In April 2025, Tansa’s information provision desk received an email.

The subject was “Regarding the suicide and cover-up of a second-year student at Nagasaki Kaisei High School.”

It was from someone claiming to be a graduate of Kaisei High School.

“I know it’s a little late now, but I want to tell you everything that happened back then, because the school has not changed.”

“I was a senior in high school when he was a freshman.”

“He” refers to Hayato Fukuura, who committed suicide due to bullying at Kaisei High School.

“If you need any of the information I have, I look forward to hearing from you,” he wrote, adding his real name.

I immediately booked a flight to Nagasaki, and we agreed to meet in the city.

*This article contains descriptions of bullying and self-harm. If you are at risk of experiencing flashbacks, please refrain from reading.

Seeing the news of his “sudden death”

A knock came a little earlier than scheduled at a conference room in Nagasaki City.

When I opened the door, a man in a company uniform was standing there.

“Nice to meet you, my name is Yamato Imura.”

He was the sender of the email. We greeted each other and took a seat. I expressed my gratitude for agreeing to the interview and asked him why he had provided the information. Imura replied:

“I can’t forgive Kaisei’s tendency to cover things up.”

What does he mean?

Five years ago, in 2020, Imura left his hometown and was working for a company in Fukuoka Prefecture.

As he was working as usual, his boss called out to him.

“Mr. Imura, you have been contacted by the media.”

He had no idea. When he asked for more details, he came across a certain news.

In April 2017, a second-year high school student at Kaisei Gakuen, a private school in Nagasaki, committed suicide due to bullying from his classmates. Kaisei Gakuen attempted to publicize the suicide as a “sudden death,” and Nagasaki Prefecture confirmed the decision. Kyodo News reporter Yoichi Ishikawa broke the story. The story was followed by other media organizations, and was widely reported across the country.

A news organization tracked down the workplace of Imura, a graduate of Kaisei High School, and contacted him to hear his story.

Imura refused to be interviewed since he was unaware of the incident.

After that, he looked into related news, but couldn’t find any details. As a graduate, he decided to ask the school directly.

When he called, an office staff member answered. He asked to be put through to his former teacher, but was refused.

He asked about the alleged bullying-related suicide. Additionally, he questioned whether the school had attempted to conceal the cause of death. Yet, they refused to provide him with any information. The staff on the phone simply kept saying the same thing.

“There’s been a lot of talk about it being a cover-up, but we want you to trust the school.”

Overlapped experience of bullying 

Even after hanging up the phone, Imura couldn’t stop thinking about the suicide caused by bullying at Kaisei Gakuen.

He himself has experienced bullying.

When he was in the fourth grade of elementary school, there was a flu outbreak at school and he caught a cold. Whenever he coughed or sneezed, his classmates would avoid him, saying, “You’ll catch the Imura virus!” There was always room around Imura, even when taking group photos.

The bullying persisted even when he enrolled in a public junior high school. His classmates disregarded him when he attempted to communicate with them. Despite noticing, the teacher said, “It’s not like they’re harming you.”

“What should I do? If I’m being ignored, I have to speak up myself,” Imura thought, taking it out on objects and raising his voice. The teacher grabbed him by the neck and dragged him out of the classroom. He dragged him to the emergency stairs and scolded him.

He now realizes that lashing out won’t solve anything. However, it was the best he could do at the time. “Even if I spoke up, I would be the one who got scolded. I had no choice but to die.” Imura posted a note saying “I want to die” on the school bulletin board, but a teacher found it.

Playing in the brass band club was his favorite part of school. But with time, he started to be disregarded by both his juniors and classmates. He quit because he could no longer put up with the bullying, even though he enjoyed playing in the brass band.

“Don’t play around too much”

He needed to get away from the bullying, so he looked for a high school far away from his hometown.

The school he chose was Kaisei Gakuen.

Nonetheless, the bullying didn’t stop. In fact, it accelerated.

In April 2014, he entered Kaisei High School’s Frontier Course.

Kaisei High School offers three courses: “Stella Maris,” which aims to get students into prestigious universities; “National and Public University Prep (now Elan),” which aims to get students into universities; and “Frontier,” which attracts many students who are focused on sports.

While some students in the Frontier Course, like Imura, are interested in the arts, the majority of them are members of clubs like rugby, baseball, and soccer. Every student in the class is a boy, and they are all physically fit.

There were several students in his class who would become violent when they were frustrated, and the other students just laughed at them instead of stopping them.

The targets were students who did not play sports. Imura began to be subjected to a shoulder punch. The attack would be signaled by someone saying, “Lend me your shoulder,” and would occur several times every day.

He didn’t even feel like resisting, as it would only agitate the other person and lead to more punches. When Imura was punched, he would laugh and say, “Thank you!” This would calm the situation. His shoulder and the surrounding area were covered in blue bruises.

No one helped him. He couldn’t even talk to anyone. One day during class, a classmate hit Imura as usual. When the teacher saw this, he said:

“Don’t play around too much.”

He hurt himself too. When he got home, he cut his wrist with a razor blade. He had no intention of taking his own life. Rather, he wanted to endure the bullying, finish high school, and live freely. He felt alive as he cut his wrists.

In the summer, he would bandage his wrists, saying he had “hit it,” and in the winter, he would hide it with his long-sleeved uniform. None of the teachers was concerned.

Kaisei Gakuen showcasing his winning essay

When Imura entered his second year at Kaisei High School, he changed course to escape the bullying. When he moved from the “Frontier Course” to the “National and Public University Prep Course,” the “shoulder punches” stopped.

At the end of the year, Imura was walking down the hallway to the library when he noticed a poster for a “National Essay Contest: A Classroom to Learn the Importance of Life,” sponsored by the National Police Agency.

