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A human body found inside a suitcase floating in a Tokyo canal last month has been identified as that of a Chinese woman missing for over two years, police said Thursday.
The corpse, clad in a camisole and short pants, was not badly decomposed when discovered on June 27, which local reports said indicated the woman had not been dead for long.
But police were unable to confirm the identity of the body as being that of 34-year-old Yang Mei until Thursday, a police spokesman said.
Yang came to Japan in September 2013 as a trainee, one of the tens of thousands of foreigners – mostly from China, Vietnam and Indonesia – who participate in the government’s Industrial Trainee and Technical Internship Program (TTIP).
A Tokyo police spokesman said that Yang had been put on a missing persons watch list by police in Kyoto, western Japan.
“She was working at an auto-parts plant in Kyoto but disappeared from her dormitory after being seen in its cafeteria in March 2014,” the spokesman said.
The company reported her disappearance to the local police and to authorities in her home town in China, according to online news site Tokyo Reporter.
The spokesman added that police matched the fingerprints of the body with those of Yang from the immigration bureau. Her visa was valid for one year upon entry into the country but had not been renewed, the police said.
Her body was discovered in the Keihin canal in front of the Dai-ichi Hotel Tokyo Seafort in Shinagawa ward and just 200 metres from the Tennozu Isle Station on the Tokyo Monorail station by a man aboard a boat.
The black suitcase containing Yang’s body had a large stone in it, according to The Mainichi. Police suspect that whoever discarded the body had tried to sink the suitcase to prevent its discovery.
An autopsy failed to identify the cause of death, but Yang apparently had no obvious external injuries, according to the newspaper. She is believed to have been dead for about a week, the report said.
TTIP is officially described as an internship programme under which people from developing countries can learn skills at Japanese companies.
But it has been criticised by rights activists as a scheme to provide cheap labour for the textile, construction, farming, manufacturing and other industries.
The programme has been plagued by participants running away and going missing in Japan when no longer able to stand working conditions activists have described as “abusive” or simply seeking better wages.
(AFP/KYODO)
