News On Japan

Ibaraki: Corpse found buried confirmed as belonging to missing university student

Feb 02, 2019 (tokyoreporter.com) - A body found buried in a field in Kamisu City earlier this week belongs to a missing female university student, police said Thursday, reports NHK (Feb. 1).

Using fingerprint information, Tokyo Metropolitan Police confirmed the body is that of Natsumi Kikuchi, a 19-year-old resident of Tokyo’s Katsushika Ward who went missing last year.

Also on Thursday, police arrested Koichi Hirose, 35, of no known occupation, after he admitted to burying the body in the field near the coast — about 13 kilometers from his residence in Kamisu — during questioning.

On Friday, police sent Hirose to prosecutors on suspicion of abandoning a corpse.

Hirose has also confessed to killing Kikuchi. “I killed the girl I met on [an internet] bulletin board site after she started getting noisy,” the suspect told police. “I then buried her body.” He also said that the killing took place inside his vehicle.

On November 20, Kikuchi went by train from JR Ayase Station to Kamisu after attending class at her university in the capital.

After exiting JR Kashimajingu Station, Kikuchi boarded a taxi for a convenience store nearby. She then went in the direction of the residence of the man who began undergoing questioning on Saturday, police said previously.

At around 11:00 p.m. that night, Kikuchi last exchanged messages with family and friends on her smartphone via the application Line. Her family reported her missing with the Ayase Police Station on November 22.

Second arrest

Police took Hirose in for voluntary questioning beginning on January 24. During the conversations, he said that he did meet her in front of his residence. “But she left immediately. I don’t know where she went,” he told police.

Hirose later changed his story. He also said that he threw Kikuchi’s phone into a river.

The arrest is the second for Hirose. In April, 2017, Ibaraki police arrested him for paying an underage girl he met via a social-networking service to perform acts deemed obscene. The suspect was accused of violating the anti-child prostitution law. It is not known whether he was convicted.

News On Japan
POPULAR NEWS

Record rainfall caused 19 rivers to overflow across Fukui Prefecture, flooding roads and homes, triggering landslides and temporarily forcing authorities to issue the highest-level heavy rain emergency warning from early Sunday morning.

Drones were used to deliver food and daily necessities to an isolated mountain community in Himi City, Toyama Prefecture, on August 30 after torrential rain triggered a landslide that cut off road access, while volunteers continued flood recovery work in neighboring Ishikawa Prefecture.

Two typhoons east of Japan were moving northward on August 30, with Typhoon No. 23 (Banlan) overtaking Typhoon No. 22 (Artau), although neither storm is expected to have a direct impact on Japan.

A 9-minute, 13-second drone video filmed inside Aeon Mall Kumamoto two days after the deadly explosion has provided a detailed view of the destruction, showing collapsed ceilings, heavy dust and widespread damage that may have affected between one-third and nearly half of the shopping center.

Strong Typhoon No. 18 was moving northwest through the East China Sea on the night of August 26, gradually pulling away from Okinawa and the Amami Islands as lingering rain, strong winds and high waves were expected to ease. As of 9 p.m. on August 26, the typhoon was over waters north-northwest of Kume Island and moving northwest.

MEDIA CHANNELS
         

MORE Society NEWS

Three teenage boys who went missing after being swept offshore from the coast of Ichikikushikino, Kagoshima Prefecture, on August 28 were found in the sea near the scene on August 29 and confirmed dead.

A foreign man in his 30s suffered serious injuries after being struck by a car while riding a bicycle in Higashiomi, Shiga Prefecture, early on August 29, with police investigating the incident as a hit-and-run.

A fake video apparently created with generative AI showing a large bear eating piles of sliced bread has spread on social media following a series of illegal bread dumping incidents in Tottori Prefecture, prompting the prefectural government to warn that misinformation could cause economic harm.

Three youths, including a high school student and a junior high school student, have been arrested on suspicion of obstructing police duties after allegedly stealing fire extinguishers and spraying them toward a police station in Kasugai, Aichi Prefecture.

Yayoi Kusama, the Japanese avant-garde artist whose obsessive dots, nets, pumpkins and mirrored rooms grew from intensely personal visions into some of the most recognizable images in contemporary art, died at a hospital in Tokyo on August 14, 2026, at the age of 97. Her death was announced on August 27 by companies representing the artist, which said she continued painting until her final days.

A Toei bus crashed into a traffic signal in Tokyo's Edogawa Ward on the morning of August 26 after the driver lost control of the steering wheel while trying to shoo away a mosquito, leaving two male passengers injured.

Kanazawa's fire department is asking residents not to straighten or rearrange shoes removed by paramedics during emergency calls, warning that the well-intentioned gesture can delay the transport of patients by around 30 seconds and potentially interfere with medical care.

Two men who stole four luxury watches worth a combined 200 million yen from a store at Tokyo's Nakano Broadway may have carefully planned the 10-second theft, with one suspect renting an electric kick scooter shortly before the crime and investigators examining whether the other man's escape on foot was intended as a decoy.