The Monster with 21 Faces

In the 1980s, a mysterious organization terrorized candy companies in Japan - then disappeared. What was the Monster with 21 Faces, and what happened to it? Are any members alive today?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Dear
dumb police officers don't tell a lot. All crimes begin
with a lie, as we say in Japan. Don't you

(00:21):
know that? Why don't you keep it to yourself? You
seem to be at a loss, so why not let
us help you. We'll give you a clue. We entered
the factory by the front gate. The typewriter re used
is panwriter. The plastic container we used was a piece
of street garbage, signed monster with twenty one faces. Welcome

(00:44):
to the show, ladies and gentlemen. What you just heard
was an excerpt from the subject of today's episode, as
read by our very own Matt Frederick. That's me, Hello,
welcome to the show, A Matt, thanks for coming. Uh
and my name is Ben. Of course, as always we

(01:04):
are here with with no uh fox eyes brown? How
about that? No the fox eyed brown. He's gestued us
and what I assumed to be the common sign of
the fox side. Oh and the fox call and the
fox call. We're not going to ask you to do alright, alright,

(01:25):
that was too far. No there, Oh my god, he
did it. It's true. Yeah, as an armchair Fox expert,
Yeah or Fox putologists the word I just made up. Uh,
so I can verify that if that, if that were
actually a Fox and where I actually Fox expert. So
here is our audio follow up to an earlier video

(01:49):
that we created about unsolved crimes. Previously, we covered the
famous tom m or Toman shut case, the case of
the Summrton Man. Just I just want to say I
I've always heard it as tom un with an end should,
but then upon our research, we realized, no, it's it's
always been tom um should always. That's what that was

(02:10):
what was written on the note. Yeah, and uh, it's
it's interesting because you know, it might this is something
that listeners can can help us with, perhaps because as
you know, some languages that are non Romance or non
Latin languages have some difficulty with translation, right, which is

(02:31):
why for a long time, Uh, they were Probably if
you're old enough, you may remember in your lifetime some
names of cities have changed, like Bombay became Mumbai, uh,
Packing Beijing, things like that. So this might be a
case of Fitzgerald the author who did the translation of
the rubiat which we refer this may be a case

(02:52):
of him uh using maybe an outdated nomenclature or something
like that. Neither you uh where I speak Farsi is
that no? I mean it is okay. Well, the Somerton
case was only one of the cases we mentioned in
the video. We also mentioned, uh, some bizarre spree killings

(03:14):
in Belgium, some feet that were showing up all over
the place in the northwest north Pacific, northwest. Yeah, and
we also mentioned one other case, one of the most
famous unsolved cases in Japanese criminal history, and that is
what is known as the monster with twenty one faces met.

(03:35):
What you just read at the top of the show
was a quote from an actual letter sent to some
police departments. Uh, I have kind of taunting at very
much taunting the police departments. Yeah, as things were kicking
into high gears. So let's go ahead and just start
at the beginning. What what happened? How did this case begin? Well,

(03:59):
it all begins with this candy company called Glico in Japan. Uh.
And like all other companies, Glico has a CEO, so
their their CEO's name was Katsuhisa Ezaki, and these two
armed masked men broke into Katsuhisa's mother's house and stole
a key uh from for his house, Okay, from his mom.

(04:23):
And this was when this happened. Uh. The they did
some some pretty heinous things. They bound some people up right,
They tied up his wife and uh one of his children,
and cut the telephone cords. They raided the bathroom where
they found the CEO and his other two kids hiding.

(04:44):
That's right. And then they abduct abducted the CEO and
they held him hostage at a warehouse. Uh. They issue
a ransom as well, for one billion yen and one
ms of gold bars. Uh. That's got to be a
tense situation if you're the CEO of the company and
you wonder, well, one billion yen on of gold, what's

(05:08):
going to happen to me? What's the board can't do?
Is the board going to cut their losses and be like, yeah, sorry,
we can find another ceo? Uh. Luckily he did not
have to address that, uh frightening question. Uh. And and
you know he didn't have to get to the ultimate
answer because he managed to escape the warehouse three days later. However,

(05:29):
he was not able to identify any of his abductors.
And this was far from over. Yeah. So these guys
had masks on. I'm assuming they wore them the whole time.
So I mean, when once you're out and you're trying
to figure out who these people are, if you don't
have clear motive already beforehand, then how do you know
who these guys are? That's that is a scary, scary situation.

