Vietnam Insider

Eyes across Japan and Vietnam will be watching next month when a Japanese man stands trial for killing a 9-year-old Vietnamese girl who lived with her family in a city east of Tokyo.

The third-grader, Le Thi Nhat Linh, “loved Japan,” her mother told Nikkei. She added that she hoped the courts would “protect children and uphold justice” by handing down a harsh sentence. She and her husband have received public support from both countries in pushing to bring the accused to trial and have him face the death penalty.

On March 24, 2017, Linh disappeared on her way to school in Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture. Her body was found two days later near a drainage ditch in the nearby town of Abiko.

The next month, prefectural police arrested Yasumasa Shibuya, who headed a local school parents’ association and had helped stand watch over children’s routes to school, on charges of abandoning Linh’s body. Shibuya, then 46, was further indicted in district court for murder, sexual abuse and kidnapping. His trial will begin June 4, with closing arguments and sentencing recommendations set for the 18th of that month.

Linh’s mother, Nguyen Thi Nguyen, spoke with Nikkei from the northern Vietnamese port city of Haiphong, where she and her daughter used to live. She will leave for Japan again June 10 and is set to appear in court June 12.

Linh “always talked about what good people the Japanese are,” said Nguyen. But Shibuya “hasn’t owned up to his crime and won’t say a word” about it, she went on with audible anger.

Nguyen hopes for “a severe punishment, so children will never become victims again,” she said. She also mentioned the killing of a 7-year-old girl this month in Japan’s Niigata Prefecture.

Linh’s death sent shock waves through the community. News of a petition from Nyugen and her husband Le Anh Hao spread rapidly in Vietnam through Facebook. Musical artists and prominent athletes have called for people to sign. As of April 9, the petition had 1.05 million Vietnamese signatures and 69,000 Japanese.

As many as 260,000 Vietnamese live in Japan.

Linh sometimes spoke of wanting to bring Japanese people to Vietnam to teach them about everyday life and culture there. Most mornings, she would study the Chinese kanji characters used in written Japanese with her father, and Nguyen would teach her Vietnamese at night.

It was Linh’s dream “to be a bridge between Japan and Vietnam,” Nguyen said through tears. “We as a family want to do something to honor that.” The “Nhat” in Linh’s name means “Japan” in Vietnamese.

As a young child in Haiphong, Linh was “friendly and cheerful,” Nguyen recalled, and “would talk to people just passing by the house.”

Linh “wouldn’t even kill an ant, and she loved feeding wild birds,” her mother said. A small ornamental bird that Linh had treasured sat beside a portrait of her on a Buddhist memorial altar.

Hao decided to move the family to Japan when Linh was 3. They first settled in a publicly run apartment complex near Tokyo, in the Kanagawa Prefecture city of Kawasaki. They moved twice more, bringing Linh to tears at leaving her friends, and ended up buying a house in Matsudo.

Linh was delighted to be settled at one school. She watered a grape vine in the garden every morning, asking Nguyen when it would bear fruit.

They had lived in the new house for about a year when Linh disappeared. Afterward, Hao would sometimes jolt awake at night shouting his daughter’s name. Her younger brother, then 3, at first would ask why his sister had not come back from school, but eventually transitioned to silently placing offerings of rice at Linh’s memorial altar.

Three months after her disappearance, Linh’s beloved vine bore its first fruit. Nguyen placed some of the grapes on the altar before her daughter’s portrait.

By ATSUSHI TOMIYAMA, Nikkei staff writer