Rina Yasutake – Teen Prodigy’s Disturbing Masterpiece: Squirm

Three relatives of Rina Yasutake have faced court charges for obstructing the proper burial of their family member. Allegedly, her remains were discovered on a mattress.

Today’s story is really, really weird. Now, we’ve been sitting on this topic for some time because it’s totally fascinating. But we just weren’t sure how to approach it. But recently, we kind of figured out a clever way to tell it, which you’ll hear today.

On April 15, 2018, a 56-year-old woman named Yoshika Yasutake began dusting a piano inside of her family’s very small and very clean home in the English Village of Helmsley, like she always did.

After dusting the outside of this piano, Yoshika lifted up the lid and began individually dusting each of the piano keys. But as she did this, she was very careful not to press down accidentally on any of the keys and make a sound. That was the last thing she wanted to do.

Every time Yoshika was in charge of cleaning the house, she always dreaded getting to the piano because she was so worried about making a sound.

After Yoshika had finished dusting this piano, both outside and inside, she lowered the lid and then walked over to a bookcase right next to a window. And began dusting each of the books. And as she did, she began to hear out the window the sounds of birds chirping, cars driving around, and people chatting.

Yoshika, when she heard this, stopped dusting for a moment and just looked out the window at the beautiful town. All the little stone cottages that line the road. And as she looked out there and listened to the sounds of her village, Yoshiko was struck with a sadness about all the things that she was missing out on.

Once Yoshika had been a world-class pianist. She had trained at the Royal College of Music, which is one of the most prestigious institutions in London, and she used to play packed Symphony halls. Or sometimes in the audience would be literal members of the Royal Family. I mean, she was a really big deal. But Yoshika didn’t play the piano anymore because her younger sister Rina Yasutake had come back home.

Now, as soon as Yoshika thought of Rina Yasutake, she got angry and instinctively just turned and stared at Rina’s closed bedroom door. And just for a moment, Yoshika wished that Rina had not come home. Because ever since Rina had come home, it was like all of Yoshika’s family had decided that nothing else was important. Rina was the only thing that mattered.

The Yasutake Family consisted of Yoshika, as well as, of course, Rina Yasutake, who was 49 years old. And they both had a brother who was 51 years old, and his name was Takahiro Yasutake. And the three siblings’ mother also lived with them, and she was 80 years old. As for their dad, he had passed away a few years earlier.

Yoshika and Takahiro were both very impressive in their own ways. Yoshika had been this amazing pianist, and Takahiro was this amazing writer. But Rina Yasutake was just on another level. Rina not only spoke fluent Greek, Latin, English, and Japanese, but she also created her own dialect of Japanese with a complete system of grammar.

Rina Yasutake was also this unbelievable artist, and everybody wanted to buy her paintings. But Rina would never sell. Or if she did, it was quite rare. But that only created lots of hype around her artwork. It was like so valuable to get your hands on one of Rina’s paintings.

As a child, Rina Yasutake had been awarded all these scholarships to all these prestigious private schools. And then after graduating high school, she was given a full-ride scholarship to the University of Cambridge, which is one of the most prestigious universities in the world. And so, everybody assumed Rina was on track to become this world-famous artist.

But there was something dark inside of Rina Yasutake that no one could quite place. It only came out when she would have these sudden outbursts of anger, and people would see this side of her that just didn’t line up with the rest of who she was. But these flashes of anger would often pass quickly, and so people kind of wrote it off as a byproduct of extreme genius. It was like her brain just sometimes couldn’t quite handle how smart she was, and she would get mad and frustrated.

But when Rina Yasutake graduated from the University of Cambridge and came back home, she just was totally different. It was like something inside of her had snapped and stayed broken.

A couple of days after Rina Yasutake had come home, she had one of those sudden outbursts of anger. But Rina’s anger never went away. She just stayed mad for days and days, and her family began asking her like, “What has gotten you so upset?” But Rina refused to talk about it.

