Sachiko Eto was a prayer healer in Sukagawa, a commercial city in Fukushima Prefecture, northeastern Japan. From late 1994 she directed followers who lived in her home to beat other members of the group in rituals she presented as driving out evil spirits. The beatings went on for hours at a time, almost every day, often for weeks. Six followers died, among them a husband, wife and daughter from one family. Their bodies lay in a room of the house until police entered it on the morning of July 5, 1995.
The case came to light in the same year as the Aum Shinrikyo sarin attack on the Tokyo subway, and Fukushima Minyu later recalled it as the religion-linked case that shook Fukushima Prefecture that year. The Fukushima District Court sentenced Eto to death in 2002. Her daughter and a young former soldier received life terms, and a third follower received 18 years. The Supreme Court upheld the death sentence in September 2008, and Eto was hanged in Sendai on September 27, 2012. She was the first woman executed in Japan in 15 years.
Eto was born in 1947 in Sukagawa. Her father died when she was young, and her mother raised her alone while working for the state tobacco monopoly, according to people who knew the family and spoke to Shukan Shincho in 1995. After graduating from a local high school she left home and took a job at a local gas company. There she worked alongside a former high school classmate, and the two married. They had a son and three daughters.
She later became a door-to-door saleswoman for a cosmetics company and did well at it. A former colleague told Shukan Shincho that she was quick and persuasive, that she once reached one million yen in monthly sales, and that she was honored as an outstanding saleswoman at a ceremony in a Tokyo hotel. Her husband ran a painting business. In 1984 the couple built a house in a residential area about five kilometers east of central Sukagawa, among rice fields, on land that neighbors said belonged to his family. A neighbor told the writer Takaaki Yagisawa that Eto was attractive and stylish when she arrived, that she liked expensive things, and that she sometimes invited neighbors in.
The family's money troubles began with her husband's gambling. He bet heavily on bicycle racing, Shukan Shincho reported, and the household fell behind on its loan payments for the house. A change of job made it harder still. Eto spent her time raising money and borrowing.
In that period Eto began to consult a local folk practitioner in Sukagawa, an older woman with a reputation for accurate readings, Bunshun Online reported. Such practitioners, known in Fukushima as miko, were common in the south of the prefecture, and people went to them for advice on marriage, moving house and illness. A 77-year-old woman healer in Sukagawa whom Eto consulted told Shukan Shincho in 1995 that Eto often came to ask when her husband, who was frequently away, would come home, and that Eto had once dreamed of opening a ramen shop.
Her husband then joined a new religious group based in nearby Koriyama called Kami no Sato, later renamed Tenshi no Sato, and Eto followed him into it in 1990. A friend who attended a ritual at the Eto home described senior members coming to drive demons out of the house and Eto falling into a trance that did not stop; her husband became angry and telephoned the group's headquarters. The friend said Eto was the kind of person to whom spirits came easily. In about February 1993 the couple left the group. Their second daughter's severe headaches had not improved, and they had begun to doubt it. A representative of Tenshi no Sato told Shukan Shincho that the group used hand healing and did not use drums of the kind Eto later used.
After leaving, Eto began performing purification rituals herself. A 19-year-old woman who saw her about three times told the magazine that at first the sessions consisted of chopping motions with the hands and shouted syllables, and that she found them unsettling and stopped going. Bunshun Online, in a 2022 account, wrote that Eto also passed through groups in Tochigi and Okayama before she began calling herself a god. Her husband disappeared about three years before the killings came to light, and the house faced seizure.
Eto came to present herself as a god, or as the messenger of a god. The Supreme Court later found that she formed a religious group on that basis and held absolute authority within it. The group had no published name. Followers came to her with illnesses and family troubles. She told some of them that a snake or a fox was attached to them, or that their trouble came from a past life. The Fukushima Minyu newspaper, looking back in 2019, noted that many of the followers were dealing with illness in their families.
Two related families became central to the group. A 48-year-old woman was the first in her family to visit Eto. Her younger sister, a 45-year-old woman, followed her. The elder sister's husband, a 49-year-old man, joined after Eto treated him for diabetes and he felt he had recovered, Bunshun Online reported; he brought his wife and their three daughters, the eldest 18, the second in high school and the youngest in middle school. The younger sister came with her husband, a 45-year-old man, and their son. Another follower, a man of 42, joined with his 33-year-old wife, and a 27-year-old woman who worked under him at his job was also drawn in. Shukan Shincho reported that 12 or 13 people were gathering at the house by the end of 1994. Eto's eldest daughter, then 23, had recently returned home after leaving her husband's family.