(05:51):
So a few weeks later, a couple other things happen
that some vehicles that are in the parking lot at
Glico are set on fire. Then there is a container
of hydrochloric acid um and and a letter that accompanied
right yeah, and a threatening letter written to Glico itself.
They were found in Ibaraki. And let me take a

(06:13):
moment here to point out that my Japanese is going
to be terrible. My pronunciations, uh and thank you to
everybody in the Summerton case. There are people who wrote
in and said, hey, guys, your your pronunciation of the
Australian stuff not that bad. Yeah we did, Okay, well
we have we have some really supportive audience, ye C

(06:33):
plus B maybe so this uh so the Japanese is
not going to be spot on here, but the warehouse
where this guy was originally held hostage, that's where this
That's the same town that this letter came to. And
this was the first in a string of letters from
a person or a group of people dubbing itself the

(06:54):
Monster with One Faces. Interesting side note here, they did
make up that name. No, No, it's based off of
a Japanese detective series, I believe, which is fictional. Uh
And but it's pretty well known in Japan. It's named
after the villain in one of those detective in that
detective series. Uh. These letters claim that Glico candies were

(07:18):
laced with potassium cyanide soda, meaning that it would quite
possibly kill people who ate it. Yeah, and if not
kill them, make them very very very ill. And you
can't have that if you're a large company like that.
That this is just not this is not a good
idea to allow this product to go out. So Glico,

(07:39):
as you might assume, they pulled, they pulled their their
stuff off the shelves, but they didn't just pull the
possibly contaminated once. They just pulled everything. They pulled a
lot of stuff and they were also Um, they were
doing this based entirely on the threat. Yes, there was
not evidence found at that time, but this was a

(08:01):
massive loss for the company, twenty one million dollar loss.
And keep in mind this is in the eighties. Uh.
And they had the layoff almost five hundred employees because
of this expense. And that's a twenty one million dollar
US right yeah, yeah, yeah, not yet and uh, after
months of tormenting Glico, the monster it's twenty one faces,

(08:22):
uh forgives them, says we forgive Glico, and that was
their final letter. But they weren't done yet. But it's crazy.
I guess they they caused enough damage. I'm trying to
put my head in the mind of these the Monster
twenty one faces. Just I guess they saw that the
company had been I defeated in a way, at least

(08:43):
according to their standards, so they're like, you know what,
it's okay, guys were cool. So they moved on, and
they they turned their sights on a couple other companies
who produced food um oh Man Marudai, ham House Foods
Corporation and Fujia. Right yeah, and this this was straight
up extortion pretty much, right. Uh. And at the time

(09:06):
in Japan. It's important to note that this was a
campaign of over terror. You know, people were some for
the first time, were terrified about the possibility of crime
because Japan, in comparison to a lot of other countries,
is a very safe place. You know, this is this

(09:27):
is not the place where you would think you would
accidentally die because you ate you bought some pockey, which is,
by the way, my my favorite, my favorite thing that
Glico makes, you know what I'm talking about, the little
yeah yeah, yeah, don't get the strawberry. I'm not I'm
not a fan of strawberry, and I have no illusions

(09:49):
about the nutritional value or lack there of. Man that
chocolate sauce stuff is on point. Anyway, So they told
Mardai that they would stop harassing this company if one
of their employees gave him ransom money fifty million years,
specifically on a train. So the police forces have an

(10:10):
investigator disguise himself as an employee, and while he's disguisedes
an employee, they don't see exactly the place where they're
instructed to hand off the money because they're supposed to
like throw it from a train kind of but they
do see a guy later becomes the prime suspect as
a representative of the monster. Twenty one faces and that

(10:31):
is the so called fox Eyed Man, which goes back
to your nickname today. No, the man was well built,
he had short hair and it was permed, and he
was and he was described as having eyes like those
of a fox. So after this police officer, investigator dress