Eventually, Rina Yasutake just locked herself in her bedroom in the family home, and she would stay inside of there, refusing to talk to her family for weeks. And then when she did finally emerge after several weeks, it was clear Rina was just different. She basically refused to speak to anyone, family included, unless it was absolutely necessary. And she really never left the house, or even her room, unless it was totally necessary.

And it would turn out, this was not some post-college phase Rina was going through. This would become Rina’s life. She basically became a total recluse inside of that bedroom for decades, to the point where the family’s neighbors didn’t even know Rina existed because she basically never came out of the house.

Yoshika stopped staring at her sister’s closed bedroom door and turned her attention back to the books on the shelf. She finished dusting them, and then after she was done, she was done cleaning the house. And so, she put the duster down and Yoshika very quietly tiptoed her way over to Rina’s closed bedroom door. And very quietly, she knocked.

Rina Yasutake hated loud noises, which is why Yoshika was no longer allowed to play the piano because it was too loud for Rina. After Yoshika gave this light knock, she began counting in her head to 30. Because Rina had told her, “You do not come in right away. You knock and you wait 30 seconds at least. And then maybe I’ll let you come inside.”

And so, Yoshika, she’s counting in her head, one, two, three. She gets to 25, 26, 27, and then from inside the room, Rina would tell Yoshika, “Okay, you’re allowed to enter.” Yoshika very slowly reached down, she turned the knob and opened up her sister’s bedroom door, and it revealed this totally dark room, this very small, cramped space. All the shades and blinds had been drawn, and Rina was sitting on her bed, completely silent.

Yoshika kept her head down, being very careful not to make eye contact with Rina. She didn’t want to upset her. Yoshika walked into the room, made her way to the table, and scooped up all of Rina’s dirty dishes.

Then, Yoshika turned around and began walking out again. As she did, she tried to take a quick glimpse at whatever Rina was working on in her bedroom. Rina Yasutake had told her family that she was working on this masterwork but wouldn’t really elaborate on it.

In order to work on this thing, she needed the room to be dark and the house to be silent, and she needed to focus exclusively on this masterwork. The family needed to support her as she did this, but again, Rina just never really elaborated on what this masterwork was. She would just say that it was very special and it would combine all the elements of her life – her spirit, her body, her soul. Even the family would be a part of building this masterwork.

When her family asked her, “Well, what do you mean? How can we support you in making this masterwork?” Rina would just say, “Oh, you’ll know when the time is right.” Yoshika couldn’t get a glimpse of the masterwork, and so she quickly turned her head back down to the ground and shuffled her way out of Rina’s room and shut the door behind her.

Yoshika went to the kitchen and dumped Rina’s dishes in the sink, which was totally clean to begin with because one of Rina’s rules was the house must always be immaculately clean. No dirty dish, no dust anywhere. I mean, it had to be perfect, spotless at all times because that’s the only way Rina could work on this masterwork.

As Yoshika cleaned and dried off all of Rina’s dishes and began putting them away, her brother Takahiro walked into the kitchen.

He said to Yoshika that it was time for them to leave the house and go to the market and buy some supplies for Rina Yasutake so she can continue to work on this masterwork. Yoshika was immediately totally annoyed that they had to go do this because everything was all about Rina, but she kind of buried those feelings and told her brother, “Okay, sure, let’s go.”

Takahiro was different than Yoshika in how he thought about their younger sister Rina. Yoshika totally resented Rina because now that Rina was home, Yoshika basically had to give up her career as this amazing pianist in order to support Rina in this whole masterwork she was working on.

But Takahiro, he was totally fine giving up his writing career to just focus on supporting Rina because he really believed in Rina and he thought that this masterwork she was building was going to be like the single greatest piece of art in the history of humankind.

And so, Takahiro felt proud to kind of be a part of it. Now, Takahiro, like the rest of his family, had no idea what this masterwork actually was, but Takahiro and Rina Yasutake had a much better relationship than Yoshika and Rina. And so, Rina would tell Takahiro these specific things that she needed in order to build this masterwork, and so that day, Rina had told Takahiro some things she needed, and so he and Yoshika were going to go out and get them.

