TOKYO (TR) – Details are emerging over a 36-year-old Tokyo bar operator in custody on suspicion of abandoning the body of his 25-year-old girlfriend. The body of Maho Muroga was found submerged in a reservoir in northeastern Japan last month, reports TV Asahi (Oct. 13).
On October 5, police apprehended Takuya Miura on suspicion of abandoning a corpse. The arrest follows the discovery of the body of Muroga on October 4 in Lake Hanayama, located in Kurihara City, Miyagi Prefecture.
The grim discovery came four days after Muroga’s mother contacted police on the evening of September 30, desperate after losing all contact with her daughter.
“Endless trouble”
Miura operated a bar situated on the second floor above a Chinese restaurant near Numabukuro Station in Nakano Ward. He reportedly ran the venue single-handedly, preparing drinks and food alone.
While regular customers described Miura as an attentive listener who was “always gentle” and “never seen angry,” neighbors in the commercial building told a far darker tale, describing him as sullen, dismissive, and prone to calling emergency services at the slightest confrontation.
“There was endless trouble,” said a man who previously operated a restaurant downstairs. “He was blunt and would completely ignore greetings. Whenever we complained about the excessive noise coming from his bar, he would immediately call 110 on us. Nobody had a good impression of him.”
Bar hostesses
Miura reportedly boasted to local workers that his establishment was lucrative, catering to club hostesses for late-night “after-parties” where high-rollers ordered bottles priced at upwards of 1 million yen.
Muroga first met Miura as a customer after relocating to the capital. However, frequent disturbances soon caught the attention of neighbors.
“You could clearly hear violent fighting coming from up there,” a regular at a downstairs venue recalled. “The thuds were so heavy that dust would fall from the ceiling.”
“Going wild”
When one person went upstairs to investigate, Miura quickly cracked the door, insisting that “everything is fine,” while a tearful woman was spotted outside smoking. Another nearby worker recalled hearing a woman “going wild” inside the bar while a man attempted to restrain her.
The couple is believed to have moved in together around September of last year at an apartment roughly two kilometers from the bar. Domestic friction spilled into the open there as well.
“Around 5 a.m. back in June, I heard a woman screaming outside the auto-lock door,” a resident of the apartment building said. “She was wailing, ‘Give me back my phone!’ It echoed through the entire area.”
Police are currently interrogating Miura and investigating the exact circumstances behind Muroga’s death, with murder charges also being considered.
