science

The Monster with 21 Faces

The Monster with 21 Faces is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Monster with 21 Faces rather than just read about it. In short: The Monster with 21 Faces (怪人21面相, Kaijin Nijūichi Mensō) was a name (based on Edogawa Rampo's fictional villain "The Fiend with Twenty Faces") used as an alias by the group responsible for the blackmail letters in the Glico Morinaga case in Japan, in 1984. Variations of the name's translation, including "the Mystery Man with the 21 Faces" and "the Phantom with 21 Faces", have also been used in articles and books fe…

Key takeaways

The Monster with 21 Faces belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Monster with 21 Faces to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Monster with 21 Faces from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Monster with 21 Faces (怪人21面相, Kaijin Nijūichi Mensō) was a name (based on Edogawa Rampo's fictional villain "The Fiend with Twenty Faces") used as an alias by the group responsible for the blackmail letters in the Glico Morinaga case in Japan, in 1984. Variations of the name's translation, including "the Mystery Man with the 21 Faces" and "the Phantom with 21 Faces", have also been used in articles and books featuring the case.

Kidnapping of Katsuhisa Ezaki At around 9:00 pm on 18 March 1984, two masked men armed with a pistol and rifle (later assumed to be toy guns) used a key stolen from the home next door to enter the home of Ezaki Glico president, Katsuhisa Ezaki. The home next door belonged to Katsuhisa's 70-year-old mother, Yoshie, and was located on the same property surrounded by a brick wall. The criminals had broken into her home and tied her up with a cut telephone line. They retrieved the key to her son's home which had a security system installed. Having entered the home of Katsuhisa Ezaki, the two masked men tied up his wife Mikieko (35 years old) and his eldest daughter Mariko (7 years old). Mikieko offered the men money and one of them responded, "Be quiet. Money is irrelevant." After cutting some telephone lines the two masked men located Katsuhisa Ezaki who was bathing with his other two children, Yukiko (4 years old) and Etsuro (11 years old). Katsuhisa Ezaki was abducted naked from his home and taken to a warehouse in Ibaraki, Osaka. Three days after his abduction, Ezaki was able to escape his captors after breaking free from the ropes they had tied him with. However he was unable to identify the culprits or provide police with any clues as to their motivations. Several weeks after Ezaki's abduction, the group set fire to several vehicles at the company's headquarters. Then on 16 April 1984, a plastic container full of hydrochloric acid was found inside a Glico company building in Ibaraki, Osaka, the same city Ezaki was held captive in.

Letters

Letters to Ezaki Glico On 8 April 1984, The Monster with 21 Faces sent a letter to police, saying (English translation):

To Japanese police fools: Are you stupid? There's so many of you, what on earth are you doing? If you are real pros try catching me. There’s too much handicap so I will give you a hint. There's no fellows in the Ezaki’s relatives, there's no fellows in Nishinomiya police, there's no fellows in Flood fighting corps. Car I used is gray, food was bought at Daiei. If you want a new info, beg for it in the newspaper. After telling you all this you should be able to catch me. If you don't you are tax thieves. Shall I kidnap the head director of the prefectural police? Although the letter told police the color of the vehicle they had driven while kidnapping Ezaki, as well as the supermarket they had bought the food used to feed him during his captivity, these clues provided little assistance to authorities. Meanwhile, the Monster with 21 Faces also sent letters to the media, taunting police efforts to capture the culprit(s) behind the scare. An excerpt from one such letter, written in hiragana and with an Osaka dialect, reads, "Dear dumb police officers. Don't tell a lie. All crimes begin with a lie as we say in Japan. Don't you know that?" Another letter sent by the Monster with 21 Faces that was received on 23 April was sent to both Sankei and Mainichi newspapers as well as the Koshien police station. It read:

To police fools: You shouldn't lie. If you lie, you steal. I also sent this to the Koshien police. Why are you lying. Don't hide things. Why are you complaining? You guys are having such a hard time, so I will give you a hint. I entered the factory from the side staff entrance. The typewriter we used is PAN-writer. The plastic container used was a piece of street garbage. Monster with 21 faces" The Monster with 21 Faces sent its first letter on May 10 to the giant food company Ezaki Glico following the kidnapping and escape of Katsuhisa Ezaki, president of Glico. The letter stated it had laced $21 million worth of the company's confections with potassium cyanide soda, and it later threatened to put them on store shelves. None of these poisoned candies were found, but Glico products were removed from stores, resulting in a loss of more than $20 million and the laying off of 450 part-time workers. By the end of the whole ordeal, Glico reported a total decrease in sales of nearly $130 million. On 26 June, the Monster with 21 Faces issued a message proclaiming its forgiveness of Glico, and subsequent harassment of the company ceased.

Letters to Morinaga After ceasing its harassment of Glico, the Monster with 21 Faces began targeting Morinaga, another confectionery company, and food companies Marudai Ham and House Food Corporation with similar criminal campaigns, using the same alias. In October 1984, a letter addressed to "Moms of the Nation" and signed by the Monster with 21 Faces was sent to Osaka news agencies with a warning similar to those sent to Glico. It stated that 20 packages of Morinaga candy had been laced with deadly sodium cyanide. After receiving this letter, police searched stores in cities from Tokyo to western Japan and found over a dozen lethal packages of Morinaga Choco Balls and Angel Pie before anyone was poisoned. These packages had labels, such as "Danger: Contains Toxins", put on them. More tampered confections were found in February 1985 for a total of 21 lethal sweet products. On 1 November 1984 a threatening letter from the Monster with 21 Faces arrived at the Tokyo home of Morinaga Dairy vice president Mitsuo Yamada:

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Monster with 21 Faces

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Monster with 21 Faces claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Monster with 21 Faces before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Monster with 21 Faces ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Monster with 21 Faces

In research: The Monster with 21 Faces appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Monster with 21 Faces in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Monster with 21 Faces is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1984 crimes in Japan, Blackmail, Extortionists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Monster with 21 Faces outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Monster with 21 Faces in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Monster with 21 Faces means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Monster with 21 Faces out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Monster with 21 Faces in simple terms?

Why does The Monster with 21 Faces matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Monster with 21 Faces?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Monster with 21 Faces.