So, Takahiro and Yoshika threw on their jackets and stepped outside. As soon as they were out there, they both flipped their collars up and kind of concealed their faces and put their heads down because they were very careful not to make eye contact with other people. This family was already very private, but with Rina, they had been instructed to be even more private and not even really interact with the outside world. And so, basically, anytime they went out in public, they would kind of hide themselves.

Yoshika and Takahiro made their way to the pharmacy, they ducked their way inside, and they would purchase a bottle of surgical spirits, which is sort of like a medical alcohol. Then, after buying that, the brother and sister put their collars back up, headed back outside, and they went to an old used bookstore. They bought a book on palm reading, which is the art of studying the lines on your hands in order to tell someone’s future. When the brother and sister bought this book, even though the cashier was talking to them, they kept their heads down and didn’t say a word to the cashier.

Then, after getting their book, the brother and sister hurried their way back home. When they got there, the door was locked, but instead of pulling out a key and unlocking the door of their own home, the brother and sister knocked and waited. Then, at some point, their mother came to the door, and they heard four locks turning. The door opened up, and then Yoshika and Takahiro walked inside and shut the door and then locked again the four deadbolts.

Rina Yasutake was adamant that no one in the family could carry around a key to the house. It was too dangerous because they could potentially lose the key in town, and then someone could come into their house and potentially see Rina’s masterwork, and they couldn’t have that happen. And so, nobody had keys. They had to knock each time they came home. And the reason they had four locks on the door was again because Rina was very worried about somebody coming into this house and seeing what she was doing.

Yoshika carried the bag with these supplies inside of it – the surgical spirits and the palm reading book – over to Rina’s closed bedroom door. Instead of knocking, Yoshika just placed the bag right outside the door, turned around, and began walking away. Then, as she did, she heard the sound of Rina’s door opening just a crack. Yoshika quickly turned around and saw a tiny, skinny arm reach out from behind the door. It grabbed the bag and then pulled the bag back into the room, and the door shut and locked.

But when Takahiro looked up and saw Yoshika, he and Rina stopped talking. Takahiro just shook his head, stood up, and walked away. After Takahiro was gone, Yoshika very quietly walked over to Rina’s bedroom door. Out of curiosity, she pressed her ear against the wood, trying to listen. Maybe she could hear Rina and catch something she was saying that would begin to explain what she had just overheard.

But all she heard was the sound of Rina Yasutake slowly shuffling towards the back of her bedroom, where her bed was. Then, it was totally silent. So, Yoshika moved away from the door and went back into the kitchen. She sat down to read again, but she couldn’t focus on the book. It was like this wave of sadness was just coming over her.

The reason Yoshika was feeling this way was that she was thinking about the past. Back in the day, when she was a kid, she and Rina used to be as close as sisters could possibly be. For much of their lives, they were very close, even after Rina began her kind of reclusive lifestyle. They still interacted as friends. But something happened in 2013, five years earlier, that totally severed their relationship for good.

On that day, Rina had emerged from her bedroom, and Yoshika offered to read Rina’s palm. This was something the two sisters did for each other periodically, a way for them to bond. So Rina held out her hand, and Yoshika began tracing a long horizontal line across her palm. Rina’s hands were different than most people’s. She had something called a Simian line, a very rare feature in palms. In palm reading, a Simian line can be very good or very bad. It can indicate that the person is a visionary or a mystic – the good side. Or it can indicate a terrible disease or aggressive nature – the bad side.

Rina Yasutake knew about her Simian line and believed it represented something good. She would say that she had a visionary soul. But on this particular day in 2013, after the family had recently been banned from a local supermarket due to Rina’s outburst, Yoshika, looking at Rina’s palm, suggested that the Simian line might indicate aggressiveness. This deeply offended Rina. She whipped her hand back, began screaming at Yoshika, calling her an idiot, proclaiming her misunderstood vision, and vowing to show the world one day.

Then, Rina began beating, punching, and kicking Yoshika. Takahiro had to run in and separate them. This was the first time Rina had lashed out physically. Concerned, Rina’s mother thought Rina might have an underlying condition causing her outbursts and sent her to a doctor. The doctor found no physical cause but suggested psychological issues and the need for psychiatric treatment, which Rina rejected, blaming everything on Yoshika.