The phrase “the importance of life” stayed with Imura. “Life” and “bullying” were connected in Imura’s mind. “I want to write.”

As soon as he got home, he immediately picked up his pen. He had always loved writing, and he had even written a detective novel.

With a mechanical pencil in hand, he faced the 400-character manuscript paper he had bought specifically for this occasion. He wrote, erased, wrote, and then erased. The manuscript paper was falling apart, so he rewrote it many times.

The completed essay was titled “Wish.” It was four pages long. It begins like this:

Have you ever felt a sense of crisis about “bullying”? Nowadays, bullying has become a dangerous thing that can easily take someone’s life. This threat to your life is right behind you.

The essay is based on his own experiences. Some excerpts are below.

I was bullied for six years. This made me think about life and death more than the average child. And that occurrence ruined my life, my dreams, and my way of living. I can never forgive that kind of bullying.

I have learned firsthand that even if those who have been bullied are freed from “bullying,” they cannot truly live the same life as a normal person. I am lucky to be alive, but many people cannot bear it any longer and take their own lives. Is it really acceptable for children who may have had dreams to lose their lives because of bullying? When I hear stories of bullying or suicide on the news, it breaks my heart. Why do innocent people have to be bullied by sinners, or worse, killed? I am very disappointed.

In order to prevent such victims from being created, we must eliminate “bullying.” I hope that a world in which precious lives and smiles are not lost will soon be realized.

It was the third semester of his second year of high school. English class was about to begin when his teacher called out to him.

“Please go to the principal’s office, he is calling for you.”

He wondered what was going on. When he entered the principal’s office, Principal Masayuki Shimizu was standing there.

“Imura, your essay won an award.”

He received the National Police Agency’s Crime Victim Support Office Director’s Award.

The award ceremony was held at the school later that day.

Imura didn’t want the story to be exaggerated. He wrote about the bullying he experienced in the essay. He feared that the perpetrators would find out and take revenge on him.

However, Kaisei Gakuen even invited the media, and took a commemorative photo of the four of them – Principal Shimizu, the local Oura Police Chief, and fellow award-winning Kaisei Junior High School student – along with Imura. The photo was then uploaded on Kaisei Gakuen’s website.

What he told the principal on his graduation

One year has passed since his essay was awarded, and in March 2017, Imura will be graduating from Kaisei High School.

During a break in the rehearsal the day before the graduation ceremony, Imura bumped into Principal Shimizu.

“Tomorrow is the graduation ceremony. How was the past three years?”

Imura answered honestly.

“It wasn’t a good one.”

“Honestly, I would not recommend this school to younger students. I hope that bullying will stop.”

A voice came from afar, announcing that the rehearsal was about to resume. Imura had more to say, but he had to go back.

He told Principal Shimizu lastly, “Please make this a school free of bullying.”

The junior who spoke to him

The next month, a student had committed suicide as a result of bullying, which he heard on the news a few years later. Kaisei attempted to announce it as a “sudden death” and to cover it up.

“Even though I told them so many times, the school hasn’t changed.”

Imura persisted in attempting to get in touch with Kaisei High School about every six months, making phone calls and visiting the school in between work, despite being advised to “trust the school.”

When he visited the school, he had a casual conversation with a teacher he was close to, and it was then that he first learned that the victim was Hayato Fukuura.

The teacher said, “That’s the kid from that time. The one who talked to you in the hallway.”

During the summer of his third year of high school, Imura and his teacher were chatting in the school hallway when a student they didn’t know, who appeared to be a junior, called out to him, “Your back is dirty.”

The teacher asked, “Imura, is your back okay?” and Imura wiped the dirt off himself. Suddenly, that junior student called out, “Imura-san.” When he replied, “Hmm? What?” the junior student asked him again.

“Is there something bothering you?”

Imura replied, “There’s a lot bothering me,” but then the bell rang. He rushed back to the classroom, but the hallway was wet because of the rain that day, and he slipped and fell. This made a big impression on him, and he remembered the event of that day well.

Despite the fact that they had not met in person, the junior recognized Imura’s name. He presumably knew Imura since Imura received a prize in an essay contest about bullying, and his face and name were in the newspaper and on the school’s website.

That person was Hayato Fukuura.

Deleted page

On April 20, 2025, Imura saw the news about the eighth anniversary of Hayato’s death.

The family of the deceased filed a lawsuit against Kaisei Gakuen, which had not even accepted the report of a third-party committee that concluded that “bullying was the main cause of the suicide.”

Imura called the school, but the school’s response was the same: “Please trust us.”

However, the victim was Hayato, the person who had called out to him in the hallway. He might have been sending out an SOS about bullying at the time. When graduating, Imura also appealed to Principal Shimizu, asking him to make the school a place free of bullying. The following month, Hayato committed suicide, tormented by the bullying.

Imura told the school that if it would not offer an explanation itself, he would provide information to the media.

He emailed local TV stations, Nagasaki Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun, and Tansa. Only Tansa and Nagasaki Shimbun responded to him. Nagasaki Shimbun replied that they would do an interview on the next anniversary of Hayato’s death.

After deciding to be interviewed by Tansa, he called Kaisei High School one last time.

He was planning to decline the interview if Kaisei gave a proper explanation.

However, Kaisei’s attitude was the exact opposite of what was expected.

“What are you going to talk about?”

“You’re going to be in a bad position.”

“Don’t say anything that would be detrimental to the school.”

Later, he happened to open Kaisei Gakuen’s website.

A page celebrating his essay contest win had been deleted.

To be continued.

*In this series, the last names of the victim, Hayato, and his family will be pseudonyms as a countermeasure against slander.

(Originally published in Japanese on November 20, 2025. Translation by Mana Shibata.)

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