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HEADLINE: WHO'S AFTER THE MAN BEHIND GLICO POCKY
Once the munch of millions, Pocky chocolate sticks and Kittyland cookies are now avoided by many Japanese like the plague.
This is ever since Japanese newspapers published the warning: "Eat Glico products and go to your grave."
The authors of the anonymous letter claim to have laced Ezaki Glico candy with lethal doses of cyanide.
Retailers have been stampeding to remove Glico products from their shelves, with Japan's biggest supermarket chain Daiei withdrawing all stock completely.
HEADLINE: SHARE PRICE HAS PLUMMETED
Sales are down dramatically, with US$10.5 million (S$22 million) lost in just 10 days. The share price of Ezaki Glico, a "boring" but respectable blue chip, has plummeted.
One thousand workers are being laid off. No poisoned candy has yet been found.
The poison threat is the latest twist in Japan's most bizarre and, for police, Infuriating, kidnapping and extortion case.
Already the "gang" had kidnapped company president Katsuhisa Ezaki, snatching him naked from his bathtub and holding him for three days.
Threats to his family were received as well as a warning to release some "damaging" photographs of him. The "gang" then set two fires at his company's plant.
This has been accompanied by what a red-faced police spokesman called "the most impudent insults in our history."
One note particularly rankled. Addressed "To stupid policemen." it demanded: "If you are professionals, why can't you catch us?"
After dropping some "clues," it said: "If you still can't get us you're tax thieves. Next time shall we snatch the police chief?"
Stung by the taunts, police have mobilized a task force of 2,000 sleuths to track down the culprits, with 100 assigned just to look for the "extremely rare" typewriter the gang is thought to have used.
So far, there is little real evidence, and police are still searching for a motive.
Among those being considered are:
- In merging two subsidiaries two years ago, Mr Ezaki put many people out of work. His "High-handedness" did not fit well with the Japanese tradition of lifetime employment, and there is speculation that some of those made redundant may have sought revenge.
- The company may have angered some sokaiya company extortionists by refusing to buy them off.
Until a law was passed two years ago, most Japanese companies paid off sokaiya to keep the peace and shorten the length of annual general meetings. Often the money was to prevent the disclosure of some piece of dirt on the company dug up by the sokaiya.
- Someone in the company may have run foul of the local yakuza, or gangsters, notably the powerful Yamaguchigumi gang, whose turf is the Osaka district where Mr Ezaki lives and works.
"I do not have the slightest idea of anyone who has any ill-feeling towards me," Mr Ezaki claims. "The abductors just want ransom money."
HEADLINE: IS WHOLE THING BEING ENGINEERED?
But why, people are asking, the wild fluctuations in demands by the gang?
The ransom first demanded - US$4 million plus 100 kg of gold bullion - was unrealistic enough for a medium sized company. Later, the demand became just US$250,000.
One theory being widely canvassed is that the gang is deliberately driving down the share price to make a fortune later.
Another gaining currency in the popular press, which is devoting even more energy to the case than the police
e is that the whole thing is being engineered from inside the owning family.