A traffic crash occurred on April 19, 2019, in Higashi Ikebukuro, Toshima, Tokyo, resulting in 2 deaths and 10 injuries. The crash occurred when an 87-year-old passenger car driver mistakenly stepped on the accelerator instead of the brake and entered an intersection hitting pedestrians and bicyclists. In the aftermath of the incident, there was widespread protest throughout Japan at what was seen as special treatment for the perpetrator due to his status as a retired and decorated senior bureaucrat.
Overview
At 12:25 p.m., April 19, 2019, Kozo Iizuka, the 87-year-old male driver of a Toyota Prius, and the retired Head of the Industrial Science and Technology Agency of the former Ministry of International Trade and Industry (now the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry), caused a traffic crash at an intersection near Tokyo Metro Higashi-Ikebukuro Station in the Higashi Ikebukuro district of Toshima ward, Tokyo.
Iizuka, the driver, ran red traffic lights, and hit several people on a pedestrian crossing, killing two (a mother and daughter) and injuring 10, including the driver himself and his wife, who was in the front passenger seat. The car's data recorder showed no record of him using the brake at any point during the incident. Immediately after the crash, Iizuka telephoned his son, telling him that the accelerator didn't come back up and he had hit people. However, an inspection carried out by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department found that nothing had been wrong with the car, and that the airbags had correctly deployed.
It was first reported in the media that there had been eight injuries (including Iizuka and his wife, who was riding with him) and two deaths, but on April 24, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department announced that a further two people, another mother and daughter, had received light injuries. This made for a total of 12 injuries or fatalities.
The driver, Iizuka, was already suffering from problems with his legs at the time of the crash, with the cause suspected by his doctors to be Parkinson's disease. Furthermore, when it was discovered that there had been nothing wrong with the accelerator, which Iizuka had blamed the crash for, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department determined that the crash had been caused by incorrect operation of the car by Iizuka himself.
Seven months after the crash, on November 12, 2019, the Accident Investigation Bureau of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department filed papers with the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office charging Iizuka with violation of the Act on Punishment of Acts Inflicting Death or Injury on Others by Driving a Motor Vehicle, etc. Almost three months later, on February 6, 2020, the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office indicted Iizuka without arrest.
Hearings for a criminal trial began on 8 October 2020, in which Iizuka continued to deny the charges, claiming that the car had malfunctioned, and saying that he had no memory of accelerating the car. 元院長が起訴内容を否認 2020-10-08 Kyodo News 東京・池袋暴走「車の異常」 89歳被告、無罪を主張 東京地裁初公判 2020-10-09 Mainichi Shimbun "上級国民"池袋暴走事故「否認」の衝撃 車のせい？裁判の行方と思わぬ余波 2020-10-08 Asahi Shimbun On 4 March 2021, an engineer from the car's manufacturer testified that they found no problems with the car's parts.
At a trial on 15 July 2021, prosecutors sought 7 years imprisonment for Iizuka. In the end, he was sentenced to five years of imprisonment on 2 September 2021.
Crash The dashcam in the car driven by Iizuka captured the crash and its aftermath on video.
According to the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, in the dashcam recording at the time of the crash, Iizuka's wife shouted "Watch out! What have you done?" as the car entered a leftward curve in the road, with Iizuka then saying "Oh, what's going on?" followed by the car crashing into the curb and metal guard rail at the left side of the road. Footage from nearby security cameras showed that Iizuka then panicked, entering the intersection at a speed of almost . The car hit a garbage truck from side on, overturning it, and then plowed into the many cyclists and pedestrians on the pedestrian crossing.
Following the crash, rather than immediately phoning the police, Iizuka phoned his son, telling him that the accelerator wouldn't come back, and that he had hit numerous people.
Iizuka explained that he had gone into the curve at a speed exceeding the speed limit because he was hurrying, afraid that he and his wife would be late for a booking they had made at a French restaurant. He had been weaving amongst traffic, changing lanes three times just before the crash in order to overtake other vehicles.
The car rapidly accelerated after going through the red lights and by the time it fatally hit the mother and child was traveling at a speed of .
Petition, indictment and conviction
The funeral for the two deceased, Mana Matsunaga, 31 years old, and her daughter Riko, 3 years old, took place on April 24, 2019. On the day of the funeral, the husband and father of the two deceased held a press conference where he announced that he was releasing images of the deceased to the public. He then held another press conference on July 18, 2019, where he announced the launch of a signature-collecting campaign seeking the indictment of Iizuka as the driver who caused their deaths. The campaign began on August 3 in Minami-Ikebukuro Park, where the daughter, Riko, had often played. By the time of its presentation to the Traffic Bureau of the Tokyo District Prosecutor's Office on September 20, 2019, the petition had gathered 391,136 signatures.
Iizuka was subsequently indicted, but not arrested. Iizuka was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment on 2 September 2021 by the Tokyo Regional Court. Neither Iizuka nor the prosecutors appealed the sentence by the deadline of September 17, so the sentence was confirmed.元院長、控訴しない意向 禁錮5年の実刑判決—池袋暴走事故 JIJI.COM The husband/father of the woman and girl killed by Iizuka, Takuya Matsunaga, commented saying that while it does not feel sufficient given how Iizuka spent the last two years making nonsensical claims, it is the maximum allowed, and that he is thankful to the prosecution for it. Iizuka died of natural causes in prison on October 26, 2024.池袋暴走事故の飯塚幸三受刑者（93）が死亡 松永拓也さん「後悔や経験の言葉を託された。死を無駄にしたくない」 Japan News Network
Civil lawsuit In October 2019, Takuya Matsunaga, the husband of the deceased woman and father of the child, brought a civil lawsuit against Iizuka, which proceeded concurrently with the criminal prosecution. Matsunaga announced in January 2021 that civil proceedings had been launched. In October 2023, the Tokyo District Court ruled in Matsunaga's favor, ordering Iizuka to pay ¥140 million in compensation.
