Tokyo

Tokyo District Court on Monday sentenced a former top bureaucrat at Japan's Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry to six years in prison for stabbing his 44-year-old son to death at his home in Tokyo in June.

Prosecutors had demanded a prison term of eight years for Hideaki Kumazawa, 76, in the lay-judge trial while the defense side had sought a suspended sentence for the former vice agriculture, forestry and fisheries minister.

Noting that Kumazawa started living with the son, Eiichiro, who had developmental disorder, a week before the incident and was assaulted by him the following day, Presiding Judge Tomoyuki Nakayama said that the father “started to think about the possibility of murdering” the son.

Pointing out that Kumazawa handed a letter to his wife indicating his intention to commit murder-suicide, the judge said that he “decided to kill Eiichiro, motivated by a remark by the son or something else that happened.”

Kumazawa “tried to build a (favorable) relationship with Eiichiro although they had been living separately for a long time,” the judge said. Still, he added: “Realistic measures to deal with the situation, such as consulting with police or the doctor (for the son), were available, but Kumazawa failed to take such steps.”

The murder, which was committed only a week after the father and the son began to live together, was a “short-sighted act,” the judge said.

At the same time, however, the judge said that the murder “was not as serious as other such cases” and that there is room for leniency for Kumazawa, noting that the accused surrendered himself to the police after committing the killing and that Eiichiro’s violence was behind the crime.

The defense side claimed that Kumazawa had gone to pick up a kitchen knife in order to protect his life as Eiichiro threatened to kill him.

But the judge dismissed the claim, saying, “Judging from the wounds on Eiichiro, Kumazawa attacked him one-sidedly before the son could try to resist.”

According to the ruling, Kumazawa stabbed Eiichiro in his neck and chest many times to death in a room on the first floor of their house in Tokyo's Nerima Ward at around 3:15 p.m. on June 1 (6:15 a.m. GMT).

As vice agriculture minister in 2001 and 2002, Kumazawa dealt with an outbreak of mad cow disease, formally called bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, in Japan.

He also served as Japanese ambassador to the Czech Republic.

Jiji Press