(10:51):
his employee drops the ransom, he and this other guy
try to follow the Fox Eyed Man, but they lose him,
and then they get an other close chance to catch
him again, but he evades them again. He's pretty good
at it. It feels so cinematic to me. It feels
like this is a script that was written. But no, No,
ladies and gentlemen, this happened. Yeah. And after the after

(11:14):
this event and during these close calls, the monster is
mailing more harassing letters towards the police. And a year later,
after a year unsuccessfully investigating this finding no leads, catching
no criminals, the police superintendent, a fellow named Yamamoto, commits
suicide because of this case, and he does it by

(11:35):
setting himself on fire, allegedly because he's ashamed of his
failure to capture the fox eyed man. So five days
after the death, little less than a week, the Monster
of twenty one Faces sends a final letter to the media. Matt,
do you want to do the honors? Sure? Yamamoto of
Shiga Prefecture police died. How stupid of him. We've got

(11:57):
no friends or secret hiding place, and she got it's
Yoshino or Shikata who should have died. What have they
been doing for as long as one year? In five months?
Don't let bad guys like us get away with it.
There are many more fools who want to copy us.
No career. Yamamoto died like a man, so we decided
to give our condolence. We decided to forget about torturing

(12:20):
food making companies. If anyone blackmails any of the food
making companies, it's not us, but someone copying us. We
are bad guys. That means we've got more to do
other than bullying companies. It's fun to lead a bad
man's life. Monster with twenty one faces And with that,

(12:40):
the monster at twenty one faces did not surface again,
or at least hasn't hasn't been seen to surface. So
this crime, this series of creams, remains unsolved. Seventeen months
from the initial kidnapping to the last known letter, which
you heard part of there. And this was a historical

(13:04):
and historical hinge. You know, this turn the public perception
of a crime free and safe Japan, and it leaves
us with a lot of questions. One one thing that
people would say is that the suspects would most likely
be yakuza, you know, the organized crime rings of Japan.

(13:24):
It certainly seems like there was a lot of organization
going on, coordinating where to be and when and knowing
information about their victims. And in jun statute of limitations
ran out for the kidnapping an assault, and then two
thousand the limitations for the poisoned food products also expired.

(13:49):
So what's interesting is the fox sybe man as well
as some other unidentified guy in a hat we're seeing
different times during the seventeen months. The guy in the
hat was actually seen putting food onto a shelf, uh
so actually participating in the in the poison right. So
after the after the release of the identicate, you know,

(14:15):
to try to find the perpetrator in the Tokyo Metropolitan
Police believed the culprit was a guy named Manabu Miyazaki
or U mr M which is kind of a cool name,
uh he. And it's because he had in nineteen seventy
six released a tape about supporting a union that was

(14:38):
in a labor dispute with Glico way back in seventy six,
and it's set and according to the police, this had
a lot of similarities to the tone of letters sent
by Monster with one faces could be motive. And in
seventy six and seventy five there were whistleblowing incidents that
were also attributed to the guy uh taw about Glico's

(15:00):
dumping of industrial waste into rivers. Uh So, he was
also suspective a couple other things. But here's here's the thing.
His father was the boss of a local yakuza organization
Akuza organization, and the guy himself apparently bore resemblance to
the fox side Man, which one of our listeners on

(15:22):
YouTube said that was just sort of a phrase for
someone with crazy eyes. But I don't know again, not
a not a foxologist? Is there a foxologist in the house.
I just always wanted. There's a sketch of him you
can find online, and the way they depicted his eyes
I can see what they're saying. And there in two

(15:45):
thousand or so there were rumors that there was actually
North Korean involvement, and there were you know that that's
not as readily accepted as the accusations of organized crime
in general, or should I say, domestically organized organized crime.
But we have to ask ourselves, you know, will will

(16:06):
this case ever be solved? It? Will it be like
a deathbed confession? What what were the long term results?
What was the ultimate motivation behind this? You know, was
was the group doing this, uh, profiting in some other
way by um damaging the reputation of Glico, may be

(16:29):
competitors somewhere. Yeah, And it's a it's a decent question
because we're really looking for here now is motive? Yes,
that's the strange part. There's not really an explanation of motive,
at least in the letters themselves, other than we are
bad guys and it's fun to lead that kind of life.

