Woman dies one month after being stabbed by stalker

Tuesday 08th September, 05:22 AM JST

TOKYO —

A 21-year-old woman, who was stabbed in her Minato Ward home on Aug 3, died on Monday, after more than a month in an unconscious state in hospital, police said Tuesday. Her 78-year-old grandmother, who was attacked with a knife and a hammer, died shortly after the incident. Koji Hayashi, a 41-year-old man from Chiba, has been charged with murder.

Miho Ejiri worked at a store in Akihabara where girls would first massage male customer’s earlobes, clean the inside of their ears and then massage their head, all the while engaging in conversation with the man’s head in their lap. The store charged 2,700 yen per half an hour for the service, and Ejiri was extremely popular, even once appearing on a TV show where she said she worked 6 days a week for up to 10 hours a day, making around 700,000 yen a month.

Police said that Hayashi frequented the store almost every week for over a year, sometimes spending up to 5 hours in the store and once spending more than 300,000 yen in one month. He asked Ejiri to be his girlfriend in April this year but she refused, and shortly after, he was banned from entering the store. Hayashi began following her home after work and loitering in her neighborhood. Ejiri had to have a male employee escort her home on occasions.

Police were called to her Minato home at around 9 a.m. on Aug 3, and found Hayashi standing in the entrance covered in blood. He told police he had stabbed both Ejiri and her grandmother, and he was arrested. Ejiri’s grandmother was pronounced dead shortly after she was rushed to hospital, but Ejiri remained in a critical state until her death on Monday.

News reports

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Latest 15 of 46 Total Comments Show All

northlondon at 07:54 PM JST - 8th September

A sad case like him would have stalked and murdered a poor girl under any circumstances. If they banned ear cleaning salons, thigh massage joints and hostess clubs overnight, these madmen would just end up going to straight massage salons or start harrassing shop girls. Her place of employment had nothing to do with his actions except for the fact that it was the establishment where he found her. Are people here saying that he was perfectly normal until he started getting his ears cleaned ? What rubbish.
norinrad21 at 07:58 PM JST - 8th September

May she RIP
womanforwomen at 08:05 PM JST - 8th September

He is crazy alright. This kind of service is not normal. At 21 you can keep any man's head on your lap and clean his dirty years. At 41, 51, 61 it will not be the same. Having a strange man's head on your lap is asking for trouble. Only lunatics will solicit that kind of service. Normal people would find a woman who is long term! Poor girl, no one to guide her. And the society did not say anything when a 21 year old girl was earning that amount of money working 10 hours a day 6 days a week. She is 21 and should have been enjoying her life doing affordable things.
AK619 at 08:47 PM JST - 8th September

The only arrest and court orders that are enforced immediately, are those against foreigners. This girl didn't have to die if the Police had stepped in to protect her, what good is the Japanese Police? Why do Japanese pay taxes???
LuckyLangers at 09:13 PM JST - 8th September

Aweful crime and the girl and her occupation has nothing to do with causing the incident. Whilst not everyone is expected to be a black belt, some kind of self defense training, knife training, might be a lesson for us all. Japan is a safe place, but nutters are about and reading this article was quite sad but true.
bobbafett at 09:17 PM JST - 8th September

I never said the girl was asking to get murdered by a nutcase but her and her company were happy about the easy money those nutcases paid up.

I can assure you that if he went there as often as he did spending that kinda money and they were happy to oblige him again and again and were so blinded by the cash that they chose to ignore all of the danger signals then they sure went a long way to heaping the disaster upon themselves.

They acted to prevent it only after they had taken enough of his money but by then it was too late. The stalking started the minute the cash dried up. Banned for no cash. No other reason.
AK619 at 09:55 PM JST - 8th September

The guys that go to these establishments are extremely lonely. They have no social life but work and Beer. Some build an imagination that these girls actually care about them. These girls really exploit these guys feelings, by making them feel wanted by affectionately touching them and putting there heads between there young legs. I guess after she played with this guys heart for months, and made him feel like she loved him, after she dumped him and became destitute, she realized she met the wrong fool! May this be an example for the young girls that enter into this industry, serving beef at Yoshinoya is better then having a stalker crazy after you.
northlondon at 10:20 PM JST - 8th September

I guess after she played with this guys heart for months, and made him feel like she loved him, after she dumped him and became destitute, she realized she met the wrong fool! May this be an example for the young girls that enter into this industry, serving beef at Yoshinoya is better then having a stalker crazy after you.