Effects Allegations of special treatment
Standard police practice in Japan is to arrest suspects of crime at the time they are apprehended; and standard journalistic practice in Japan is to refer to suspects in a case with the noun suffixed to their surname, and without the usual honorific suffix of "san" or "sama". However, Iizuka was not arrested at the scene, or anytime thereafter, and was referred to in police reports and in the press as "Iizuka former official" or "Iizuka-san" rather than "Iizuka suspect." This led to criticism that Iizuka was being given special treatment because, being a retired senior bureaucrat, he was considered a .
Investigators of the crash said that he was not arrested because he was also an injured party and was admitted to hospital. This meant that his case did not fulfil the requirement for arrest stipulated by the Rules of Criminal Procedure, which is that there be grounds for fearing that he might flee and/or destroy evidence. The investigators claimed that they had not established that he was an ex-bureaucrat until some time after the crash, and that online criticism of them was incorrect.
Regarding the use of honorifics suffixed to Iizuka's name, instead of the usual suffix "suspect", the Asahi Shimbun newspaper explained it saying that it was "to convey that [Iizuka] was a public servant with social influence", and the Nishinippon Shimbun said that it reflected their "clear rule that people not yet arrested should be referred to using an honorific suffix or their work-related title".
It is noted that following referral of the case to prosecutors on 12 November 2019, some media organs began referring to Iizuka as "the suspect, Iizuka" (Iizuka-yōgisha). Professor Yutaka Ōishi of Keio University said regarding the debate over Iizuka's title in the media: "I believe that criticism has been mounting based on the view that has taken hold that the police and the mass media have come together to protect the man [i.e., Iizuka] because he is a former bureaucrat."
The author, Akira Tachibana, commented as follows: "Saying that there is no need to arrest [Iizuka] because he does not satisfy the stipulation that there be grounds for fearing that he might flee and/or destroy evidence is what human rights lawyers have long asserted. Yet, most arrests are made without giving any recognition to this protestation by such lawyers. Thus, in this case, one can only wonder what it was in this case that led to the snap decision to deem arrest unnecessary."
The treatment which Iizuka received gave rise to the popular term "high-class citizen", which was nominated for that year's "'You Can' New Word/Popular Phrase Prize." "High class citizen" was also selected by Shogakukan publishing house as the "Word of the Month" for May for its Daijisen dictionary. Furthermore, "high class citizen" received the third highest number of nominations for the "2019 Prize for New Phrase Selected by Daijisen."
In analyzing the reactions to the incident, Toyo Keizai commentator Atsushi Manabe writes that Iizuka's words and actions after the crash "added fuel to the fire", and as a result the case represents to people how unapologetic liars and coldblooded psychopaths succeed more than regular honest people, which goes against the zeitgeist of the common people. This "victory of brazen shamelessness" represents a loss of morals, and this is why people feel disgust and anger at it.飯塚被告はこれまでも「アクセルが戻らなかった」などと自身の過失を否定する発言を繰り返しており、およそ半年後の11月にテレビの取材に対し、「安全な車を開発するようにメーカーの方に心がけていただき、高齢者が安心して運転できるような、外出できるような世の中になってほしい」と語るなど、火に油を注ぐ事態をあえて作り出しているようなところがあった。'The suspect, Iizuka, has so far repeatedly denied that he was at fault, claiming, for example, that "the accelerator wouldn't come back up." Also, about half a year after the incident, in November, he said in a television interview that he "wanted car manufacturers to apply to themselves to developing safe cars and thus create the kind of environment where the elderly can drive with a sense of assurance, and where they can go outside of their homes". This and other such statements have served only to add fuel to the fire.' 正直に生きている者がかえって損をする、貧乏くじを引くような昨今の風潮であり、自らの利益のみを追求するがゆえに「嘘をつき通し、悪びれない」者が真っ先に出世し、経済的な成功を収める——いわば冷血漢のごときサイコパス的な人格で世渡りしたほうが生きやすい世界になっている現状への強烈な違和感である。'In today's world, the tendency is for those who live their lives honestly to actually lose out because of it and get the short end of the stick. There is something intensely unsettling about the current state of the world where inveterate liars and the brazenly shameless who seek nothing but their own gain are the ones who make it to the top, that is, where life becomes easier if you live it like a cold-blooded psychopath.' わたしたちはマスメディアが流す情報の断片から、「厚顔無恥の勝利」といったモラルハザード（倫理の欠如）の腐臭を嗅ぎとっていることは間違いないだろう。だからこそこの事件が特別なものに思えるのであり、不快感や怒りの感情が沸き起こりやすいのである。'There can be no doubt that, from the snippets of information released by the mass media, there is a whiff of something rotten, of a moral hazard (moral lack) in the form of the "triumph of brazen shamelessness". And this in itself sets the incident apart, and readily gives rise to feelings of disgust and anger.'