The occurred at 03:09 AM on August 17, 1949 when a

Tōhoku Main Line The Tōhoku Main Line () is a railway line in Japan operated by the East Japan Railway Company (JR East). The line starts from Tokyo Station in Chiyoda, Tokyo and passes through such cities as Saitama, Saitama, Saitama, Utsunomiya, Tochigi, Uts ...

passenger train A passenger train is a train used to transport people along a railroad line, as opposed to a freight train that carries goods. These trains may consist of unpowered passenger railroad cars (also known as coaches or carriages) push-pull train, ...

derailed and overturned between Kanayagawa and Matsukawa stations in

Fukushima Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu. Fukushima Prefecture has a population of 1,771,100 () and has a geographic area of . Fukushima Prefecture borders Miyagi Prefecture and Yamagata Prefecture ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

, killing three crew members. Together with the Mitaka and

Shimoyama incident The was the disappearance and death of Sadanori Shimoyama, the first president of Japanese National Railways, in Tokyo on 5 July 1949. Shimoyama disappeared on his way to work and his body was discovered on the Jōban Line in Adachi, Tokyo, Ada ...

s, it was one of three major criminal cases involving allegations of

sabotage Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, government, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, demoralization (warfare), demoralization, destabilization, divide and rule, division, social disruption, disrupti ...

blamed by the government on the

Japanese Communist Party The is a communist party in Japan. Founded in 1922, it is the oldest political party in the country. It has 250,000 members as of January 2024, making it one of the largest non-governing communist parties in the world. The party is chaired ...

and the Japan National Railway Union in the immediate post-war era. Twenty people were arrested and seventeen were convicted in 1953 (four of whom received

death sentence Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in s ...

s), but eventually all were

acquitted In common law jurisdictions, an acquittal means that the criminal prosecution has failed to prove that the accused is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the charge presented. It certifies that the accused is free from the charge of an o ...

on appeal, and the case was closed without determining the real cause in 1970. In 2009, Fukushima University announced that archive files detailing the incident were made public.

Overview and investigation

At 03:09 AM on August 17, 1949, one month after the

Mitaka incident The was an incident that took place in Tokyo, Japan on July 15, 1949, when an unmanned 63 series train with its operating handle tied down drove into Mitaka Station on the Chūō Main Line, Chūō Line, killing six people and injuring 20. The inc ...

, a

passenger train hauled by a

JNR Class C51 The is a type of 4-6-2 steam locomotive built by Kisha Seizo Mitsubishi and Japanese National Railways (JNR) Hamamatsu Works . The C classification indicates three sets of driving wheels. The C51 introduced diameter driving wheels to Japan. C51s ...

steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, Fuel oil, oil or, rarely, Wood fuel, wood) to heat ...

(C51 133) derailed and overturned ''en route'' from

Aomori Station is a railway station in the city of Aomori in Aomori Prefecture, Japan. The station has been operating since September 1891, though the most recent station building, which consists of three island platforms connected to the station building by a ...

Ueno Station is a major railway station in Tokyo's Taitō ward. It is the station used to reach the Ueno district and Ueno Park—which contains Tokyo National Museum, The National Museum of Western Art, Ueno Zoo, Tokyo University of the Arts and other ...

. The locomotive overturned, killing three crewmen, and two baggage cars, two passenger cars and one

mail car A passenger railroad car or passenger car (American English), also called a passenger carriage, passenger coach (British English and International Union of Railways), or passenger bogie (Indian English) is a railroad car A railroad ...

derailed. None of the 412 passengers were injured or killed. The accident site was the entry to a curved section of track past

Kanayagawa Station is a railway station in the city of Fukushima, Fukushima, Fukushima, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan operated by East Japan Railway Company (JR East). Lines Kanayagawa Station is served by the Tōhoku Main Line, and is located 264.0 rail kilomete ...

, prior to reaching Matsukawa Station in

. Accident investigators found that the bolts and nuts on the track joints had been loosened, and a large number of

railroad spike A rail fastening system is a means of fixing rails to railroad ties (North America) or sleepers (British Isles, Australasia, and Africa). The terms ''rail anchors'', ''tie plates'', ''chairs'' and ''track fasteners'' are used to refer to parts ...

s fixing the rails to the sleepers had been removed, resulting in one 25-meter section of rail shifting 13 meters in the accident. Investigators also found a

spanner A wrench or spanner is a tool used to provide grip and mechanical advantage in applying torque to turn objects—usually rotary fasteners, such as Nut (hardware), nuts and screw, bolts—or keep them from turning. In the United Kingdom, UK, ...

and pry bar in a rice paddy a short distance from the crime scene. Suspicion immediately fell on Japan National Railway Union, workers at the nearby

Toshiba is a Japanese multinational electronics company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, elevators and escalators, electronic components, semiconductors ...

