Ex-head of fan club of voice actress harassed her with 200,000 emails

Jan 15, 2018 | News On Japan

Jan 15, 2018 (tokyoreporter.com) - Tokyo Metropolitan Police on Wednesday arrested the former male head of a fan club for popular voice actress Ayana Taketatsu for allegedly harassing her via email last year. The crime is believed to have included the sending of tens of thousands of messages dating back to four years ago, reports the Sankei Shimbun

On July 14, Hidehiko Yokoyama, a 32-year-old resident of Kikugawa City, Shizuoka Prefecture, allegedly sent a threatening message from a computer at a coffee shop in Kakegawa City, Shizuoka to the agency of Taketatsu, located in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward.

The message read: "[Ayana] is getting too cocky. I absolutely will never forgive her. "Die, die, die."

Yokoyama, who has been accused of making threats, admits to the allegations, according to police.

Since 2014, the suspect is believed to have sent more than 200,000 similar emails to the agency and related persons.

"Since such awful things were written, I was scared and left wondering why," Taketatsu was quoted during an interview with Fuji News Network (Jan. 11) in which she broke down in tears.

The voice actress also referred to the stabbing of pop idol Mayu Tomita by a frenzied stalker in 2016. "I do not know when something like that will happen to me," she said. "As of now, I am unharmed, but I did not know what to do."

She wrote on Twitter and her blog that she is fine while thanking her fans for their support.

Sent from thousands of addresses

The emails were sent to the agency and related parties from thousands of addresses, police said. Investigators are now attempting to determine how the suspect was able to send such a large quantity of emails.

Taketatsu has become one of the most important and popular voice actresses since her debut in 2007. She is widely known for her role as Azusa Nakano in the animation "K-On!"

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