Three friends of murdered Japanese musician Asami Nagakiya say they will not blame the country for her death and will return next year to celebrate Carnival.
Speaking at the PCS Silver Stars panyard, Tragarete Road, Newtown, on Thursday night, soca singer Angella Giustini (Ann-G) and her dancers Mari Kaneko and Keiko Sakurai said Nagakiya loved this country like her own and they could not turn their back on T&T although she had met her tragic demise here.
The women, who left the country shortly after the wake at the panyard, said they knew Nagakiya for at least five years and the small but tight-knit local Japanese community was devastated by her death.
According to her autopsy, Nagakiya was strangled to death. Her body was found hidden under branches at the base of a tree at the Queen’s Park Savannah, Port-of-Spain, opposite Queen’s Royal College (QRC) on Wednesday morning.
During a pan tribute to the murdered tenor player, who also teaches pan in her homeland, the trio cried as other mourners at the panyard swayed in their seats to the tune of “Time to say goodbye”. (See page A10)
“She loved Trinidad (and Tobago) and loved steelpan and I tell you she had a gift,” Giustini, who has been coming here for the past couple years to enter the International Soca Monarch competition, said. “She loved steelpan so much she brought it to Japan and she was teaching it to the people there and was playing it at lots of events in Japan. She loved it so much she released a CD in Japan with a compilation of music.”
The friends added that Nagakiya had been playing for a “very long time” but were unsure how long.
The friends, who have been frequenting T&T for the past 11 years and met Nagakiya here six years ago, said she had been very supportive of them. Giustini said she last saw her friend on Carnival Monday at KFC, but they just exchanged pleasantries.
“I can’t judge a country based on one incident. I hope that whoever did it gets what they deserve, but we will always love Trinidad,” she said.
“Right now we will love to return next year but we have artist labels to finalise, so if we don’t come back next year it would be for different reasons. But yeah, we will come back to Carnival,” Giustini said, adding that it is still very hard to accept Nagakiya’s killing.
“It is a big issue, especially for us being close to her. It is harder for us, to go see things or even post things on social media,” Giustini added, noting that the Japanese Embassy had contacted Nagakiya’s family but they could not say what had been the response back home to her killing as she was very popular.