After that, Rina stopped leaving her bedroom, only emerging once every couple of months. She added new rules for the family, including no house keys and four locks on the door. She instructed them to learn a new dialect of Japanese she created, to protect from the outside world. Rina also demanded the removal of all telephones, TVs, and computers from the house.

Yoshika sat in the kitchen, reflecting on the sadness of losing her relationship with her sister.

And you know, Yoshika had a lot of regret about what she had said about the Simeon line. But eventually, like always, Yoshika just kind of pushed her feelings for Rina down. Before long, Yoshika was back to reading her book.

For the next several weeks, Yoshiko would see her brother Takahiro sitting up against the door to Rina’s bedroom more often than usual, having these kind of hushed conversations through the door with Rina. Also, Yoshika began to notice that Takahiro was now cooking all of Rina’s meals. Normally, their mother was the one who cooked Rina’s food, but now Takahiro seemed to have taken over that task entirely.

As for Yoshika, because she was primarily in charge of being the one to constantly clean the house, that meant she was the one going into Rina’s bedroom and collecting her dirty dishes. As soon as Takahiro had begun being the cook for Rina, Yoshika began to notice that more and more food was being left on Rina’s plates. Basically, Rina wasn’t eating as much food as she normally did, and this started to worry Yoshika. Reno was already a very small person; she was four foot 11 inches tall, barely 90 pounds, and Yoshika worried that, you know, she really needs to eat; she’s already so small, she can’t afford to miss meals.

Then, one day in the middle of May, Yoshiko went into Rina’s bedroom and she saw all of her dishes were basically completely filled with the food she had been given. She basically had not touched them. Yoshika, who really never actually spoke to Rina when she was in the bedroom, just couldn’t help herself this time. Without even looking at Rina, Yoshika gathered up the plates full of food and said, “Rina, you need to eat more of your food.” Rina didn’t say anything back, and Yoshika just quickly turned and walked out of the room.

But after that interaction, Takahiro would tell Yoshika that Rina doesn’t want you going in her room ever again. And so, from now on, the dishes that you would normally collect, Rina will place them right outside of the door. That way, you don’t have to go inside that room. Also, around the same time, Rina, who normally would only leave her bedroom to go use the bathroom, began going to the bathroom exclusively at night when her family was asleep, to avoid any interaction with them. And so, by this point, Rina’s interactions with her family were reduced to basically zero.

By early August, Takahiro and Yoshika were being sent to the store more and more often by Rina to get more of these surgical spirits, the medical alcohol. Now, neither Takahiro nor Yoshika had any idea what Rina was doing with these surgical spirits, but they knew it was their duty to support her. And so, they kept buying them. What they would do is they would come back home with these bottles, and Takahiro would barely open Rina’s door, and he would tuck the bottle inside, and then Rina would take it, the door was shut, and then Rina would never give them her empty bottle. Basically, the bottle went in, and it stayed inside.

Then, on August 18th of 2018, Takahiro and Rina appeared to get in some kind of a fight. Yoshika was in the kitchen and she saw that Takahiro was sitting against the door of Rina’s bedroom. The two were having kind of a hushed conversation, and then at some point, Takahiro stood up, turned around, and faced the door, and kind of yelled into it, “I told you your soul was not enough.” And then Rina said something back to him, at which point Takahiro said, “No, please, please,” as if he was kind of begging with Rina to change her mind.

Then, before Yoshika could come over and ask Takahiro what was going on, Takahiro just opened up Rina’s bedroom door and walked inside, and suddenly the house went completely silent. Yoshika was too nervous to walk over and look inside of the room, and so she just stayed in the kitchen and listened. For 15 minutes, it was absolute silence.

Then Takahiro walked out of Rina’s bedroom, shut the door behind him, and he looked very calm. At this point, Yoshika looked over at him and said, “What’s going on?” And Takahiro would just smile and tell Yoshika that Rina’s masterwork is nearly completed. And then Takahiro asked Yoshika if she remembered when Rina had said, you know, at some point her masterwork was going to require some direct help from the family, but she said, you know, we’ll know when the time is right for us to participate. And Yoshiko would say, yes, you know, I remember that. And Takahiro said, well, the time is now.

