Fusako Sano

Fusako Sano (佐野 房子, Sano Fusako^?, also known by the pseudonym Sachiko Yamada) (born 1981) is a Japanese woman who was kidnapped at age nine by Nobuyuki Satō (佐藤 宣行 Satō Nobuyuki), and held in captivity for nine years and two months from November 13, 1990 to January 28, 2000. In Japan, the case is also known as the Niigata girl confinement incident (新潟少女監禁事件, Niigata shōjo kankin jiken^?).

Fusako Sano, then a fourth grade elementary school girl, disappeared on November 13, 1990 at age nine after watching a school baseball game in her home town of Sanjō, Niigata Prefecture, Japan. A huge police search failed to find the missing girl. Police even considered the possibility that she had been kidnapped by North Korean intelligence operatives.

She had been kidnapped by Nobuyuki Satō, then a 28-year-old mentally disturbed unemployed Japanese man, who forced her into his car, and subsequently held her in the upstairs floor of his apartment in a residential area of Kashiwazaki, Niigata Prefecture for 9 years and two months. The house is only 200 meters from a kōban (police substation), and 55 kilometers from the location where she was kidnapped.

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