At a quarter to six on a December morning in 2013, the president of Japan’s best-loved dumpling chain was shot four times in the dark, outside his own headquarters in Kyoto. No witness. No footage of the shooting. Nobody seen leaving.
For nine years the case had no face. Then police found one: a cigarette butt near the scene carrying the DNA of a senior yakuza figure, already in prison for a different shooting.
On 16 October 2026, the court acquitted him. It accepted the DNA was his, but ruled it couldn’t exclude that someone else had left that cigarette there. The killer of the Gyoza King has never been identified.
This episode pairs the case with the Mujina, the faceless ghost of Kii-no-kuni-zaka. A man flees a woman with no face, runs up a dark slope to the only light he can see, and finds the stranger holding it has no face either. The first blank face is the one you run from. The second is the one you ran to.
So I’ll put it to you: you’re the judge. A known gangster, a DNA match, a family that’s waited thirteen years, and one doubt about a cigarette. Do you acquit?
This is Candle 018 of Hyakumonogatari: one hundred Japanese true crime cases, each paired with the myth that shares its shape. Hosted by the Tale Teller.
Content note: discusses a fatal shooting and organised crime. The man charged was acquitted, and this episode treats him as innocent.
SOURCES
-
Tokyo Reporter, Oct 2026: the acquittal
-
The Star / Kyodo, 16 Oct 2026: verdict, evidence and defence argument
-
Bunshun, Oct 2026: the court’s reasoning on the cigarette butt
-
NHK, Oct 2026: the family’s call for an appeal
-
Alo Japan, Oct 2026: arrest (2022) and trial (2025)
-
Bengo4.com: the 2016 third-party committee report
-
Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan (1904): “Mujina”
Part of our guide: Japanese True Crime Cases
Support the Tale Teller
Enjoying the stories? If you’d like to help keep the candles lit and the tales coming, you can support the show on Patreon.
