Discussion Music / TaijiSawada

http://www.tamd.org/englishtop.html is a site that has been established by his fiancee and others to demand a reopening of the investigation. It contains much of what is now known about his death.

Replaced a short reference to the murder theory under Never Suicide, for the following reasons:

• It has been seriously raised in the Japanese media, enough for Kitami to file (and now drop) a SLAPP defamation lawsuit against a journalist who investigated, Yuji Watanabe. The lawsuit's status right now is paused in preparation to drop, and Kitami refuses to leave Saipan to testify in a case where she is the plaintiff.

• Other artists have raised doubts, including some who have known him very well as a person and would have been in place to know if he was suicidal. This theory, therefore, isn't Fan Wank or Fan Cruft, even if fans believe it - they're not the only people who do.

I won't lie and say it's anything but a Conspiracy Theory at this point, but it's a notable enough Conspiracy Theory that it's well beyond "bad fanfic," and the page should reflect that his death was controversial. I do admit I went a bit overboard, but the references that exist now should stay, IMO.

(ninja'd to include Wikipedia definition of a SLAPP)

Edited by AGroupie ? Hide / Show Replies

Due to recent developments, the cause of death needs to be rewritten. It is officially being disputed now, with at least one official demand from a Japanese government official for the investigation to be reopened in progress, and the testimony that he had no neck wounds - which makes his current stated cause of death absolutely impossible. I will rewrite accordingly, if there are no objections, to state that the official cause of death is still "suicide" but that it is currently under legitimate, serious dispute.

The allegations of foul play have ascended a bit above Conspiracy Theory at the time of writing. Taiji's fiancee herself (who is not Kitami Terumi) has come out to say that she saw his body with no damage to his neck, as did his own mother. Visual Kei producer Dynamite Tommy, a close personal friend of Taiji's, also believes he was murdered. All of this was published in a somewhat reliable entertainment publication, "Weekly Bunshun."