Excuse me for being direct and all that, but you are talking absolute shite. 'Played with this guys heart' ? 'Dumped him' ? She was cleaning his ears!

It sounds as though a lot of guys on this site have a real complex about attractive girls making money and people are trying to defend that nutjob who murdered a grandmother and her grand-daughter.

AK, so you believe that we should tolerate stalking and violent men and have all women work in Yoshinoya to stop these incidents happening ? Sorry my friend, but that is the most irresponsible comment I have read for a long time.
womanforwomen at 11:25 PM JST - 8th September

No one is defending the man. Bobbie and AK very good anlayses.Very sad for the 2 women but it is a lesson for the others who think that you can make money doing silly things. I can open a salon and a spa, and many Jmen will visit for sure ( not a problem, i have what they want).I can make much more than what this young woman made. And I also know approximately how long I will live. Even though I have a fiance and some tough guys as friends, I know for sure who will patronise the services.

But no thank you. I will continue with my job that pays me ok. Thank goodness for my strong, supportive family and friends.
Gloobey at 01:08 AM JST - 9th September

Look, in a society like this where most grown men are incapable of having a meaningful relationship with a woman unless she is pixelated, this kind of crap is going to happen. Having his head in her lap once of or twice a week was as close as this guy was ever gonna get to a relationship and the establishment she worked at should have had safeguards in place to prevent this sort of thing from happening. Seriously, what kind of nut job would pay for this service? They must know what kind of clients they attract. Sad but hardly surprising.

...The attitude towards women in this country really stinks...
Fadamor at 04:27 AM JST - 9th September

Ehh... the woman's not at fault for doing her job. She's not at fault for spending the money she earned doing her job (and believe me... cleaning stranger's ears means she EARNED it!) The one at fault is the guy walking into a business and expecting a relationship simply because he was a regular customer. Nutcase? Probably. That type of business attracting nutcases? Again, probably. There are other ways to clean ears that do not involve putting the customer's head in your lap. That obviously was the "hook" this business used to bring in customers. They needed to realize that the "hook" was going to bring in more anti-social types than social types.
herefornow at 04:33 AM JST - 9th September

This is a society that has numerous glaring contradictions/hypocracies, and this is one. Society winks at these business establishments, knowing that they are skirting the laws, and also knowing that they are likely to attract a certain percentage of nut jobs as clients, but then hide behind hideously weak anti-stalking laws. If J-men are having an increasingly difficult time having real relationships, and these kinds of cases are becoming more common, then the laws, and the way they are enforced need to be changed. Critisizing the gals, and not addressing the underlying social issue, is crap.
Tommygun at 04:40 AM JST - 9th September

womanforwomen you really need to open your eyes and get out into the real world where life isn't so perfect that people can pick and choose what job they do. You don't know the girl nor her reasons why she did this job yet you call her silly and that her getting stabbed and dying is a lesson for others. In another article you're defending a 40 year old man without a job for putting a kid in a freezer because living without a job is "hard". How old are you honestly?

Possibly she was working to support herself if she lived with her Grandmother. Hard to get a decent job that pays something at 21.
mnemosyne23 at 05:27 AM JST - 9th September

Blaming the victim in this case is ridiculous. I don't care what your job is -- being the victim of a murderous stalker is not your fault. She could just as easily have been the checkout girl at the local combini, or the cashier at a McDonald's. He saw her, he liked her, he obsessed over her, and then -- when he couldn't have her -- he killed her. The man was deranged, and no matter how you slice it he is completely at fault. I agree that the girl's employer should have created safeguards to keep its employees safe, but in the end it was the lunatic with an Oedipus complex who committed the crime, and he alone should pay for it.
womanforwomen at 10:10 PM JST - 9th September

Tommygun, you have misunderstood my point. A 21 year old doing this job has put herself too close to death.She risked herself too much. Don't you think that the risk would have been a little less if she was working at a kombini or at Yoshinaya? Keeping the head of a man and that too a lunatic one on your lap is a little too intimate.

If money was not the motivation maybe, this girl would never even look at this man. I just passed by a club a few minutes ago. On most days it is empty. Today, there were three guys in the bar. Two in their twenties and a third one was older. The older guy seemed to be around 40. If that guy was in the train or a store or something, that girl would never even look at him. But here, she was 'lovingly' chatting to him. The bars near Nerima City hall are very small and cheap establishments and you can see many such scenes without a problem.

She was popular, was on tv and at 21 girls are very attractive. She could have lived today and saved her grandmother if she did not put herself at risk.