(16:50):
What if it was an early take on the health
food movement where they were trying to punish companies who
make delicious sticks with candy on them. Yeah, but again
stay away from strawberry. No. The you know, that's that's
an interesting angle too. But the problem is with that
that there's not very much in the way of proof.

(17:11):
That's just conjecture. Well, and and if you know, let's
say that they were successful and they got the ransom money.
When you're getting ransom money like that, even in the eighties,
it's going to be trackable in some way. You know
that each each UH bill is going to have numbers
on it that you can trace. Sure, you would need somebody,

(17:31):
I don't know, like an organized crime to wash that money,
you know, to funnel it through different things, different gambling
things or pachinko parlors, things like that, which I would
make sense, But that's just connecting, you know, between gambling
and those sympathizers. That isn't in any way to say
that there is proof that any North Korean sympathizers were

(17:54):
behind the monster with twenty one faces. But then again,
there's not too much solid proof that the Yakzo is.
It's just sort of like there the there that would yeah,
because that's a crime family and this was clearly organized,
well thought out. The methods of contact and delivery for
the time UH did did show that this was not

(18:19):
anyone's first rodeo, you know what I mean. So what
this leaves us with is another point that we should make,
which is a lot of the contemporary reporting of this
the stuff that was happening in the eighties at the
time was of course written in Japanese and remains in Japanese.

(18:39):
So now I'd like to put out um a request
for those of you listening with knowledge of Japanese. Is
there a is there an additional piece of this story
that you think is missing for people who primarily speak English?
And if so, what, because we'd like to hear it
that we could even put a little addendum at the

(19:02):
end of another episode where we discuss something that you
wrote to us, written to us, that would be great,
That would be a great follow up, and we could
also look at it on our new live show. We're
on Periscope usually around four pm. Uh, I guess Thursday's
or Friday's right some yeah, sometime near the end of
the week Hunt And we do hope you tune in

(19:24):
and check that out. We we hope you're enjoying looking
at some of these crimes. These are just sort of
one oh one instances, but yeah, it's to send you
down the rabbit hole, right, yes, or the foxhole or whatever. Right.
I was going to say candy hole, but for some
reason that sounds strangely dirty. It's just your face. Oh

(19:45):
because people eat candy. Yeah, okay. I was like a
personal insult, and I thought, Matt, we're on air. Sorry,
what have I done? Um? So we're going to go
ahead and in that Oh wait, do you hear that?
It was the fox call? Screety he's back. Oh it's no.

(20:06):
Oh man, I don't know if that's really what it.
Fox sounds like I heard they had they kind of shriek.
You know. It's interesting. Uh, there's a the domestication project
that went on with foxes that you've probably heard about, right, Uh.
The I believe it was a Russian project, and the
idea was to see what would happen when they bred

(20:28):
foxes increasingly for domestic purposes, turning them into pets. Because
very few animals are actually domesticated. You contame individuals, but
domestication is when the entire uh the entire type of
animal is just ready to hang with people. So what
they found was that the fox has got floppy ears

(20:49):
and retained some juvenile characteristics, and they do make that
crazy unholy soundings. Yeah, so you nailed it, but it
wasn't too far off. So you were talking about Pocky, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
what about yan Yan? Have you ever had yan Yon?
I have? I have not. What is ya? It's like
it's like a little dipping sticks, you know, Yeah, it's

(21:10):
like Pocky. Okay, okay, it's like I'll tell you that.
It's one of those things that whenever I met a
place and they sell it, I have this moment where
it's like dunk a ruse. It's like dunkarru Okay, okay, whatever,
I'm in a place where they saw that stuff, I buy.
I buy a couple just just to have on board
on hands. I don't really eat sweets, but it must

(21:33):
have been a nostalgic thing for me or something that's
a fun thing to offer to guests too. They have
them at the place where I get my bondnes right
around the corner from my house. They've got the pocket Pokey.
Do you go to Lee's. Yeah, it's a Lee's Bakery.
Oh man. Okay, So if you're ever in Atlanta and
you you like, mom me just sandwiches, sandwiches or just