Then Takahiro told Yoshika that they had to go to the store and get more surgical spirits. And so, really without questioning him, Yoshika went with him. They went to the store, and they would purchase three times the normal amount of surgical spirits that they normally would. And then, when they got home, Takahiro alone would go into Rina’s bedroom with these surgical spirits, he would shut the door behind him, and Yoshika just sat in the kitchen for about 10 minutes, until Takahiro came out again, no longer carrying these surgical spirits. He would come over to Yoshika and say, “Rina is ready to reconcile with you. She wants you to sit by the door and talk to her. And if you do that, you can be more involved in creating her masterwork.”

At this news, Yoshika felt a mixture of frustration and relief. She had never thought it was fair that Rina had so completely cut her off after that 2013 Simeon line joke she made while palm reading. Also, Rina had made Yoshika’s life so difficult for so long. I mean, Yoshika had basically been forced to give up her dreams of playing the piano, and she had to give up her friends and all of her life ambitions and goals to just support Rina. But despite all of that, deep down Yoshika missed Rina terribly. They did used to be so close. She wanted to have that relationship again.

And so, Yoshika walked over to Rina’s closed bedroom door, she sat down against it, and at first, she didn’t say anything, and Rina didn’t say anything either. But then, at some point, it was like the floodgates just opened, and Yoshika kind of began pouring her heart out about how sad she was about how her and Rina’s relationship had really gone south, and how she wanted to fix it.

Now, normally, on the rare times that Yoshika would talk through the door to Rina, like when she was trying to open it up to drop something off or whatever, it was always Takahiro who would answer on Rina’s behalf, as if Rina was not there. But this time, Rina actually spoke back. Rina was actually the one responding to Yoshika. And Rina’s tone was very kind and it was very forgiving. It was like she was saying, “I understand, Yoshika, and I forgive you, and I want us to be close again.” And then Rina would say that, you know, she’s been working so hard on this masterwork, and she’s so close to finishing it, and she needs Yoshika’s help to complete it. And if Yoshika can just help her with this one final step, then they can be close again, just like they used to be.

And so Yoshika, she played this beautiful song. And then, when it was all over, Yoshika’s listening carefully for Rina to yell out or be mad that she’s playing this loud music in the house. But it was just quiet. And so, again, Yoshika just felt this closeness to her sister.

Before long, Yoshika felt tears of happiness coming down her cheeks. But then, as Yoshika closed the lid of the piano, she did hear a banging. But it wasn’t coming from Rina’s bedroom; it was coming from the front door.

A moment later, Yoshika heard someone scream from outside the front door, “Police, open up!” But before Yoshika could go to the door to open it, her mother had ran to the door. She opened all four locks but then only opened it a crack and tried to yell at the police to go away.

But the police, they were kind of pushing on the door, trying to get the mother to get out of the way. And Yoshika, she kind of moved over and looked through the crack, and she saw it wasn’t just a couple of police officers; it was a whole army of police officers, and firefighters, and EMTs. There was an ambulance.

And then before long, the police officer that had been yelling, “Open up,” he finally just pushed and got the door open all the way. And then a swarm of people in uniforms flooded the home. And as soon as all these officers were in the house, they immediately began opening up every door, like they were looking for something.

And then finally, they got to Rina’s bedroom and they opened the door. And as soon as they did, Yoshika watched as the officers just stopped at the doorway and they begin cussing and yelling and turning their faces away. And then the officers went into Rina’s bedroom.

And then a minute later, they began talking on their radio, and then EMTs came into the house with a stretcher. They went into Rina’s bedroom, and then before long, Yoshika, Takahiro, and their mother watched as the stretcher came out again with these officers and EMTs.

And on the stretcher was Rina, and she looked terrible. Her eyes were sunken back in her head, and her skin was so pale it was practically see-through. I mean, really, she just kind of looked like a skeleton.

