JAPAN TIMES



 

Japanese authorities applied an 1889 anti-dueling law to arrest a man over a fight that resulted in his opponent’s death in Tokyo’s red light and entertainment district, police said Friday.

The face-off took place in September on a street in the Kabukicho area of the capital after the suspect “and the dead man agreed to fight each other,” police spokesman Mitsuhiro Hirota said.

Tokyo police on Wednesday arrested Fuzuki Asari, 26, on suspicion of having “conspired with someone else” to have a duel and causing injury resulting in the death of his 30-year-old adversary, Hirota said.

The suspect, who is unemployed, “committed acts of violence such as throwing” the opponent, Naoya Matsuda, who “died on Oct. 12 at a hospital in Tokyo... of multiple organ failure” caused by head injuries, the spokesman said.

The crime was investigated and announced by the Tokyo police’s organized crime control division, he said.

It was not specified whether any weapons were involved in the fight.
The 1889 law stipulates that “anyone who has engaged in a duel shall be punished by imprisonment for no less than two years and no more than five years.”

The suspect’s other alleged crime — causing death from involuntary injury — would lead to no less than three years in prison, according to Japan’s criminal law.

Although it is rare to apply the anti-dueling statute in Japan, police in Gunma Prefecture arrested a high-school student and a man in October on suspicion of dueling, the Asahi Shimbun reported.