(21:57):
sandwich is sort of the perfect sandwich. You gotta you
gotta check out Leaves because it's so cheap. Yeah, I'm
as a cheap skate. Their deal really appeals to me.
You can get six sandwiches for the price of five, which, granted,
is entirely too many sandwiches for one person. This episode
brought to you by Leaves Bakery. Oh no, I would
love it if they were. If they were sponsoring our show,

(22:20):
then I would ask just for payment. And sandwiches really
that good. I once did the six sandwich deal and
I just put them in the fridge and brought into
work every day, and it was the last week of
my life. Man. Yeah, whoa, I don't know why I
haven't done that. I remember that week. That was a
high point for all of us. You're just smiling. Yeah,
So what do you think about this? Do you think

(22:41):
they're ever gonna find the perpetrator of or the perpetrators?
I don't know. It's it's sometimes, you know, these things
just don't ever get solved. I guess I don't know. Well,
it's it's also strange because we know that some organized
crime families have, especially in this uh, in this country,
some organized crime families have pretty close links with police

(23:07):
departments and law enforcement, you know. So it's it follows
then that it is entirely possible for members of the
police department and members of perhaps even the Japanese media
to know exactly who this is, but for one reason
or another, to have participated to cover up. And uh,

(23:28):
I'm I'm interested in this because I want to know
what happened with this, you know, I want to know
where it occurs. And you know, this wasn't that long ago,
relatively speaking, especially in comparison to the Summerton Man. So
it's quite possible that people who participated in this are

(23:48):
still alive. Oh yeah, Oh, I'm I'm most certain because
this isn't just a one or two person deal. I
don't I don't think it's possible that this is one
person to person deal. I mean, how know how it
is today, But it seems like there was certainly a
time where the yakuza wielded almost more control and power
than the police force itself. And I mean it was

(24:09):
probably you know, the police force was more beholden to
the accusa than the other way around. See, I feel
like we learn about that in hindsight and it we're
in this forever loop of control getting larger and larger
with organized crime within our institutions. But we just learned
about it. I don't know, it seems to me, at
least in the States, that's maybe this is completely not true,

(24:30):
but it seems there's there's a sense that organized crime
isn't you know, what it wants, what it once was, right,
has it devolved or But then also it reminds me
of the old question of or the old idea that
organized crime is always going to be around the question.
It will be who perpetrates the most, and you'll have

(24:51):
people like you know, Gary Webb, the journalist clearly clearly said, guys,
the CIA is participating organized crime and with much more
success than the Gambinos or whatever. And perhaps we're perhaps
we are arriving in a place where the differences between
some factions of law enforcement and some factions of criminal

(25:14):
empires are are not as distinct as they once were.
So so yeah, it's your appointment. It does make sense that, uh,
the quote unquote traditional organized crime could be falling off,
but um crime, like any other thing in nature, bores
a vacuum. So somebody else is going to step in.

(25:35):
Are you wait, wait, are you guys a fan of
crime shows? Mom? Stuff? Yeah? I was actually just gonna
ask Matt how you felt about the Detective finale. Thought,
don't don't ask me that, just tell me just out
with it. Did you watch it? Yeah? I did? Okay, okay,

(25:57):
all right, really fast. So I don't think you can
sit and judge something like that by just saying, oh,
it was awful, and that's not that's not what that means.
It means I think that there is deeper meaning to
be read. From my first viewing of the season, I

(26:20):
think that it wasn't shown as much on the surface
as the season one was, where you had a character
like rust Cole who was kind of explaining to you
what the symbols mean, what the the deeper thing that
you can find within maybe these symbols, within this. I
think it exists there, and that for that, I'm very happy. However,

(26:40):
I think it's I really personally think it's suffered from
having too many characters, trying to tell too many stories,
and not being able to focus its energy onto one
or two things. It was just weird for me because
it almost felt like by the time it found its footing,
it was like too late kind of yeah, I mean
the last two episodes, three episodes even to me, we're

