Hikone Police Department

Hikone Police Department enters the investigation through a missing-person report filed by a couple seeking their absent sister. Their recognition of the dead woman’s belongings connects a local search in Shiga Prefecture to the unidentified body in Tokyo and gives investigators a concrete route toward identification.

Role in the Identification

The Tokyo investigators had been unable to identify the woman found in an apartment: her effects and clothing were photographed, and details of her physical features were circulated to police departments across Japan. Earlier responses produced no match. The breakthrough came when the couple who had filed a missing-person report with Hikone Police Department examined the photographs and said that the belongings resembled those of the husband’s missing sister. The estimated age, hairstyle, and blood type also matched, turning an initial recognition into a stronger, though still provisional, identification lead.

Cooperation Across Jurisdictions

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police asked the couple to bring items that could provide identifying material, and they traveled to Tokyo with the sister’s hairbrush, makeup, and accessories. Shuhei Matsumiya met them at Tokyo Station. When the brother wanted to view the body, Matsumiya cautioned that decomposition had made the face unrecognizable and stressed that the identification was not yet certain. At the task-force meeting, investigators chose fingerprints and DNA to test the proposed match. Hikone Police Department’s role is therefore shown through the missing-person report that made recognition possible; the evidence does not describe the department’s internal organization or further actions in the case.

Wider Investigative Significance

The episode illustrates how an identification can depend on records and recognition gathered far from the crime scene. The belongings first offered a resemblance, while the agreement among age, hairstyle, and blood type strengthened the lead; forensic comparison was then needed to establish identity. That chain also sits within a larger problem of concealed identities: investigators found no reliable personal documents for the missing apartment tenant, and the material evidence eventually linked the man known in Sendai as Shunichi Watabe to Mutsuo Koshikawa. Hikone Police Department’s contribution is narrower but pivotal: a report filed locally brought relatives and identifying objects into the Tokyo inquiry, helping transform an unknown victim into a person investigators could pursue by name and evidence.