-Matsukawa factory and the

, due to recent protests over staff cuts. Ten workers from the Matsukawa plant and ten workers from the

Japan National Railway The , abbreviated JNR or , was the business entity that operated Japan's national railway network from 1949 to 1987. Network Railways As of June 1, 1949, the date of establishment of JNR, it operated of narrow gauge () railways in all 46 pre ...

were arrested and charged with sabotage resulting in death.

The trial

During the first ruling of the Fukushima District Court on December 6, 1950, all twenty defendants were found guilty, largely on the strength of

confession A confession is a statement – made by a person or by a group of people – acknowledging some personal fact that the person (or the group) would ostensibly prefer to keep hidden. The term presumes that the speaker is providing information that ...

s forced by the police during interrogation. Five of the defendants received

s, and five were sentenced to

life imprisonment Life imprisonment is any sentence (law), sentence of imprisonment under which the convicted individual is to remain incarcerated for the rest of their natural life (or until pardoned or commuted to a fixed term). Crimes that result in life impr ...

. The remaining ten were sentenced to between 3.5 and 15 years. In the

appeal In law, an appeal is the process in which Legal case, cases are reviewed by a higher authority, where parties request a formal change to an official decision. Appeals function both as a process for error correction as well as a process of cla ...

ruling at the Sendai High Court on December 22, 1955 at which the defendants recanted their confessions and professed innocence, three of the defendants were found innocent, and the remaining 17 were again found guilty. Four received death sentences, and two received life imprisonment. The cause of the defendants was taken up by author

Hirotsu Kazuo was a Japanese novelist, literary critic and translator active in the Shōwa period. Early life Hirotsu was born in the Ushigome neighborhood in Tokyo as the second son of the noted novelist Hirotsu Ryurō, whose pupils included Kafū Nagai. ...

, who wrote an essay in the literary journal '' Chuokoron'', which led to an upsurge in support by leading intellectuals and literary figures, including

Yasunari Kawabata was a Japanese novelist and short story writer whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the 1968 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal and ...

Naoya Shiga was a Japanese writer active during the Taishō and Shōwa periods of Japan, whose work was distinguished by its lucid, straightforward style and strong autobiographical overtones. Early life Shiga was born in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, ...

, Saneatsu Mushanokoji, Seicho Matsumoto,

Eiji Yoshikawa was a Japanese historical novelist. Among his best-known novels are revisions of older classics. He was mainly influenced by classics such as ''The Tale of the Heike'', ''Tale of Genji'', ''Water Margin'' and ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'', m ...

and others. On August 10, 1959, the issue reached the

Supreme Court of Japan The , located in Hayabusachō, Chiyoda, Tokyo, is the highest court in Japan. It has ultimate judicial authority to interpret the Japanese constitution and decide questions of national law. It has the power of judicial review, which allows it ...

, which referred it back to the Sendai High Court for a retrial. In the interim, it became public that a document confirming the

alibi An alibi (, from the Latin, '' alibī'', meaning "somewhere else") is a statement by a person under suspicion in a crime that they were in a different place when the offence was committed. During a police investigation, all suspects are usually a ...

of the accused had been hidden by the

prosecution A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the adversarial system, which is adopted in common law, or inquisitorial system, which is adopted in Civil law (legal system), civil law. The prosecution is the ...

during the previous trials. Forensic testing—showing that the spanner found near the accident site was the wrong size and could not have been used to cause the accident—had also been suppressed. On August 8, 1961, in a retrial at the Sendai High Court, all defendants were found innocent. The prosecution protested the decision, but on September 12, 1963, the verdict was upheld by the Supreme Court. Legal proceedings dragged on until 1970, when the defendants were finally awarded compensation from the Japanese government for

false arrest False arrest, unlawful arrest or wrongful arrest is a common law tort, where a plaintiff alleges they were held in custody without probable cause, or without an order issued by a court of competent jurisdiction. Although it is possible to sue ...

and imprisonment.

In popular culture

Several movies have been made of the Matsukawa incident, including a 1961 expose film directed by

Satsuo Yamamoto was a Japanese film director. Yamamoto was born in Kagoshima, Kagoshima City. After leaving Waseda University, where he had become affiliated with Left-wing politics, left-wing groups, he joined the Shochiku film studios in 1933, where he worke ...

titled the ''Matsukawa Jiken'', starring

Ken Utsui (24 October 1931 – 14 March 2014) was a Japanese actor who worked on stage, film, and television from the 1950s to the 2010s. Career and death Born in Tokyo, Utsui entered the Haiyūza theatre troupe in 1952 and was soon selected to star in t ...

. The production cost of 45 million yen was raised entirely by donation.

References

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Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Matsukawa Derailment 1949 murders in Japan 1949 in Japan Accidents and incidents involving Japanese National Railways Anti-communism in Japan August 1949 in Asia Derailments in Japan Political repression in Japan Railway accidents in 1949 Rail transport in Fukushima Prefecture Tōhoku Main Line Train wrecks caused by sabotage Unsolved mass murders Unsolved murders in Japan Wrongful convictions

Overview and investigation

The trial

In popular culture

See also

References

Notes