On May 3, 1998, 48-year-old mother and housewife Noriko Shizuka of Japan’s Chiba Prefecture went with the rest of her family to the Akagi Shrine in near-by Gunma Prefecture. Since it was raining when the family got there, only Noriko’s husband and brother-in-law got out of the car to visit the shrine. The other five family members- Noriko, her daughter, her grandson, her sister-in-law, and her mother-in-law- were supposed to sit in the car in the parking lot and wait. (Note: The Japanese sources I consulted aren’t exactly clear on who all went on this family trip. This site here gives the other family members as “husband, daughter, grandson, uncle, aunt, mother-in-law”. I’m assuming the uncle and aunt were from Noriko’s husband’s side of the family, but I could be wrong.)
After waiting for a while, Noriko told the others that she wanted to give an offering of saisen, money offered to the gods in Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. She took 101 yen, a small sum equivalent to less than $1, from her purse and then got out of the car. Noriko wore a black skirt and pink shirt, and took along a red umbrella. Her family watched her walk off, and that was the last time anybody ever saw her.
Despite a 10-day search of the area, with 100 people participating, neither Noriko’s body nor any of her personal belongings turned up. Noriko might not even have gone into the shrine; nobody there reported seeing her, and Noriko’s daughter actually saw her mother walk away from the direction of the shrine’s haiden, the public space where ceremonies and worshipping take place. Why Noriko was walking away from the shrine has never been explained. Was she leaving her family of her own accord, or did somebody lure her away?
7 months after Noriko disappeared, a TV station that had earlier covered her case on one of their programs got hold of a video tape that was taken in Akagi Shrine around the same time when Noriko went missing. At first, this seemed like an important development because the tape showed a woman who bore a resemblance to Noriko, but the Shizukas looked at it and said that it wasn’t her. However, another figure that could be seen in the lower right corner of the screen did look like Noriko, and had a red umbrella and a similar haircut.
Still looking for some resolve, the Shizukas next turned to an American psychic for help. The psychic, without a shred of evidence, claimed that Noriko was dead. According to her, Noriko encountered a young man on her way to the haiden. The man said that he needed help picking up somebody who had fallen. Noriko agreed to lend a hand, and that’s why her daughter saw her walk away from the shrine. The whole act was a trick though, and once the man got Noriko in an isolated spot, he and his friend grabbed her and dragged her to their car.
To prevent Noriko from escaping, the two men tied her arms up and blindfolded her. They then took her to their hide-out, where they tortured her for the pure fun of it. The men had no intention to kill Noriko, and after they had their fun, dropped her back off the night after they abducted her. Badly hurt by the beatings, Noriko was disoriented and wandered through the forest near the Akagi Shrine. Without realizing where she was going, Noriko fell off a cliff and died.
Now I’m not the kind of person to believe psychics and their well-paid clairvoyant powers, so I’d say it’s safe to throw this woman’s story out and wag a finger at her for exploiting Noriko’s family’s vulnerability. There is, of course, the possibility that Noriko was abducted and murdered, but as one internet commentator noted wryly, “In my spiritual vision, the housewife is still alive.” Some have suggested that Noriko really did walk off voluntarily, perhaps to start a new life with another man. Interestingly, the family received several silent phone calls after Noriko’s disappearance. The area codes in the phone numbers weren’t local ones, but from the cities of Osaka and Yonago. But other than this strange tidbit, there’s nothing to suggest that Noriko is alive either.
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