Content warning: This article discusses an extremely serious criminal case involving violence against a minor. Details are presented factually and with care, in service of awareness, legal education, and victim advocacy. In November 1988, a 17-year-old high school student named Junko Furuta was cycling home from her part-time job in Misato, Saitama, Japan. She never made it home. What followed over the next 44 days became one of the most disturbing criminal cases in postwar J