They played the footage on loop, again and again and again. Riots had broken out all over Tokyo. Buildings burned. People ran through the streets screaming. Overnight, a peaceful city had turned into a war zone. Who could have thought that an innocent woman, now dead, would be at the center of it all? They said she knew something was coming. She could sense that her world had become dangerous. For weeks, she had been reaching out to authorities, bureaucrats, the local police, asking for help. She asked for a bodyguard, relocation, a temporary safe house. She felt unsafe. People were leaving strange messages on her phone. People were following her wherever she went. She couldn’t sleep. She was a nervous wreck. I wonder how she felt when an angry mob knocked down the door of her house in the middle of the night, dragging her out of her bed, still in her pajamas, and into the streets of Tokyo. She must have been terrified as they pulled her through those avenues, when they threw her into the middle of the road and doused her with lighter fluid.
