Japan | Man arrested over murder of woman in Tokyo in 2018

TOKYO— A 47-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of killing a 29-year-old woman in Tokyo’s Roppongi district in 2018.

Police said Nobuaki Takahashi, who had been on an international wanted list since June 2019, was arrested on Saturday at Narita airport after being extradited from Malaysia, NTV reported.

Takahashi left Japan for Malaysia on Oct 13, 2018, five days before the body of Aisha Kumi Balletta, 29, was found in his apartment. Balletta, a Japanese-American, had multiple head injuries and had been dead for more than a week. She lived in Yokohama and was apparently a regular visitor to the apartment, neighbors said.

Her body was found wrapped in a sheet on the floor beside the bed in the one-room 4th-floor apartment about 350 meters from Roppongi Station.

A male acquaintance of Takahashi went to Azabu police station and reported that a woman’s body was in the apartment and that his friend had disappeared.

Takahashi is suspected of killing Balletta by repeatedly striking her on the head with a dumbbell which was found in the apartment.

Police said Takahashi has denied killing Balletta.

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Speaking to reporters after Takahashi’s arrest, Balletta’s mother said, "For the past 7 1/2 years, I have longed to see my daughter every day. She was a kind, hardworking, and family-oriented girl,” Sankei Shimbun reported.

“My daughter was not in a 'relationship' with that man; she was a victim who was controlled by him and suffered from the terror of threats, surveillance, and violence. I hope the truth will be revealed in the upcoming trial, and I strongly hope for the death penalty for the sake of my daughter's honor."

In Japan, the death penalty is actively used and frequently imposed for especially heinous murders—particularly those involving premeditation, extreme violence, vulnerability of the victim, or cases that shock public conscience.

Balletta’s mother explicitly called for the death penalty, framing the crime as not just a spontaneous killing but one rooted in prolonged control, threats, surveillance, and violence against her daughter.

Japanese courts often hand down death sentences in similar cases of intimate-partner or acquaintance murders that demonstrate cruelty, especially when the victim was subjected to ongoing abuse before the fatal attack.

If Takahashi is convicted of intentional homicide with aggravating factors (such as the use of a weapon, the manner of body disposal, and the suspect’s flight), this case has a realistic potential path toward a death sentence under Japan’s retributive and deterrent-oriented capital punishment system, which still carries out executions by hanging for the “worst of the worst” crimes.

Source: Japan Today, Staff, April 26, 2026

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde

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