Japanese police yesterday said they have arrested a couple whose 33-year-old daughter froze to death in a tiny room where they had confined her for years because they believed she had a form of mental illness that made her violent.
The Osaka Prefectural Police Department said Airi Kakimoto’s body was found in a state of extreme malnutrition after her parents reported the death on Saturday. She was 145cm tall and weighed 19kg.
Yasutaka Kakimoto, 55, and Yukari Kakimoto, 53, said that they fed their daughter only once a day and kept her in a 3m2 room for about 15 years, police said.
“Our daughter was mentally ill and, from age 16 or 17, she became violent, so we kept her inside the room,” police quoted her parents as saying.
People with mental and physical disabilities and their families can still suffer stigma and shame in Japan, despite some changes in public attitudes.
The parents added the small room — fitted with a camera and a double door that could only be unlocked from the outside — to their house and equipped it with a makeshift toilet and tube to a water tank outside, police said.
About 10 surveillance cameras were installed outside the single-story home, which was surrounded by a 2m-high fence, police added.
The parents found their daughter dead on Monday last week, but they reported the death on Saturday.
“We wanted to be together with our daughter,” police quoted them as saying.
The couple were arrested on suspicion of illegally disposing of a body, a step that often precedes more serious charges, police said.
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