōshien is a district of Nishinomiya, Hyōgo, Japan.Kōshien also refers to:*Koshien Stadium, a baseball stadium in Nishinomiya, Hyōgo, which is the venue of the annual high school baseball tournaments:...
police station. “Why don't you keep it to yourself? You seem to be at a loss. So why not let us help you? We'll give you a clue. We entered the factory by the front gate. The typewriter we used is PAN-writer. The plastic container used was a piece of street garbage. Monster with 21 faces.”
On June 26, The Monster with 21 Faces issued a message proclaiming its forgiveness of Glico, and subsequent harassment of the company ceased. However, it began targeting Morinaga
Morinaga & Company
is a confectionery company in Tokyo, Japan, in operation since August 15, 1899. Their products include candy and other confectioneries. Morinaga has Ayumi Hamasaki and Mao Asada appear in their commercials....
, another confectionery company, and food companies Marudai Ham and House Food Corporation with similar criminal campaigns, using the same alias.
In October 1984, a letter addressed to "Moms of the Nation" and signed by The Monster with 21 Faces was sent to Osaka
Osaka
is a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...
news agencies with a warning similar to those sent to Glico. It stated that 20 packages of Morinaga candy had been laced with deadly sodium cyanide
Sodium cyanide
Sodium cyanide is an inorganic compound with the formula NaCN. This highly toxic colorless salt is used mainly in gold mining but has other niche applications...
. After receiving this letter, police searched stores in cities from Tokyo to western Japan and found over a dozen lethal packages of Morinaga Choco Balls and Angel Pie before anyone was poisoned. These packages had labels, such as "Danger: Contains Toxins", put on them. More tampered confections were found in February 1985, making a total of 21 lethal sweet products.
Unable to capture the suspect believed to be the mastermind behind The Monster with 21 Faces, the police superintendent Yamamoto of Shiga Prefecture
Shiga Prefecture
is a prefecture of Japan, which forms part of the Kansai region on Honshu Island. The capital is the city of Ōtsu.- History :Shiga was known as Ōmi Province or Gōshū before the prefectural system was established...
committed suicide by self-immolation
Self-immolation
Self-immolation refers to setting oneself on fire, often as a form of protest or for the purposes of martyrdom or suicide. It has centuries-long traditions in some cultures, while in modern times it has become a type of radical political protest...
in August 1985. Five days after this event, on August 12, "The Monster” sent its final message to the media:
"Yamamoto of Shiga Prefecture Police died. How stupid of him! We've got no friends or secret hiding place in Shiga. It's Yoshino or Shikata who should have died. What have they been doing for as long as one year and five months? Don't let bad guys like us get away with it. There are many more fools who want to copy us. No-career Yamamoto died like a man. So we decided to give our condolence. We decided to forget about torturing food-making companies. If anyone blackmails any of the food-making companies, it's not us but someone copying us. We are bad guys. That means we've got more to do other than bullying companies. It's fun to lead a bad man's life. Monster with 21 Faces."
After this letter, The Monster with 21 Faces was not heard from again. The statute of limitation for the kidnapping of Katsuhisa Ezaki, president of Glico, ran out in June 1995, and the statute of limitation for the attempted poisonings ran out in February 2000. No suspect was ever caught or convicted of the crimes, and the identity of The Monster with 21 Faces remains a mystery.
"The Videotaped Man"
Following threats by The Monster with 21 Faces to poison Glico confections and the resulting mass withdrawal of Glico products from shelves, a man wearing a GiantsYomiuri Giants
The are a professional baseball team based in Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan. The team competes in the Central League in Nippon Professional Baseball, the top level of professional play in Japan. They play their home games in the Tokyo Dome, opened in 1988. The English-language press occasionally calls the...
baseball cap was caught placing Glico chocolate on a store shelf by a security camera. This man was believed to be the mastermind behind The Monster with 21 Faces. The security camera photo was made public after this incident.
"The Fox-Eyed Man"
On June 28, 1984, two days after The Monster agreed to stop harassing Marudai Ham in exchange for 50 million yenJapanese yen
The is the official currency of Japan. It is the third most traded currency in the foreign exchange market after the United States dollar and the euro. It is also widely used as a reserve currency after the U.S. dollar, the euro and the pound sterling...
, police came close to capturing the suspected mastermind. An investigator disguised himself as a Marudai employee and followed The Monster's instructions for the money exchange. As he was riding a train to the money's drop point, he noticed a suspicious man watching him. He was described as a large, well-built man wearing sunglasses and with his hair cut short and permed. He was also quoted to have "eyes like those of a fox." As investigators tailed him from train to train, the Fox-Eyed Man (キツネ目の男, kitsune-me no otoko) eventually eluded them. In a later incident, investigators saw the Fox-Eyed Man again, accompanying the alleged "Monster" group during another secret money exchange with House Food Corporation. Once again, he was able to elude police and avoid capture.
Tokyo Metropolitan Police at first identified Manabu Miyazaki
Manabu Miyazaki
is a Japanese writer, social critic and public figure known for his underworld ties.While not a member of any particular yakuza syndicate, Miyazaki describes himself as a "freelance yakuza" and has the credentials to prove it. He was born in Kyoto, Japan; his father was a yakuza boss in Kyoto, and...
, a known yakuza
Yakuza
, also known as , are members of traditional organized crime syndicates in Japan. The Japanese police, and media by request of the police, call them bōryokudan , literally "violence group", while the yakuza call themselves "ninkyō dantai" , "chivalrous organizations". The yakuza are notoriously...
, as the Fox-Eyed Man and the Videotaped Man because of his resemblance to these suspect, but after his alibis were checked, he was cleared of the Glico-Morinaga crimes.