Late in 1994 a 21-year-old former member of the Self-Defense Forces began coming to the house. Eto made him the second-ranking figure in the group, and followers were told to address him with an honorific title. Shukan Shincho reported that she began a relationship with him, and that in April 1995 the two rented an apartment in Kagamiishi, the town next to Sukagawa. Neighbors told Bunshun Online that the couple often drove off together in a sports car, and that the car and other spending on the young man were paid for with money taken from followers.
At about the same time, late in 1994, Eto began the violent rituals. They were called "goyo." In each one a follower she had picked out was beaten and kicked by others in the group, with fists and with the sticks used to play taiko drums, on the face, head, back and thighs. The Supreme Court described the sessions as lasting several hours at a time, intermittently, almost every day. Members were made to beat one another, and Fukushima Minyu reported that some were beaten by members of their own families on Eto's instructions. Katsuhiko Saito, then chief of the Sukagawa police station, told the paper in 2019 that the group was small, that the leader held all decision-making power, and that the violence grew as followers watched and checked on one another.
Eto told investigators that she beat followers as religious training to strip away worldly desires, because there was constant trouble over relationships between men and women. She also said a god had possessed her and that the rituals were sacred acts. Prosecutors and the courts saw other motives. Fukushima Minyu reported that the trial brought out her possessiveness toward the young man, jealousy of women around him, and disputes over money. "In the end, what lay behind it was relationships between men and women, and money," Saito said. Some followers believed that the dead would come back to life.
The 49-year-old follower tried to get away. At about 10 p.m. on January 2, 1995, he ran from the Eto house, barefoot and in a T-shirt and trousers, to a neighbor's home and asked for help. He told the neighbor that a gathering of 12 or 13 people was going on at the house and that he had escaped by saying he needed the toilet. The neighbor offered to call the police. The man refused, asked for a taxi and left. The next day his family went to the police to ask for help; his elder brother later told Shukan Shincho that officers did not take it seriously. His relatives never understood why he went back to the house with his wife and daughters. Six months later he was among the dead.
Another neighbor told Bunshun Online that, shortly before the arrests, the father of the young former soldier came to him for advice about how to bring his son home. Neighbors also recalled drumming at night from the house.
The Supreme Court, summarizing the facts found at trial, set out two phases. In the first, two followers were beaten in roughly overlapping sessions over nearly a month. Both died of crush syndrome caused by their injuries. Because the courts did not find that the attackers intended to kill them, these two deaths were treated as injury resulting in death.
In the second phase, within less than five months, five more followers were attacked in the same way, one after another or at the same time. This time the courts found intent to kill. Four died, and those deaths were convicted as murders. The fifth, the 33-year-old wife of the 42-year-old follower, survived. That attack was convicted as attempted murder.
The dead were the 45-year-old woman, wife of a follower who survived; the 49-year-old man who had fled in January; his 48-year-old wife, the elder sister of the first woman; their 18-year-old eldest daughter; the 42-year-old man; and the 27-year-old woman who had worked with him. Four were women and two were men. None of the sources opened gives the date of each death or states which two of the six deaths were the injury-resulting-in-death counts. The Japan Innocence and Death Penalty Information Center gives the period of the deaths as December 1994 to June 1995.
The dead were not buried. The Supreme Court recorded that their bodies were laid out in a room of the house and left. Bunshun Online reported that as followers began to leave, Eto tried to hide what had happened, filling the room with deodorizer and having followers smoke heavily. Surviving children were still living in the house; Shukan Shincho reported that two of them went on attending school for months while living there. The Supreme Court later wrote that the futures of children who had lost one or both parents were a matter of concern.
The end came when the 33-year-old woman was beaten in a purification session and seriously injured. She reached a hospital, where her injuries were judged to need about two months of treatment. What she said led the Sukagawa police to move on the house. Early on the morning of July 5, 1995, officers surrounded it. A woman who lived nearby recalled the street filling with police officers and vehicles at about 7 a.m., and television crews arriving. In the weeks before, neighbors had noticed crows gathering around the house, as many as 30 at a time.
