"They say that after 15 years the victims' feelings calm down and evidence disappears, but there's no way that the family of the victim will ever forget," Mr. Ishikawa said. "Well, if he'd been put in jail for some years, I might have accepted it to some extent. But that wasn't the case. Far from it, I think he kept on working until retirement, received benefits. Now he's getting his pension and walking his dog."

"It's madness. He's a murderer, but we can't do anything. Isn't Japan a country governed by law?"

Japan adopted the statute of limitations on murder during the Meiji Restoration when it was desperately trying to catch up with the West in the late 19th century. Convinced that it could not become a modern nation without Western laws, Japan first adopted France's legal system, then switched to the German model because France was defeated in the Franco-Prussian War, said Morikazu Taguchi, a professor at Waseda University's law school in Tokyo.

"If it was said that advanced countries had it," Mr. Taguchi said, "it became an absolute must."

In the decades after World War II, Germany and France eliminated the statute of limitations on crimes against humanity. Germany eventually discarded it for ordinary murders, though France has retained a limit of 10 years after an investigation is closed. Britain's common law does not have a statute of limitations on murder. American states, which were influenced by British common law, do not have a statute of limitations on murder. China has a 20-year limit on crimes punishable by death.

In Japan, there has been no real push to abolish the statute of limitations. But in keeping with a movement to toughen laws in recent years, the 15-year statute, which had been unchanged for more than a century, was extended last year to 25 years. Toshinobu Uetomi, an official at the Justice Ministry, said that the extension reflected today's longer life span and advances in investigative methods, especially DNA testing.

Takao Kimei, the policeman who handled the investigation, said that a blood stain and fingerprints suggested strongly that the murderer of Ms. Namai's daughter was a certain Ryoji Nagata. Mr. Nagata, who attended the same high school as the victim, lived a couple of blocks away from the Namai home.

Ms. Namai said that her daughter and the suspect did not know each other, and that she was at a loss as to the motive. What is clear is that the suspect disappeared a day after the killing.

Occasionally, the policeman would visit the Namai home, kneeling before the Buddhist altar to pray for Michie's spirit. Mr. Kimei would look, he said, at the framed photos of her -- with family, friends, at work -- taken before she was killed.