The Gurico-Morinaga Case

October 15, 2002 The Gurico-Morinaga case happened more than 20 years ago in Japan. It scared all Japanese at that time. When the G-M case occurred, nobody had ever heard of anything like it. Things started when the president of the Gurico company, which is one of the big confectionary companies, was kidnapped by someone. The group that carried him off called themselves "Kaijin 21-menso". This name is radicurous because it came from an old mystery book, "Kaijin 20-menso," who always trick the police. Actually Kaijin 21-menso made fun of the people who were serious about the case, such as the police or the exective of the company. They sent redicurous statement that they did it because they got bored. Fortunately, the president came back without any injury. Their pattern was clever and well-planned compared with their childish words. Police couldn't solve this case or even how many people there were in Kaijin 21-menso. Moreover, K-21 sent another statement to the police that said they would continue to make fun of us - people in Japan - more and more. The next target was the Morinaga Confectionary Company. To the best of my memory, they asked a large amount of money from the company, they started to scare us when Morinanga refused. They decided to put potassium cyanide into the products of confectionary companies and the consumer would have been killed if he/she had eaten the contarminated products. K-21 didn't say which company was their target, but they sent a statement to the police that they would do this to some Japanese big companies. Nobody could do anything. If the police had not announced to the Japanese people, many people would have died from the poison, but it only confused the public when they were informed. The police and the companies had no clues to the mystery. The announcement only made peole stop buying the major companies' confectionaries - cakes, cook, candies, snack-food. the companies made special wraps which showed everybody knows if the confectionary had been opened before. This was the only thing the company could do. However, we were surprised that they changed the wraps from the old ones very quickly. We usualy think that Japanese companies are very slow to do some things, especially things which are not for their own benefit. So, we found out that they can do these kind of things if they try. Anyway, nobody was arrested, although some criminals who used their name, because victims were afraid when they heard the name "Kaijin 21-menso", were arrested. Actually, the police had one chance to catch them when the group passed through a police checkpoint. A camera station at a point on the highway had required them as they drove through, but did not communicate to the ceckpoint station, therefore, the police did not catch them. The public found out about this when K-21 wrote a letter to a newspaper, telling them that they had been stopped at the checkpoint but they let go. The chief of police commited sucide the next week after he and the department were blamed for this incident. One day, one store caught a man in the secrity camera. His eyes were very thin, so everybody called him "Kitsune-me no Otoko(a man with fox eyes)." The police tried to find him and the group, but they never found him or the group. K-21 finally sent a message to the public that they would not scare us any more because they get bored to keep doing this. By the way, the term "Kitsune-me no Otoko" was getting popular among Japanese, and everybody started to use it in the conversation. It finally got the prize as the most popular word of the year. Later, we discovered that many well-known people who have thin eyes were contacted and interrogated by the police regarding the case. At the same time they sometimes get into trouble by looking susicious to bystanders.

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