“Yoshiyuki Kōno (victim)”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

Yoshiyuki Kōno (河野義行, born 1950) was a victim of the Matsumoto incident, a sarin attack that killed eight people and sickened many more in Matsumoto, Japan, on the evening of June 27, 1994 and the following morning.

Despite the fact that his wife was one of the people who was gassed and was comatose at the time, the investigating police considered Kōno a prime suspect in the crime. Due to the deliberate leak from the local Nagano police force, he was subjected to a "trial by media" where the Japanese media treated Kōno as the perpetrator, dubbing him the "Poison Gas Man", subsequently causing him to receive hate mail and death threats. It was revealed that Kōno had a large amount of pesticides stored at his residence.{{cn|date=July 2018}}

Historian Keiichi Tsuneishi claimed in the Asahi Shimbun, the second most circulated newspaper out of the five national newspapers in Japan, that the nerve agent is synthesizable from organophosphorus pesticides when in fact sarin cannot be manufactured from pesticides.^[1]^[2]

However, after the much larger attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, Kōno was cleared of blame and Aum Shinrikyo was deemed responsible. The head of National Public Safety Commission Hiromu Nonaka and media publicly apologised to Kōno. However, Nagano police did not directly apologise to Kōno until 2002.^[3]

While no sufficient evidence of Kōno's involvement was found, he was accused by the media in perpetrating the attack when police hinted at possibility of his involvement. While actually this was in violation of basic legal rights of the citizen, police could get away with it since the source that provided the information to the media was quoted as anonymous.{{cn|date=July 2018}}

Kōno later participated in many media events in defence of Aum, arguing that since the time he was wrongly accused in connection to the incident, he realised how vulnerable innocent victims are to media hate campaigns. Pointing to his own personal experience with the media industry and police, he drew parallels to innocent Aum members who suffered public alienation and unceremonious intrusion into their private life justified mostly by fears generated by the sensationalistic media rather than any proof of actual guilt.{{cn|date=July 2018}}

Together with Yoshihiro Yasuda, a veteran attorney arrested during his defence of Aum's founder Shoko Asahara, he also campaigned against the death penalty and delivered speeches and lectures explaining the impact of Japan's judicial system on suspects and wrongly accused, as well as the social impact on relatives and associates.{{cn|date=July 2018}}

Kōno's wife emerged from her coma after several years, but never regained her powers of speech or vision. She died in August 5, 2008 at age 60.{{cn|date=July 2018}}

Further reading

References

1. ^{{cite news|last=Keiichi|first=Tsuneishi|date=June 28, 1994|newspaper=The Asahi Shimbun, evening edition|title=ナゾの有毒ガスで７人死亡農薬中毒に似る　松本市の住宅街|trans-title=Mysterious toxic gas killed seven people, resembles pesticide intoxication, residential area of Matsumoto city}}
2. ^{{cite news|last=Keiichi|first=Tsuneishi|date=July 4, 1994|newspaper=The Asahi Shimbun, morning edition|title=市販薬でも作れる猛毒サリン　知識や経験あれば可能　松本の中毒死 |trans-title=Deadly poisonous sarin synthesizable from over-the-counter drug, possible with experience and knowledge. Death by poisoning in Matsumoto}}
3. ^{{cite web|url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0XPQ/is_2002_July_22/ai_89564230|title=Ex-suspect attends 1st meeting as Nagano safety commissioner|accessdate=2008-01-06|date=2002-07-22|publisher=Kyodo News}}

Further reading

References

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