Man arrested under 1889 dueling law after deadly street fight in Tokyo

Japanese authorities applied an 1889 anti-dueling law to arrest a man over a fight that resulted in his opponent’s death in Tokyo’s red light and entertainment district, police said Friday.

The faceoff took place on a street in September in the Kabukicho area of the capital after the suspect “and the dead man agreed to fight each other,” police spokesman Mitsuhiro Hirota told AFP.

Tokyo police on Wednesday arrested Fuzuki Asari, 26, unemployed, on suspicion of having “conspired with someone else” to have a duel and causing injury resulting in the death of his 30-year-old adversary, Hirota said.

The suspect “committed acts of violence such as throwing” the opponent, Naoya Matsuda, who “died on October 12 at a hospital in Tokyo … of multiple organ failure” caused by head injuries, the spokesman said.

The crime was investigated and announced by the Tokyo police’s organized crime control division, he said.

After he was arrested, Asari allegedly admitted to the allegations, saying: “I am deeply sorry that my opponent died,” according to the Tokyo Reporter.

It was not specified whether any weapons were involved in the fight. The Tokyo Reporter, citing police, said Asari met the victim for the first time on the day of the fight.

The 1889 law stipulates that “anyone who has engaged in a duel shall be punished by imprisonment for no less than two years and no more than five years.”

The suspect’s other alleged crime — causing death from involuntary injury — would lead to no less than three years in prison, according to Japan’s criminal law.

Although it is rare to apply the anti-dueling statute in Japan, there was a case in October when police in Gunma prefecture north of Tokyo arrested a high-school student and a man on suspicion of dueling, the Asahi Shimbun reported.

In 2007, a deadly shootout in West Virginia led police to file a rare charge of “murder by duel.” The law, written in 1849, reads: “If any person fight a duel in this state and in so doing inflict a mortal wound, he shall be deemed guilty of murder.” West Virginia became a state in 1863.