Inside, in an eight-mat room at the back of the ground floor, officers found the six bodies. An officer who entered told Bunshun Online years later that he had never smelled anything like it.
Police arrested four people on suspicion of assault: Eto, her 23-year-old eldest daughter, the 21-year-old former soldier, and the 45-year-old husband of one of the dead women. The children of the two families were taken into protective custody. The 33-year-old survivor was also arrested; five people in all were charged.
Eto and the three arrested with her were indicted on four counts of murder, two counts of injury resulting in death, and one count of attempted murder against the survivor. The survivor was indicted on two counts of murder, for the deaths of her husband and of the 27-year-old woman.
The 33-year-old woman's case was heard separately. The Fukushima District Court sentenced her to three years in prison. On appeal in 1997, the sentence was changed to three years suspended for five years. The appeal court found that her judgment had been impaired by Eto's influence, and it took into account petitions from her family. She is a living private person and is not named here.
The joint trial of Eto and the three others opened at the Fukushima District Court in October 1995. All four denied any intent to kill. Eto's position, which she kept to the end, was that she had acted as part of a religious service. "I never thought they were going to die," she told the court, as reported by the International Business Times. In court she said that at the time, because of her religious conviction, she had not even been aware that the victims had died.
In 1996 the court ordered psychiatric evaluations of all four defendants, and the trial was suspended for about three years while the evaluations were carried out. When hearings resumed, the defense argued that the four had diminished capacity. Eto's lawyers argued that she had been in a possessed state and had lost her sanity.
The court rejected those arguments. On May 10, 2002, the Fukushima District Court found that all four defendants had full criminal responsibility. It sentenced Eto to death. Her eldest daughter and the former soldier were sentenced to life imprisonment. The 45-year-old husband of one of the victims was sentenced to 18 years. The two life sentences became final without appeal.
The 45-year-old follower appealed, and the Sendai High Court dismissed his appeal, which made his sentence final. Eto also appealed. On November 22, 2005, the High Court dismissed the appeal and upheld the death sentence.
Her lawyers, Fumitoshi Takazawa and Masatoshi Takahashi, took the case to the Supreme Court. At a hearing on July 15, 2008, they argued that she could not be held criminally responsible because she had been possessed. They also argued that the death penalty breached Japan's constitution, and that the lower courts had erred on the facts and on the sentence.
On September 16, 2008, the Third Petty Bench of the Supreme Court, presided over by Justice Tokiyasu Fujita and sitting with Justices Yukio Horigome, Kohei Nasu, Mutsuo Tahara and Takaharu Kondo, unanimously dismissed the appeal. It rejected the constitutional argument on the strength of its own earlier rulings and held that the other grounds were not proper grounds for a final appeal. It also affirmed the finding that Eto had full criminal responsibility at the time of each crime.
The court then explained why it would not disturb the sentence. It described the attacks, carried out by many people over long periods, as amounting to slow killing by torment, and the loss of six lives in succession as extremely grave. It said the suffering and anguish of victims who had clung to Eto and died without being saved were beyond imagining, and noted the families' severe feelings and the wide impact on society of a crime by a religious group. Eto had built a group on the claim that she was a god or a god's messenger, the court said, and had used that absolute authority, for selfish motives with no room for leniency, to choose followers as targets one after another and to beat them herself or order others to. Her responsibility was markedly heavier than that of her co-defendants, and her claim in court that she had not known the victims were dead was an unreasonable excuse that showed no real remorse.
The court weighed what could be said in her favor: that the influence of her religious conviction could not be denied, that the victims had not always tried to escape the beatings, and that she had no criminal record. Even so, it found her guilt extremely grave and upheld the death sentence. On September 22 her lawyers asked the court to correct the judgment, a final formal step. The death sentence then became final.
On the morning of Thursday, September 27, 2012, she was hanged at the Sendai Detention Center. She was 65. On the same morning Yukinori Matsuda, 39, who had been sentenced to death for killing two people in a 2003 robbery in Kumamoto Prefecture, was hanged at the Fukuoka Detention Center. The executions were authorized by Justice Minister Makoto Taki, who had ordered two others in August.
Eto was the first woman executed in Japan since 1997. Daily Shincho counted her as the fourth woman executed in Japan since 1950. The Justice Ministry said 131 people remained on death row.
