Gunma Prefecture enters the narrative through two sharply different roles: a place where a confiscated lion cub was sent to a zoo, and a remote search location in the investigation of the Saitama Dog Lover Serial Disappearances. The latter connection gives the prefecture its greater significance in the book, linking its landscape to evidence that helped resolve a long-running case.

A Destination for the Lion Cub

A newspaper archive search uncovered a July 14, 1992, report about Gen Sekine raising a lion cub on the balcony of his home. After neighbors alerted animal control, the cub was sent to a zoo in Gunma Prefecture; Sekine was fined for keeping a wild animal in violation of city ordinances. The article also supplied the Chinese ideographs for Sekine’s name, allowing investigators to search databases more reliably. Gunma thus first appears not as the scene of a crime, but as the destination for an animal removed from an unlawful domestic setting.

The Search for Physical Evidence

Years later, Gunma became important to the investigation of missing people associated with dog breeder Sekine. On tapes passed to Chiaki Sekiguchi, Shima appeared to refer to Yasunobu Endo’s disappearance and said that a body was in Gunma. He also spoke about other dead bodies and implied that he had helped transport Akio Kawasaki’s corpse. The recordings were not conclusive on their own, but they gave investigators material to pursue and made Shima a crucial potential witness.

From a Lead to a Case

After Shima was found and arrested, he provided information that led police to a site in Gunma Prefecture. There they recovered enough of Akio Kawasaki’s teeth to support the case. The small search team worked without the Yomiuri or others knowing about the operation. On January 5, after the New Year’s holidays, Saitama police announced the arrests of Gen Sekine and his wife, Hiroko, for Kawasaki’s dismemberment; Sekine admitted almost everything within hours. Gunma’s role is therefore defined by the distance between an uncertain recorded clue and physical evidence that helped bring the investigation to a close.