The real story of what happened inside of that family’s home would quickly become international news. And not because Rina was secretly creating a Masterwork of Art in her bedroom. Here’s what really happened:

Rina Yasutake stopped eating food in April of 2018. She would say that the only thing she needed to be nourished was her Visionary soul. And so, basically, because she had this Visionary Soul, she didn’t need to eat food. That was the conversation that Yoshika had overheard between Takahiro and Rina when Takahiro was saying, “Only your soul, how… how?” Well, he was trying to figure out how Rina was going to survive by being nourished by her soul. It didn’t make any sense.

Fast forward four months to August 18th, and again Yoshika had overheard her brother and her sister talking through the bedroom door. Except on this day, it sounded like Takahiro was fighting with Rina. Because at some point, he had stood up and yelled through the door, “I told you your soul wasn’t enough!” And then he had busted inside of Rina’s bedroom and stayed in there in silence for 15 minutes, only to come back out again and very calmly tell Yoshika that, “Don’t worry, Rina is nearing the end of her master work, and we just need to go out and get her more surgical spirits.”

Well, it would turn out the reason Takahiro was mad and yelled through the door at Rina is because he was trying to talk to her through the door and she wasn’t talking back. And he suspected it was because she wasn’t eating. And so he had yelled at her about that, and then barged into her room, only to find Rina totally unresponsive, not moving, not talking, nothing. And so he just stood there, wondering what to do.

And so as Takahiro is standing there, it clicks for him that now is the time. Now is the time to get involved. And so Takahiro left the bedroom, he grabbed Yoshika, they went to the pharmacy, they got more surgical spirits, they came back, and Takahiro alone went into Rina’s bedroom and covered her head to toe in these spirits. Because that was something she had wanted him to do before, and he believed that that’s what she needed right now. Because she can’t talk, she can’t move, she needs more of these spirits. That’s going to help her Visionary Soul nourish her while she completes this master work.

And for the next month, Takahiro and Yoshika would continue to apply these spirits to Rina’s body, believing they were helping her complete her master work. On September 25th, when Yoshika and Takahiro were at the pharmacy getting more spirits, the reason that this pharmacist finally struck up a conversation with Yoshika is because over time, the pharmacist had noticed that every time they came in to buy these surgical spirits, they smelled so bad. And on this particular day, when they came in, the stench was just overwhelming.

And so the pharmacist finally had asked Yoshika, you know, like what are these surgical spirits for? And Yoshiko would give this totally weird answer about how the spirits were for her sister, and she was working on this master work in her bedroom, and it was all going to be worth it. And so when Yoshika and Takahiro had left that day, the pharmacist was just so weirded out and alarmed by them that he called the police.

And when the police arrived at the family’s home, they discovered that Rina was not building a Masterwork in her bedroom. She was just dead in her bed and had been for six weeks. Rina died around August 18th, which is the day that Takahiro came into the room and discovered her unresponsive.

Which meant there was never any reconciliation happening between Yoshika and Rina. It’s unclear why Takahiro had told Yoshika, “Hey, you know, Rina’s ready to reconcile with you.” Because again, Rina was dead at the time. So there’s no way she would have said anything to him.

And so when Yoshika was having these supposed heart-to-hearts through the door with her sister, or playing music for her, that wasn’t real. The only real thing that was happening is Yoshika and Takahiro, from August 18th until the end of September when the police busted into their home, they would spend nearly every day rubbing this weird medical alcohol all over their dead sister’s body.

Because that’s what they believed she wanted when in reality, all this alcohol was doing was actually preserving her body.

So Rina’s body didn’t start to really decompose until the police entered the house and they stopped applying this alcohol. And so the officers who busted into Rina’s room on that day, the reason they were reacting the way they did, was because they were looking at a perfectly preserved dead body that had been dead for six weeks.

This tragic and shocking story quickly garnered international attention, not only because of the bizarre circumstances surrounding Rina’s death but also because of the psychological impact it had on Yoshika and Takahiro, who truly believed they were aiding their sister in completing her so-called “Masterwork”.

Their misplaced belief and dedication to Rina’s vision, despite her death, is a haunting reminder of the power of delusion and the devastating effects it can have.