Yanaka five-storied pagoda double-suicide arson case

This last version, built of Japanese zelkova wood was, at almost 35 meters, the tallest of its kind in the Kantō area.

It was a famous city landmark and the very symbol of Yanaka Cemetery, but it was completely destroyed by fire at around 3 o'clock in the morning on July 6, 1957.

The bodies were too badly burned for a positive identification to be possible, but their identities were established to a near-certainty thanks to a thimble found among the ruins.

A seamstress in her twenties working in a sewing shop in Tokyo and her middle-aged (and married) lover had gone missing.

[2] In 2007, researchers at the Tokyo University of the Arts claimed to have found blueprints of the pagoda drawn in 1970, and a movement to rebuild it was born.