Weathered signs from five years ago stand forlornly on a bank of the Tama River in Kawasaki, politely asking visitors to refrain from laying any more flowers of condolence so they don't accidentally catch fire.
But the scene is otherwise absent of any reminder of the shocking incident that happened here five years ago.
Thursday marks the fifth anniversary of the high-profile slaying of 13-year-old Ryota Uemura, a Kawasaki schoolboy who was found dead — and naked — on the riverside after he was repeatedly forced by a gang of three local teens to swim on a freezing February night in 2015 and had his neck slashed with a box cutter, a detail that evoked in the minds of many the gruesome fate of journalist Kenji Goto, who had been murdered by the Islamic State just weeks earlier.