ZEKKA: "I was 14 at the time of my murders..." Paperback – March 12, 2026

On May 24, 1997, 14-year-old Shin’Ichiro Azuma murdered 11-year-old Jun Hase, before dismembering him, then hanging his head on his school gate with a cryptic handwritten letter stuffed into his mouth. A few weeks earlier, on March 16, he had killed 10-year-old Ayaka Yamashita with a hammer and stabbed a 9-year-old schoolgirl. Found irresponsible by the Kobe Children’s Court, the teenager, who worshipped the Zodiac killer, was sentenced to confinement in a psychiatric medical center for minors and released in 2005. In 2015, he released Zekka, a book in which he recounts his murders and his captivity, while returning to the roots of his neuroses and obsessions. This augmented English translation offers you the most complete and uncensored version of the autobiography of the youngest serial killer in the history of Japan. Read more