五十嵐 一
He completed his doctoral programme in Islamic art at the University of Tokyo in 1976, and was research fellow at the Royal Academy of Iran until the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Igarashi was an associate professor of comparative Islamic culture at the University of Tsukuba. He translated Ibni Sina"s The Canon of Medicine by Avicenna and Salman Rushdie"s Satanic Verses and wrote books on Islam, including The Islamic Renaissance and Medicine and Wisdom of the East. His body was found on 12 July 1991 in his office at the University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan.
In 2006, the case was closed without having determined any suspects.
Kenneth M. Pollack alleged in The Persian Puzzle that the attack was a covert operation by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. In 2010, Bungeishunjū reported a rumor circulating among the Japanese immigration authority that a young and wealthy Bangladeshi committed the murder then flew back to his home country the next day, before it was discovered.
According to the unverified rumor, Japan had refused to extradite the suspect from Bangladesh due to fears of inflaming anger over the Satanic Verses controversy.