I was reading The Japan Times at work and came across this article in the Life section. I'll copy and past it since I don't know if they archive their papers online.

Punishers gain revenge for you

By MICHAEL HOFFMAN
Shukan Jitsuwa (Oct. 6)

Should you believe everything you read? Should you believe this?
The following episode, at least, is well documented: On Sept. 14, Eriko Kawaguchi, a 32-year-old rescue worker with the Metro Tokyo Fire Department, was arrested when she complained to police that the man she had paid to murder her lover's pregnant wife failed to carry out his end of the bargain. The man, a self-styled "detective" named Koji Tabe, was also arrested.

Kawaguchi allegedly met him in the course of an Internet search for a killer for hire. His "contract revenge" Web site seemed to promise what she was looking for. Sinking deeply into debt, she paid him 15 million yen for his services. When time passed and her lover's wife met no untimely end, Kawaguchi in her despair went to the police.

If that outlandish chain of events is possible, and apparently it is -- might not the rest of Shukan Jitsuwa's article be true too? Professional "avengers," it claims, are flourishing -- on the Net and off. Some even post ads on walls and utility poles. For a fee, they will do anything for you. Want your faithless partner rubbed out? Your boss taught a good sharp lesson? Your rapist or stalker or rival for somebody's affection infected with HIV? An avenger is the person to call.

One enterprise specializes in "chemical revenge." Its leader is a 35-year-old man Shukan Jitsuwa calls Mr. Tanaka.

"To most people this might sound like a joke," Tanaka says, apparently deadpan, "but yes, I guess you could say we have sprayed people with disease-causing bacteria -- hepatitis B, hepatitis C, cancer-causing chemical compounds . . ."

A surprising confession, muses Shukan Jitsuwa.

"In my business," Tanaka continues, "we can't be too squeamish about illegal requests. Some people hear from a private detective that their husbands or wives have been cheating, and go crazy: 'I want him dead!' 'Kill her!' "

Some are very specific about how they want the target to die.

"They'll say, 'Carve him up with a Japanese sword!' 'Shoot her full of AIDS!' Honestly, it's enough to disgust you with human nature."

As far as shooting someone full of "AIDS" is concerned Tanaka says: "We obtain tainted blood from doctors or students at university hospitals. Or we advertise for blood donations from AIDS victims." If the target is a man, "we might have a female staff member seduce the guy, take him out, slip something in his drink, and when he's sound asleep use a syringe to inject him with AIDS-tainted blood. There's no way to trace it back to us. How many times have we done this? Maybe 100. The fee? Usually 1 million yen."

How does the client know the target has been infected?

"We have our connections with the hospitals," says Tanaka. "We obtain the records, and pass them on to the clients. They get full, detailed reports."

He recalls one client in particular -- a high-school girl who had lost her virginity to a rapist. "AIDS" was the punishment she ordered. It was done. The fee in her case was 300,000 yen. How did she get the money?

"Prostitution," says Mr. Tanaka.

"Is this the end of the world?" wonders Shukan Jitsuwa.

Sometimes it rather seems like it.


Another case of life imitating art?

-Dingus McGee,
Currently Running In Tokyo

this is just kinda scary.. esp. the last example... a girl gets raped... and wants the rapist injected with AIDS...so he can likely rape again, AND spread AIDS?!

Hurray!

Sorry, but my bullshit meter's off the charts on this one. Not much of this seems particularly credible, and I am rather disinclined to trust reporters with something so sensational.

I think that medias are always full of bullshit anyway...

Almost half of the material presented on television is fake (yes, that includes Oprah, Dr. Phil, the USA president...)

A quick search through the Japan Times returned no hits for this aticle, but I did find a related one here.

I'm an infrequent reader of this paper. Normally they're not too bad on facts.

Remind me to get back to the subject of japanese 'revenge experts' once I'm at work - which is, in fact, totally true, and booming business.

Which isn't to say more than 0.5% of the experts actually do it. It's just a big wierd cultural phenomenon at the moment.

Well, being a journalist myself (but not a reporter), I always tend to the Mafalda Axiom: "if half of what the news tell is a lie and half of what really happens isn´t told by them, therefore the news don´t exist."

Beautiful, eh?

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getart...n20051004a7.htm
He had http://http//www...... Not te most well-formed URL.

Remind me not to mess with any japanese people next time I'm in Osaka...

Hmm, badasses whom are paid by rich people to do their dirty work for them? Around here, they're called "cops."

(I kid, I kid. Just seemed like a SR type of thing to say.)

That's not entirely untrue.