Villainous conspirator Yoshie Taira (aka Miyako Kaneshiro)
Yoshie Taira aka Miyako Kaneshiro (Junko Minagawa) was a villainess from "Solitary Island of the Princess and the Dragon King's Palace", episodes 11.06, 11.07, and 11.08 of Case Closed (airdates August 19, August 26, and September 2, 2002). She was a member of the TV crew set to broadcast a detective match-up between Kogoro Mouri and Heiji Hattori to solve the mystery of a deceased man found on Onikame Island.
Yoshie's backstory, however, revealed that her original identity was Miyako Kaneshiro, the stepdaughter of Mayor Hyogo Kaneshiro who was supposedly kidnapped four years prior by a group of men who later robbed the Kaneshiro home, stealing his rare byōbu (a Japanese folding screen) and murdering the family maid Yoshiko Matsumoto. She grew up in the mayor's house, and everyone referred to her as the mayor's daughter, so perhaps the fact that she was a stepdaughter was not widerly known or forgotten. She gave the mayor's two servants nicknames based on nicknames on japanese castles, possibly inspired by the mayor's house that resembled a castle. The housekeeper was called 'Kaa-chan' taken from 'Karasu', Japanese for Crow, after Matsumoto Castle, that also was called Crow Castle. The butler Mikihiko Daito, was called 'Chiyo-nii' after Edo Castle, called Chiyoda Castle, based on that Daito was written with kanjis for Huge and east, that Edo Castle was a huge castle facing east. But as revealed over the episode's progression, Miyako had actually staged her own kidnapping, having done so to test her stepfather's love for her. When Hyogo refused to pay the ransom, however, the evil Yoshie and her cohorts (Yoshitsugu Kume, Takashi Shimoji, and the unindentified deceased man) break into her house to steal the byōbu, with Takashi killing Yoshiko in the process. Based on the nickname rule, the robbers called the byobu, that had images of Egrets drawed on, for 'princess' after Himeji Castle, also called Egret Castle.
Later on, the group kept the byōbu hidden in a box hidden in the ocean and weighed down with an anchor, with the unidentified member of the group dying on Onikame Island after his boat drifted away as he came to the island to retrieve the byōbu. Years later, Miyako took on the name Yoshie Taira and came with Yoshitsugu and Takashi to Onikame, using the detective battle between Kogoro and Heiji as a pretense to recover their ill-gotten gains. Coincidently enough the extended staff also included her cousin, Noburo Ikema. However, one of the other men on the broadcast staff, Mikihiko Daito, was the former butler to the Kaneshiro family and the fiancee of Yoshiko. After learning about Yoshie's involvement in the kidnapping/robbery and the murder of his fiancee, Mikihiko plotted to kill the three in revenge. Yoshie was Mikihiko's first victim, as he lured her to the forest where the byōbu was hidden (having been washed ashore a year prior during a typhoon) before strangling her to death with a rope, with Mikihiko only learning afterwards her true identity as Miyako Kaneshiro. With her dying breath she called him Chiyo-nii, apologing. That means that she did seem to feel remose her role in the housekeeper's death. Mikihiko arranged her body with closed eyes and folded hands as a sign for respect and affection to the lady he had once known.
Trivia[]
- Junko Minagawa also voiced vengeful villainess Romi Karube, who appeared in Season 15 of Case Closed.
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