HEADLINE: THE GREAT CANDY CAPER LEAVES ALL JAPAN ATWITTER
Over the weekend, supermarkets put back candies and other sweets that they had removed from their shelves six weeks ago. That event, small though it was, may have signaled the end to one of the stranger crime sprees in Japan's postwar history.
For more than three months the public has been absorbed by a series of criminal acts directed against Ezaki Glico, a major confectionery company that also produces biscuits and processed meats.
The saga began March 18 when the president of Glico, Katsuhisa Ezaki, was kidnapped by three men while he soaked in a tub at his home outside Kobe.
Three days later the 42-year-old Mr. Ezaki managed to escape - unharmed and with his family having avoided paying any of the $4.3 million in cash or the 220 pounds of gold bullion that had been demanded.
The abduction shocked many Japanese, who for the most part enjoy a life free of crime and who feared that European-style corporate kidnappings had arrived on their shores. Their concern turned to bewilderment as the kidnapping proved to be only the start of trouble for Mr. Ezaki and his $540 million- a-year company, which is based in Osaka.
Soon after, two fires believed to be the work of arsonists broke out at Glico plants. Then an anonymous telephone caller told the company that a $1.3 million payoff could end the harassment.
In an odd twist, men presumed to be Mr. Ezaki's tormentors kidnapped a young Osaka man while he sat in a parked car with a friend. They ordered him to collect the $1.3 million at a designated dropoff point, a barbecue restaurant. The man was arrested, but was freed after his friend confirmed his story. Once again, no payment was actually made.
The biggest blow to Mr. Ezaki came in mid-May when his enemies sent letters to Osaka news organizations saying cyanide-laced packs of Glico candy had been placed on store shelves. They warned that more packs, with stiffer doses of poison, would soon be distributed across Japan.
No evidence of poisoning ever emerged, but the scare tactics worked. Supermarkets and small shops cleared their shelves of all Glico products. Typical of the nationwide concern was a Tokyo office worker who gave her colleagues a gift of chocolates, attaching a reassuring note that another candymaker had produced them.
For Glico, the case became an instant financial disaster. May's sales were nearly half what they were the year before. The company announced 1,000 workers would be laid off. Four outside concerns used as subcontractors stopped operations entirely. Two days ago Mr. Ezaki estimated that sales this year would be off by about $130 million.
More worrisome for many Japanese were signs of copycat extortions. A 42- year-old man was charged with using a similar cyanide threat to coerce $214,000 from the Tokyo Coca-Cola Bottling Company. ''The Glico case is very much our concern, too,'' Hideyo Motoyama, president of the Kirin Brewery, said several weeks ago. ''If this kind of crime is left unpunished, there will be no stable operation of food companies.''
Then came taunting letters from the criminals to the Osaka police, sneering at the ''poor, stupid cops.'' It was a breach of etiquette almost as startling to some Japanese as the crimes themselves. Indeed, despite the assignment of 200 or more national and local officers to the case, the normally efficient police seemed stumped.
Naturally, the big question was why all this was happening. Now and then, the police leaked clues to the press, but, if they truly knew who they were after, they gave no indication.
That left a clear field of speculation for this country's often-hyperthyroidic popular magazines. Theories ranged from disgruntled former employees who had lost their jobs in the merger of two Glico subsidiaries, to people with a personal vendetta against Mr. Ezaki, to stock manipulators out to drive down the price of Glico shares.
Several people saw the possible involvement of shadowy organizations that say they are civil rights groups but are described by the authorities as fronts for racketeers. Some Glico employees may have ties to these groups, it was said.
Through it all, many sensed that Mr. Ezaki was not telling all he knew and might even have struck a deal with his tormentors. ''Right from the beginning we haven't been getting much help from the Glico president,'' Seiichi Tagawa, head of the National Public Safety Commission, told the newspaper Mainichi.
A possible denouement finally materialized the other day with still more letters to newspaper offices from people who said they were the culprits. They had ''become bored with this affair,'' they said, adding that they had burned 15 boxes of cyanide-tainted Glico chocolates and removed another box from a store shelf in Osaka.
The letters had the same derisive tone as the earlier notes to the police. ''Our colleagues include a 4-year-old child who every day wants to eat Glico products,'' they said. ''We can't have this child crying all day.'' It was time, they added, to head for Europe, to escape the muggy Japan summer.
On Friday Glico held its annual stockholders' meeting, an uneventful session that lasted 40 minutes. At the same time, Glico candy started to reappear on store shelves. Things seemed to be returning to normal.
Except that still no one knew exactly what had happened.
