Takako Konishi

Who was Takako Konishi?

Takako Konishi was an office worker from Tokyo who was found dead in a snowy field outside of Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, on November 15, 2001. Konishi had originally arrived in Minneapolis earlier that month, traveled to Bismarck, then to Fargo, and finally to Detroit Lakes, where she died. Her death was ruled a suicide, but it was insinuated by the media that she had died trying to locate the money hidden by Steve Buscemi's character, Carl Showalter, in the film Fargo, under the impression that the film was based on a true story. The events depicted in Fargo, however, are fictional.

Investigations by American film writer/director Paul Berczeller discovered the entire Fargo story had come about as the result of a misunderstanding between Konishi and one of the Bismarck police officers with whom she had been talking. The story was then inflated by the media, leading to the urban legend that she had come to America to search for the money in the film. Instead, it was discovered, Konishi had been very depressed after losing her job at a Tokyo travel agency, and had come to Minneapolis because it was a place she had previously visited with her lover, an American businessman. Depressed and lonely, Konishi had been wandering Detroit Lakes when she decided to commit suicide with an overdose of alcohol and sedatives. This theory was bolstered by the discovery of a forty minute phone call she had made to her lover the previous night, and a suicide note she had sent to her parents expressing her intent to kill herself and that she had disposed of most of her belongings before she left Bismarck.