The memorial
This is a roadside makeshift memorial for someone who's died. And this is the true story that explains it.
20 years ago, some young yakuza gang member committed a crime in Shinjuku's Red Light Kabukicho neighbourhood five or six km east of my neighbourhood. Chased by police, he hijacked a taxi cab and for no particular reason hopped out at Fuji High School, the public institution directly across the street from my apartment building. It was April 8th and there was a school Entrance Ceremony, or possibly an Opening Ceremony going on in the gymnasium building. The gym was full of students, teachers and parents.
The young fugitive went into the small picturesque garden beside the gym and killed himself with a gunshot while the ceremony was going on inside.
Now, every year on the date, someone leaves a small memorial like this at the school. It consists of flowers, beer and cigarettes. The beer is open and full, ready to drink. The pack of cigarettes also full, ready to smoke. It’s not always in the same location. This year it's here on a retaining wall on the south side of the school ground. Often it is at the gate of the gym parking lot - the site where the young man jumped out of the taxi and entered the grounds twenty years ago and crossed the threshold from this world to the next.
This memorial appeared on time, on Wednesday, April 8th, but I've never seen who does it. A single person, a couple or a group? The man's friends, yakuza brothers or family? I don't know.
20 years ago, I was working at a private high school in Ichikawamama on the Keisei Line in Chiba Prefecture east of Tokyo. I was at school in the morning for Opening or Entrance Ceremonies there and when I came home I discovered several television news vans parked on the street near my home. I thought maybe a celebrity had visited the school, or something. Maybe they'll stop me for a foreigner-on-the-street-viewpoint interview. That didn’t happen, and I only learned the full story the next day.
On Wednesday 8th I noticed the memorial when I was standing on the landing outside my door, giving my cat some sun. From my 3rd floor vantage point I watched a policeman come by on a bicycle, gently suggesting to the odd pedestrian that they should be self-isolating at home. He stopped and inspected these flowers and beer before cycling away without disturbing them.
I have long since forgotten what crime that guy was suspected of. I think about him sometimes.