In Japan, privacy and cultural norms around such matters are quite significant, making any untimely death considered perplexing.
Japan has made a significant impact on global pop culture across various mediums. From Anime to Manga, to video games and music, as well as fashion and cuisine. Let's not forget about the automotive industry, and gadgets, and technology.
The country's influence on pop culture extends far and wide, and its unique blend of tradition and modernity continues to captivate audiences globally.
But there are darker sides of this.
And one man who died in the late 1980s, apparently hit the Western media, and became viral, three decades after it happened.
Japan, due to its reputation in its extremely complex cultural, historical, and social factors, the country's pop culture's influence is based on its rich tradition.
But because it has strict laws, and places a high value on privacy and discretion, the globalization and stereotypes made the media to sometimes exaggerate and generalize certain aspects, including fetish culture.
On Friday, February 24, 1989, was the state funeral day of Emperor Hirohito.
In that very day, many workers are granted a free day from their duties, and one of the many people in Japan, was a primary school teacher working in Toro village in Tamura district, located in Fukushima, a prefecture located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu.
The 23-year-old woman who received an extra-long weekend, had her plenty of time to spend at her family home.
Just when she was about to depart from her room at a school's staff dormitory, she decided to use the toilet first.
Everything went well, and nothing was out of the ordinary, until something strange caught her eyes.
In the toilet’s opening, in the hole where wastes go, she saw a shoe.
Confused at first, she later panicked and screamed after realizing that there is also somebody inside the hole.
She ran for help, and called other teachers over to help her investigate.
Shortly after witnessing this, one of the teachers called the police.
When the police arrived, the authorities were surprised by how a person could fit inside a cramped septic tank-like cesspool. When they tried to pull the person out, they realized that the person inside the shallow pool of feces and urine is already dead.
Swiftly, a police line was set up, and people were questioned.
According to reports, the staff dormitory was designed with individual rooms, and each of of the rooms has its own private toilet.
What this means, the teacher who first discovered the body, was the sole user of toilet, as it happens to be inside her room.
The staff dormitory has that traditional squat toilets, which are installed in the floor, and users should squat over them to use them. Underneath the toilet, there is a U-shaped pipe under them.
In the Japanese countryside, the conditions in the mountainous villages were not very developed, and one of the things that lacked, was a proper sewage pipe from the toilet.
Because of this, the toilets have a cesspool, where sewage flows into it.
And this U-shaped pipe is both the sewage pipe, and the cesspool.
The one end of the U-shaped pipe is connected to the toilet, where human waste enters, and the other end. served as the sewage outlet outside.
Periodically, someone would open the manhole cover to pump out the waste from inside.
And in this case, the teacher who was about to enjoy a nice long holiday, wanted to use the toilet, but out of instinct, she took a peek into the cesspool.
When she peeked, this was when she saw a black shoe, placed over the man's head, who was leaning slightly towards the left side of the toilet opening.
The police had a hard time extracting the body.
This happened because of how small the cesspool is, if compared to the size of the human body. It seemed impossible for an adult to crawl inside it.
The U-shaped opening where the man entered, was on the outside, on the waste-collecting side, which only measures at 36 centimeters. On the inside, the U-shaped opening is smaller, measuring at a mere 20 centimeters.
The depth the U-shaped pipe is placed underground, is 107 centimeters; its length is 120 centimeters; and its width is only 36 centimeters.
The deceased man was in a crouched position with his head facing the inside hole.
He was shirtless, and was pressing his jacket to his chest.
Due to the man's position, and the location, the only option to take the body out was to destroy the toilet.
And they did just that.
After they got the man out, they saw that the man had no signs of injuries, and had only some light scratches.
Before he was brought to the autopsy table, the body had to be washed twice to remove the feces and the foul smell.
It was realized that the cause of death was hypothermia. He "suffocated," and that he was also "frozen."
In simpler terms, he died of exposure after being trapped in a tight space.
The man died in February 26th, meaning that he was already dead for two days before he was found.
The body was quickly identified as a local man. His name was Naoyuki Kanno (Naoyuki Sugano), and that he lived just ten minutes away from teachers’ housing.
The 26-year-old man was an employee at a company that oversaw the Fukushima nuclear plant’s safety. He was well known in the community for his activities in youth association. He also worked as an MC at local weddings, and was known to have helped ran a campaign for a village headman’s position.
In other words, Naoyuki was well-respected man.
But his apparent place of death, and the humility he gave to himself for crawling inside a cesspool to just get a clear view of the private parts of his target, made him a sexual deviant.
Sugano has been missing since the afternoon of February 24, and the last person who saw him, was his father, who claimed nothing of his son was unusual that day.
The police quickly ruled out third party involvement, concluding that it was Naoyuki who entered the cesspool on his own will.
This bizarre death of such a well-liked person, has caused an uproar in Mijakoji.
More than half of its inhabitants, over four thousand people, have signed a petition requesting police to continue the investigation. People began making up stories, and theorized that Naoyuki had a relationship with the teacher. But since the teacher was engaged at the time, people speculated that the woman was having an affair with Naoyuki.
Others called Naoyuki a pervert, while others, including his boss, said that it may have been a suicide.
After all, a month before this, there was an accident at the Fukushima Power Plant, with one of the reactors getting shut down temporarily. His boss said that workers who were responsible for its maintenance were having a considerable amount of stress.
With the case is closed, and that nothing is certain when it comes to rumor. But what is true is that, Naoyuki and the teacher knew each other.
The teacher confessed that before the incident, she had been receiving weird calls, and that they abruptly stopped after the incident.
Regardless of the conclusion, what still puzzled people is how Naoyuki could’ve possibly fit into the cesspool.
According to the statistics, an average Japanese male has a height of less than 180 centimeters, with an average shoulder width of about 38 centimeters.
Even if the deceased was a very slim man it must have been a tight fit.
Other puzzle that remained unanswered, is the fact that his missing shoe was found in a nearby field, close to where he parked his car. The car that had keys inside.
Why would Naoyuki leave his keys? Why would he leave his show behind on a cold February day?
Then, another puzzle is how Naoyuki was deeply involved with the campaign. Naoyuki made speeches endorsing the village head at the time, until he suddenly withdrew his support.
Some Internet communities assumed that Naoyuki was a stalker, or maybe somebody helped him.
Some also speculated that somebody might have placed him there on purpose. But after realizing how small the hole is, there is no way for anyone to put him in that place, and in that position.
Due to Japan’s statute of limitation, the case has been closed.
The case is then known as the "The Case of the Corpse in the Toilet, Fukushima,” (福島女性教員宅便構内怪死事件).
Soon after the incident, the investigations and cultural sensitivities played a crucial role in understanding the circumstances surrounding this event.
Police never re-opened Sugano’s case.
So here, the death of Naoyuki Sugano remained unsolved.
The news barely made the internet when it happened, and this is obvious since it happened way back before the internet.
But when someone picked up the story and republished it in English to the blogging platform Medium, soon, other followed.
It didn't take long before people began covering the story on their blogs, and also through vlogs on YouTube, and on social media platforms like TikTok.
This case should be considered one of the most famous mysterious cases in the internet world, simply because the case is closed without anyone clearly knowing how the man died.