TOKYO (TR) – A woman covered in blood and holding a knife. That was the scene in a quiet residential area in suburban Kokubunji City on the morning of December 28.
At around 7:55 a.m., Yumi Nakayama, 62, allegedly stabbed her husband, 65-year-old Yuji, in the neck with a fruit knife at their third-floor apartment.
Yumi then called police. She said, “I stabbed my husband with a knife.”
Upon the arrival of emergency services, Yuji was already in cardiac arrest. He was later confirmed dead from blood loss at the hospital where he was taken.
Police later accused Yumi of murder. When explaining the incident to the press, Tokyo Metropolitan Police described Yuji as a “company employee.” However, his actual qualifications extended to law enforcement — and even included protecting a prime minister, reports the site for weekly tabloid Shukan Bunshun.
When officers arrived at the scene, Yumi was in a daze, covered in blood and holding a knife in her hand. Yuji was lying bleeding next to the sofa in the living room.
During voluntary questioning, Yumi explained, “I saw my husband cheating on me, taking a mistress, and bringing her home. We had been arguing about the affair since the morning.”
According to Bunshun, he then started using abusive language, which caused her to get angry.
“I stabbed him with a knife while he was on the sofa,” Yumi said. She added that she denied having an intention to kill. “I pointed the knife at him, and he stood up and got stabbed. I didn’t mean to kill him,” she said.
“Protecting important people”
A Tokyo Metropolitan Police official says Yuji served in the police force.
“He retired in 2019,” the official says. “When he was younger, he had a long career in security, such as serving as a security guard for important people. After leaving the front lines in his 50s, he served as the head of security at several suburban police stations. He also served as the head of the command division at the communications command headquarters. His last job before retirement was as the deputy chief of Hino Police Station.”
The official goes on to say that he was entrusted as an SP, or member of the renowned Security Police.
“In other words, he was protecting important people,” the official says. “He had a strong sense of justice. In 1997, when he was an active SP, he gave artificial respiration to a small child who was drowning in a pool near his home in Chiba Prefecture, where he lived at the time. He was later granted an award from the local mayor. He was also selected to protect important people in the political world. The most notable of them was former Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa.”
A reporter for Bunshun telephoned Hosokawa about Yuji.
“Everyone still remembers the SPs,” Hosokawa said. “He was a very respectable person. He was gentle, and his tone and actions were very gentlemanly. I think he was there when I was in office [as Prime Minister]. I think he joined later. I don’t remember the details. But he was very quick, kept a low profile and did a very good job.”
When Hosokawa was told about the incident, he couldn’t hide his surprise.
“I haven’t heard much about his family from him, but I don’t think he was the type of person who would have a mistress or anything like that,” Hosokawa said. “I haven’t been in contact with him since I left. I sometimes wondered how he was doing.”
