Shiga Prefectural Police

Shiga Prefectural Police is the regional force whose inquiries help the Tokyo task force pursue a possible connection between Hiromi Asai, Michiko Oshitani, and the missing former teacher Seizo Naemura. Its assistance brings investigators to a promising lead, but the search also exposes the limits of that lead and helps frame the wider question of Watabe’s identity.

Role in the Investigation

The Tokyo task force sought a man who would have been over forty when Hiromi Asai and Michiko Oshitani were schoolgirls and who was now reported missing. Because the women’s known period together was limited to elementary and junior high school, investigators looked to people from that earlier circle. Shiga Prefectural Police was asked to find whether such a missing man could be identified.

The request focused attention on Seizo Naemura, the women’s second-year junior-high homeroom teacher. Shiga’s checks found that Naemura’s residence certificate, at his last known address, had been canceled by the authorities fifteen years earlier. He was the only missing person of a suitable age that the local search had uncovered, making him important enough for Shuhei Matsumiya and Sakagami to travel to Shiga promptly.

Local Cooperation

The Tokyo detectives were met by Wakabayashi, a detective sergeant from Higashiomi Police Station. He identified his station and welcomed them after their long journey; Sakagami thanked him for the information sent to Tokyo. The encounter places the search within a practical exchange between the metropolitan task force and local police, rather than presenting the investigation as something Tokyo could conduct from its own records alone.

Shiga’s contribution was investigative and provisional: it supplied a candidate and a traceable administrative anomaly, not proof that Naemura was the missing man linked to the murders. That distinction matters because the case’s central identities and relationships remained unresolved even after the detectives crossed jurisdictions.

Limits of the Lead

The broader inquiry later established that Naemura was not the man the investigators were looking for. Yasuyo Miyamoto’s testimony ruled him out, requiring the task force to reconsider the assumption that the missing person was a former teacher known to both women. Shiga’s search had narrowed the field according to age and absence, but those criteria alone could not establish the connection the police needed.

The investigation then shifted toward the relationship between Hiromi Asai and Shunichi Watabe. Kyoichiro Kaga reasoned that Watabe’s long-term connection to Hiromi, his limited ties to others, and his disappearance pointed toward someone exceptionally close to her. He proposed that Watabe was actually her father, Tadao Asai, who had used another man’s death to disappear. The identity question was pursued through evidence elsewhere in the case, including records and fingerprint comparisons; Shiga’s documented role was to help test the earlier Naemura hypothesis.

Significance

Shiga Prefectural Police marks the point where a Tokyo murder investigation reaches back into the women’s shared school years and into records held beyond the capital. Its findings make Naemura a credible lead because his official residence record had vanished and his age fit the task force’s search. Yet the lead’s eventual failure demonstrates how an administrative trace can guide an inquiry without resolving identity. The local force’s assistance advances the investigation not by delivering its final answer, but by helping expose the assumptions that must be revised before the deeper family connection can be recognized.