(27:01):
pretty solid. And I almost like I was hate watching
it up to that point. I'm not kidding, Like I
was just you know, hate watching Yeah, I really was.
I was just like, this dialogue is awful, these characters
don't make sense, the casting is is lopsided and bizarre.
Then by the end it was like, oh, well, okay,
there's really some stuff coming home to roost here, and
like there's actually some really interesting development and some of

(27:22):
the things that at the time seemed ridiculous for these
characters to do actually sort of make sense in the
grand picture of the things. So I would argue that
maybe it's worth watching, like binge watching, you know, like
you kind of give a sense of who the characters are,
you don't forget because it's like one thing that I
had a problem with is like there would be characters
that you maybe saw once or twice and then maybe
we're named once or twice and then you don't ever
see him again until they pop up and oh they're

(27:43):
actually really really important. But use that again. It's anyway
I don't want to get to overboard with it. I
just wanted to do a little post well because I
actually wanted to talk about Ben and I discussed it briefly,
and I'm sorry, Ben, I don't mean to just talk
and talk and talk to you about about I think
I really you like, I had pacing problems and and

(28:03):
too many characters. You're You're right, but yeah, give it
a chance. If you have not watched it yet, give
it a chance. It's a good conversation starter, that's for sure.
Oh yeah, oh yes, just like season one. My favorite
parts of watching season one within coming to work and
then discussing with everybody what we think is happening or
what's going on. Oh. I loved this season one, and

(28:24):
for an entirely selfish reason because I did think it
was it was a great show and the time you
spent on its shows. But I loved it because suddenly
people cared about the book The King and Yellow and
other stories and uh, I've never heard of it. Well,
I had only heard of it because it has you know,
it has this love crafty and air and it got

(28:46):
sucked into that whole Methos and Uk Josh might still
have my copy or did I just get another copy?
But the book itself has some has some pretty neat
stuff to mythology. It's hitt and this for sure, it
has ah literally well as virtually nothing to do with

(29:11):
this stuff. And True Detective thematically it makes sense because
the Yellow King is in that book a a figure
like there's this three act play, that's what. And the
three act play occurs in these different stories and the
ideas that when you read the first act, it's great,
it's interesting. It put only on second act blah blah blah.

(29:34):
By the time you get to the third act, you
are insane and your brain is driven to the darkness
beyond the stars Decarcosa where the Yellow King dwells, and
that kind of stuff. And uh, that's not really what
True Detective is about at all, but it is. It
is an interesting thematic underpinning. And unlike the Monster with
twenty one faces, the True Detective case was solved. Yes,

(29:59):
some people sort well, there's a spiric victory, yes, and uh,
not to give we don't want to give too much
away here. We want you guys all to be excited
about watching these shows, because, honestly, when there's good television
or a good story put on camera. Ah, just makes
us all happy. I think, Yeah, there's a there's a
renaissance I believe for TV shows. But also also I

(30:24):
defer to you guys opinion on this because you're both
far more knowledgeable about film in general than I am.
I'll have conversations with these guys, ladies and gentlemen, where
if if a lot, if a bunch of movies come
out at once, and I will walk up to maternal
or some of our other coworkers, uh and ask them

(30:46):
which one I'm supposed to watch, because they just have
tied way through all of them? You know? Should we
should we go ahead and talk about the gifts now?
Or no? No, let us never speak of that horrible,
horrible film other than to say, lady and gentlemen, we
are going to help you. We're going to save two
hours of your life. Don't see that film? Oh man,

(31:08):
I don't you know. I hate to be so blunt
about it. Well, you know what, maybe you'll like it,
Maybe you'll like it, takes all types. I haven't seen it.
I hear great things, alright, So before I give myself
it to a troubler, go on another rant. We are
going to head out reminder, Please do let us know

(31:30):
what you think about the monster. It's one in one faces,
will this ever be solved? And please let us know
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(31:55):
that's a verb, I don't know. We're we're like old
school ituners. We've been around for while on that one,
not as long as some, but we put in. We
put in some time, uh, and we have new episodes
coming out every week. We also have, as you mentioned,
the live show. But hey, Matt ben Noel, you might
be saying, I do have some feedback, but I don't
feel comfortable posting it on a public forum like Facebook

(32:18):
or YouTube or Twitter. We totally understand it, but we'd
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(32:40):
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