TOKYO (TR) – Tokyo Metropolitan Police are working to identify a body found earlier this week in the home of 45-year-old actress Nagiko Tono, reports Tokyo Sports (July 4).
Police and emergency personnel arrived at the residence on July 3 after receiving a tip. They are now working to determine whether it may be Tono herself.
“An acquaintance who could not contact Tono went to look at the residence,” a police source says. “It seems that the body was sent for a DNA test because it was so badly decomposed that it was unclear whether it was her. It will likely take some time for the identification.”
“I can become empty”
Tono’s last blog update was on June 27. Until then, she had been updating it several times a day, posting photos of her homemade dishes and writing about her health and daily life. That last blog pots was titled “Teriyaki Chicken,” which, as the title suggests, introduced a cooking video.
She also frequently posted photos of her food on Instagram. She has been self-taught since she started living alone at the age of 16.
“I can become empty,” she once said in an interview. “It’s really hard to separate work and private life…If I’m busy, I have to switch, or it’ll be painful. So I cook on purpose, even if I don’t eat, even if I’m not hungry, I cook when people come over. I just love the time I spend cooking, like when I want to cook.”
Tono also talked about the significance of continuing to write a blog every day, which is a “point of contact” with her fans.
“If I don’t know what state I’m in, I can’t control it,” she said. “Because I work in a job that involves expressing my emotions, I become really messy. My emotions come in at strange places and get in the way… I’m always sick, tired, and hurt, and I need someone to know that… I want (my fans) to understand that, so I write every day.”
“Depression”
Tono also revealed her own painful experiences, such as child abuse and eating disorders in her childhood, through her blog and the media. In a post on June 26, she wrote, “I’ll be receiving home visits from a visiting nurse starting this week. I have to do paperwork and other things, pay for the clinic for online consultations, mail things and so on. I am facing things that I’m really bad at, and one place I noticed it said ‘disease name’ → ‘depression.'”
A resident living nearby the apartment where Tono lived said, “Around the night of June 3, an ambulance came to the apartment, and I also heard the sound of a police car, so I thought, ‘I wonder if something has happened.’ However, there had been nothing unusual up until then, so it was a surprise.”
Tono made her debut as a child actress at the age of 6. She has appeared in many popular works as an actress, including playing the heroine of the NHK morning drama “Suzuran” in 1999. Since the 2010s, she has been active in variety shows, such as appearing as a semi-regular on “Out x Deluxe” for Fuji TV.
The actress left her agency last year and is currently working as a freelancer.
Her post on June 26 went on to say that she had just visited a pharmacy for medicine. “I hope I’ll get better,” she wrote. “It’s tough, but let’s stay positive!”