The executions drew protests. Amnesty International called them "acts of premeditated, cold-blooded killing by the Japanese state," and said they made a mockery of the governing Democratic Party of Japan's pledge to hold a national debate on the death penalty. The Japan Federation of Bar Associations, through its president, Kenji Yamagishi, issued a statement the same day strongly protesting the two executions, noting that they came two months after the previous ones and calling again for a halt to executions and a public debate on abolition.
A man who lived near Eto's former home told Bunshun Online that a reporter telephoned him on the day of the execution to tell him the news, though he was not a relative.
The house in Kosakuda still stood in 2019, overgrown and empty, and neighbors did not want to talk about it, Fukushima Minyu reported. One woman in her 70s told the paper that people often fail to notice the signs of trouble inside a closed religious group, and that no one in the area could forget the case. When Bunshun Online's writer returned in 2022, bamboo and weeds had grown up around the building, its paper screens were torn and a window on the upper floor stood partly open. A neighbor said that after the case was shown on television, young people had come in summer to visit it as a haunted place, and some had gone inside.
Proven by final conviction: Eto's guilt of four murders, two counts of injury resulting in death and one attempted murder, all against members of her own group, and her full criminal responsibility. The courts rejected her claims that she was possessed, that she lacked capacity, and that she did not know the victims had died.
Not established in any source opened: which two of the six deaths were the injury-resulting-in-death counts and which four were murders, apart from the survivor's own indictment, which names her husband and the 27-year-old woman as murder victims; and the date of each death.
Motive: Eto said she was carrying out a religious practice to remove worldly desires. Prosecutors, police and press accounts put it down to jealousy, her relationship with the young former soldier, and money; Fukushima Minyu reported that these motives emerged at trial. Shukan Shincho's 1995 report also carried a source's claim that Eto had been involved with another follower before the young man arrived; that is an unproven claim and is not relied on here.
Details that vary between sources: the age of the male follower who died with his coworker (42 in one passage of the Shukan Shincho report, 43 in another); whether Eto's path into religion ran through the Koriyama group alone (Shukan Shincho) or also through groups in Tochigi and Okayama (Bunshun Online); and whether her daughter and the former soldier were convicted of the 1995 "murders," as English wire reports put it, or of the same combination of murder and injury resulting in death as Eto, as the Japanese reports show. One English report said Eto was sentenced to death in 2005; the trial court sentenced her in 2002 and the High Court upheld that sentence in 2005.
1947: Sachiko Eto is born in Sukagawa, Fukushima Prefecture.
1984: She and her husband build a house east of central Sukagawa.
1990: She joins the Koriyama group Kami no Sato (later Tenshi no Sato), following her husband.
About February 1993: The couple leave the group; Eto begins performing purification rituals herself.
Before 1995 (about three years earlier, by Shukan Shincho's account): her husband disappears; the family is in debt.
Late 1994: A 21-year-old former Self-Defense Forces member joins the household and becomes second in rank; the "goyo" beatings begin.
December 1994: Start of the period in which the six deaths occurred.
January 2, 1995: A 49-year-old follower flees the house to a neighbor's door, refuses police help and later returns with his family.
April 1995: Eto and the young man rent an apartment in Kagamiishi.
December 1994 to June 1995: six followers die after beatings; a seventh, a 33-year-old woman, is seriously injured and reaches a hospital.
July 5, 1995: Police search the house, find six bodies and arrest Eto, her daughter, the former soldier and another follower on suspicion of assault.
October 1995: The trial opens at the Fukushima District Court; all four defendants deny intent to kill.
1996: Psychiatric evaluations ordered; the trial is suspended for about three years.
1997: On appeal, the survivor's three-year prison sentence is suspended for five years.
May 10, 2002: Eto is sentenced to death; her daughter and the former soldier receive life, the fourth defendant 18 years.
November 22, 2005: Sendai High Court dismisses Eto's appeal.
July 15, 2008: Supreme Court hearing.
September 16, 2008: Supreme Court Third Petty Bench dismisses her final appeal.
September 22, 2008: Defense asks the Supreme Court to correct the judgment; the death sentence becomes final.
September 27, 2012: Eto is hanged at the Sendai Detention Center, aged 65.
2019 and 2022: Fukushima Minyu and Bunshun Online report the house still standing, empty.