On Tuesday, 1 June 2004, at Sasebo Elementary School, an 11-year-old girl killed her classmate, then returned to her homeroom in bloodied clothes. The classmate, Satomi Miratai, died later that day. The killer is now in juvie, apparently until 2013.
The story, an unprecedented and grisly murder, was printed in newspapers around the world. However, nobody could have anticipated what happened next. On the Japanese side of the Internet, a class picture was discovered, and two of the girls stood out. On the far left, wearing glasses and a green sweatshirt, Satomi stood grinning, giving a victory sign to the camera. Right next to her, with an inexplicable expression on her face, stood the killer— Nevada.
For some reason, the specifics of the murder — a seemingly normal 11-year-old girl, with a box-cutter, in a Nevada sweatshirt — made a clear impression in communal consciousness of the Internet, all around the world. Stories were posted on Internet forums across Europe, the U.S., and Asia. In Japan, especially, she became a center of attention and was given the name "Nevada-tan"; "-tan" being the way a young child would pronounce the honorific "-chan", i.e., "Widdle Nevada".
The investigation into her murder revealed a long story. Nevada was originally nearly a normal kid; she enjoyed Battle Royale, but of course that's a very popular movie all over the world. Now, she was on her school's basketball team, but her mother made her quit so that she could improve her grades. At this point Nevada became ill-willed and began to collect horror Flash movies on her website. She began to frequent violent websites, and wrote a Battle Royale fanfic and gruesome "recipes". She focused her attention on the Internet, trying to gain fans with a LiveJournal-style diary. She rejoined the basketball team, but they excluded her from activities and she dropped out. On her diary, she wrote, "I don't really like to play with my friends."
Her good friend Satomi Miratai became an enemy after she slighted Nevada on her own, far more popular diary. Nevada demanded an apology, but Satomi was frank with her, calling her "pretentious". Following this insult, Nevada focused in on Satomi as an object for her anger. She watched a horror series on television ("Monday Mystery Theater") where many people were killed quickly and effectively with box cutters. Soon afterwards, she threatened a boy with a box cutter. Ten days later, she led Satomi into an empty classroom, covered her eyes, and slit her throat.
I think the word "tragedygasm" which I coined just now is the only word that can accurately describe how the mass media all around the world reacted to this story. Blurred-out photos of Nevada covered all the newspapers. Fuji Television, the CBS of Japan, actually got hold of some of Nevada's 6th-grade artwork and used it as a lead story on their evening news. This really goes beyond mourning for Satomi Miratai; the audience was morbidly attracted, and the media knew they had a story that would last for months to come.
But the actual cult of Nevada developed on a Japanese website called 2channel, the largest website in Japan and the largest Internet forum in the world by twenty-fold. Like Something Awful in the United States, 2channel is known for sarcasm, mockery, and dark humor. The anonymous posters try to outdo each other for the most terrible, and therefore funniest, joke. Nevada, I think, became one of these jokes. The "fan artwork" was likely the users offering tribute to their new, horrid "neta" (meme). Unfortunately, as many such jokes do, the black humor quickly became reality. 2channel users stalked Nevada and discovered her real name, her address, and the names of her parents. One of them went on a visit to her house and took pictures. Nevada fan art was posted to Something Awful, and more prominently to 4chan, an American hub for Japanese neta.
In the months following, Nevada became "old meme". She was integrated into 2channel's cast of characters, and news stories continued to travel worldwide, but fansites slowly closed down.
The following information was listed on Nevada's website before it was taken down. In Japan, fans of Nevada promptly learned all this information.
Her diary was also on her personal website.
As I said above, the media participated heavily in the creation of the legend of Nevada. You can't just say "this is a terrible Japanese/Internet thing and we have nothing to do with it," when your own local news source is printing stories like this from halfway around the world:
The girls' teacher said she first noticed something was wrong when the two were missing, public broadcaster NHK reported. Then "Girl A" returned, smeared with blood.
Police said she confessed to the murder and said, sobbing, "I have done a bad thing." Authorities said they have not found a motive.
All signs pointed to a close friendship between the girls, who were in art class together, played basketball together, shared a group diary and passed notes on a home page bulletin board.
But Mitarai angered the girl when she wrote negative Internet messages about her appearance, the Kyodo News Agency reported. The girl told police she decided to kill Mitarai when a final message commented on her weight. That message came four days before the killing, the report said, citing defense lawyers and investigative sources.
In a closed-door session, judges at the Nagasaki prefecture Family Court ordered the girl to undergo counseling as part of a rehabilitation program at the facility in Tochigi prefecture, just north of Tokyo, a court official said on condition of anonymity.
In the Japanese press, of course, there have been many more stories.
There must be many children whose interpersonal skills are immature and who are prone to throwing tantrums. Still, that's a far cry from actually killing another human. What pushed the girl over the threshold? The court's report did not provide an answer.
A psychiatric test has found an 11-year-old girl who admitted to killing a classmate with a knife at a Nagasaki Prefecture primary school in June is suffering from no effects of any mental disorder, informed sources said Monday.
Satomi's father Kyoji said he had wanted to leave some form of evidence in the album that Satomi and the girl who killed her had existed in the same classroom.
"It's hard for me when students hold feelings of hatred toward the girl. That's because the crime was caused by a child who didn't know what to do with hatred," he said.
Fifteen students said they wanted "both photos," another 15 said, "only Satomi's photo" and one student said "neither."
While producing the album, school officials took extra care to prevent photos of the assailant from being leaked to outsiders.This is not being overly harsh— rather, it infers that the school knows about Nevada's online "fan club".
They received the girl's photo on a CD and printed out the snapshots at the school. The CD was then destroyed, they said.
These pictures are here for your amusement or disgust. They were created, or at least some of them, as black humor.
I am not going to provide any pictures on my own website, both for legal and for bandwidth reasons. So, the following is a bunch of links to pictures on other sites. If you do not want your website listed here, please contact me and I will remove it.
This is not a full list of fanart; literally hundreds of pictures have drawn. This is the most well-done of it, in my opinion.
For a full index of Nevada artwork, try the Nevada-chan Fan Club link below.
There's also been more than one song dedicated to Nevada.
