76-year-old fortune teller with nine wives dies before sentencing
Last year, we reported on the strange case of the Japanese guy with four “wives.” The situation seemed straight out of a manga and yet it was true.
In that case, the man and his harem were all relatively young. But age didn’t stop another man.
The 76-year-old Hirohito Shibuya lived with nine wives in Higashiyamato, a suburb of Tokyo. Technically speaking, since polygamy is illegal in Japan, eight of the women were his ex-wives and he was only married to one of them.
Three of his children with the women also lived at the residence.
Shibuya was found dead on Sunday of an apparent suicide, according to media reports.
He was due to be sentenced on Monday, but not for something fairly innocuous like polygamy.
Shibuya was arrested in February 2023 for raping a teenaged girl between June and December 2022. She found it hard to resist him because he had apparently told her she would be eaten by aliens. He would make her watch footage of UFOs and aliens for six hours at a time.
He also has an arrest history for four previous instances of sexual assault.
In December, one of Shibuya’s former wives — a woman in her forties — also died in an apparent suicide. She was accused of aiding and abetting the alleged sexual assault. Another “wife,” also in her forties, was arrested as well for conspiring with Shibuya to brainwash and assault the girl.
This is the dark side of polygamy, perhaps, where the man at the center of the arrangement comes to believe he can do anything and get anything he wants.
In Shibuya’s case, he was a fortune teller and exerted a seemingly guru-like influence over women.
Fortune tellers enjoy a strong position in Japanese society. Some, like Kazuko Hosoki, are famous celebrities in their own right. There are also cases of other celebrities getting brainwashed by fortune tellers, like Tomoko Nakajima.
