TOKYO (TR) – For one Japanese woman, an ordinary meal with friends still carries a lingering sense of terror. Whenever the group gathers for a souvenir photo, she steps aside, offering to take the picture instead.
“I can’t be in the shot, so I’ll be the photographer,” she routinely tells them.
Years after rejecting an acquaintance who subsequently besieged her with up to 50 phone calls a day, barged into her apartment, and secretly installed a location-tracking application on her smartphone, the victim remains trapped in a living nightmare. Despite moving away and obtaining a police restraining order, she still wears hats and masks in public, ducks into convenience stores to check if she is being followed, and inspects her belongings daily for hidden Bluetooth tracking tags.
Her ordeal reflects a disturbing and increasingly lethal reality across Japan: the explosion of “digital stalking.”
High-profile cases
According to the National Police Agency, nationwide consultations regarding stalking reached 22,800 cases last year — the second-highest figure on record. Among them, inquiries involving the unauthorized placement of GPS devices and anti-loss tracking tags reached 1,190 cases. Consultations specifically involving compact tags surged to 679, an increase of over 300 from the previous year following their inclusion under revised anti-stalking laws.
The weaponization of commercial tracking devices has already proven fatal in several high-profile cases.
In Mito City, Ibaraki Prefecture, a female nail artist was murdered in 2025 after her ex-boyfriend tracked her movements by secreting anti-loss tags inside a stuffed animal and her car. In June, a teenage schoolgirl was found murdered along a riverbank in Sagamihara City, Kanagawa Prefecture; investigators revealed her former boyfriend had forced her to run a location-sharing app and threatened her if she attempted to delete it.
“Had no guilt whatsoever”
Kazuya Yamauchi, who has run a private investigation agency in Tokyo for two decades, says requests to sweep vehicles and personal belongings for miniature GPS devices have become a monthly staple.
“Very few perpetrators see themselves as criminals,” Yamauchi said, noting that palm-sized tags have lowered the psychological hurdle to committing surveillance. “Because these devices are cheap, accessible, and hard to detect, people believe they can monitor someone with almost zero risk.”
That warped mindset was echoed by a reformed stalker who recently underwent court-supported counseling. The man admitted that after his partner broke up with him, he spent days scouring her social media profile photos. By matching buildings and hanging laundry visible in the background against 360-degree street panorama maps, he successfully triangulated her new residence.
“I had no guilt whatsoever,” the man confessed. “I convinced myself that I was the victim, that she was forcing me to do this. I was ecstatic when I found her.”
“Escalates much more rapidly toward extreme violence”
Dr. Yuki Fukui, a psychiatrist specializing in stalker psychology, warned that digital tools have pushed stalking into a dangerous new dimension.
“It functions similarly to a substance addiction,” Fukui explained. “When an offender doesn’t know where the victim is, an intermittent location ping on GPS briefly satisfies the craving, which in turn reinforces the obsession. Because they can dominate and monitor the victim without physical confrontation, the behavior escalates much more rapidly toward extreme violence.”
The Japanese government is currently reviewing measures that could mandate counseling for perpetrators as well as fitted GPS ankle monitors for convicted stalkers.
For the victims already forced into hiding, however, the damage is already permanent.
“I used to post where I was on social media all the time, but that’s impossible now,” the female victim said. “Why do I have to keep taking countermeasures when I’m the victim? How long do I have to keep running? I feel like it will never end.”
