Murder of Shiori Ino

Shiori Ino was a 21-year-old Japanese university student who began dating Kazuhito Komatsu in January 1999 after meeting him at an amusement arcade near Ōmiya Station in Saitama Prefecture. Komatsu, who operated brothels with his brother Takeshi, misrepresented his age and occupation and pressured Ino with expensive gifts. When she tried to end the relationship, he responded with threats against her and her family, and by late March 1999 she had written a will and told a friend that she feared for her life.

After Ino stated on 14 June 1999 that she would not see Komatsu again, he, his brother, and an associate went to the Ino family home and threatened the family with fabricated claims. Ino recorded the confrontation and brought it to the Saitama Prefecture police the next day, but officers told her she had no case. She and her parents returned to the police on 16 June and were again turned away, and a free legal clinic also dismissed their concerns. Over the following months the family faced repeated silent phone calls and hundreds of letters and posters defaming Ino and her father, and further approaches to police produced no action.

In June 1999, Komatsu approached Yoshifumi Kubota, a former manager at one of the brothels, with a ¥20 million arrangement to have Ino killed. Kubota recruited two acquaintances, Akira Kawakami and Yoshitaka Ito, and in July Komatsu traveled to Okinawa to establish an alibi. On 26 October 1999, as Ino arrived at Okegawa Station to attend afternoon classes, Kubota stabbed her twice; she was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital, with the cause of death recorded as shock from massive bleeding.

Following the killing, Saitama police circulated false characterizations of Ino that tabloid and mainstream outlets amplified. The suspects were not arrested until an investigative journalist independently examined the case and published his findings in the magazine FOCUS. Kubota was arrested on 19 December 1999, and Takeshi Komatsu, Kawakami, and Ito were arrested the next day. An arrest warrant was issued for Kazuhito Komatsu, whose body was found in a lake in Teshikaga on 27 January 2000; his death was ruled a suicide.

The four surviving defendants were convicted. Kubota received an eighteen-year sentence, Kawakami and Ito fifteen years each, and Takeshi Komatsu a life sentence that the Supreme Court upheld in 2006. Three former Saitama police officers — Toshio Katagiri, Hirokazu Furuta, and Tsuyoshi Honda — were convicted of document falsification over their handling of Ino's complaints and received suspended prison terms in 2000. Ino's family sued the Saitama prefectural government, and the courts ordered compensation while declining to find that police neglect had caused her death. In November 2000, a stalker regulation law took effect in response to the case.