Mutsuko Ayano Gedenkstein, Trier

Mutsuko Ayano was a Japanese student who was the victim of a violent crime while studying in Germany.

She completed a degree in German studies in Japan and came to the University of Trier in 1981 as a Rotary Scholar to study for her doctorate under Professor Hermann Gelhaus. She was considered an eager and gifted student. In letters to her parents, she talked about life in Germany, the differences with Japan, and her love of the German language. A selection of these letters was published in German translation in 1987 and reissued a few years later in a small booklet. A new edition of these letters is due to be published by Iudicium-Verlag in 2020.

On the morning of November 17, 1983, she was walking from Trier East along the Kreuzweg to the university and encountered Janusz Komar, a 20-year-old Polish showman's assistant who was in Trier for the All Saints' Fair. He tried to snatch Ayano's handbag. When she resisted, she fell and received several kicks to the head from the man. He fled with a booty of 90 marks. Mutsuko Ayano succumbed to her serious injuries in hospital a few days later. The police initially had no leads on the perpetrator. The case was solved when the perpetrator was caught in Regensburg in December 1983, where he had robbed and kicked to death another woman. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

The crime triggered strong sympathy among the population. In 1984, a memorial stele designed by the Trier sculptor Jupp Zimmer according to the wishes of the parents was erected at the site of the attack on Petrisberg, donated by Rotarians. In 2008, a street in Petrisberg-West was named after Mutsuko Ayano.

Her parents, in a generous response to the violent death of their daughter, established the Mutsuko Ayano Fund, which has enabled Japanese students to stay at Trier University since 1985 and is administered by the Friends of Trier University. Two of these scholarship holders are now professors of German studies in Japan, Kazuhiko Tamura at Kwansei Gakuin University and Akiko Hayashi at Gakugei University in Tokyo. In her welcoming address to the 11th German Japanology Conference in Trier in 1999, Professor Hilaria Gössmann pointed out that Mutsuko Ayano's death had played a decisive role in establishing the subject of Japanese Studies at the University of Trier.