Ibaraki Prefectural Police took a 49-year-old woman into custody Monday, accusing her of stitching another woman’s lips together with a needle and thread inside the house they shared.
Koga Police Station identified the suspect as Masae Sakurai, who describes herself as a part-time worker. The charge is assault resulting in injury. Her 42-year-old housemate sustained wounds police have not estimated a recovery time for. Officers have declined to say whether Sakurai acknowledges or disputes the accusation.
Investigative sources cited by News On Japan said the needle punctured the skin repeatedly between the base of the nose and a point below the lower lip. The thread was drawn through the interior of the mouth, they said, leaving little visible from outside.
Police date the attack to June 29. The victim got out the following afternoon, choosing a moment when Sakurai had gone. Unable to form words, she entered a shop close to the house and held up a note she had written: “please help me.” A staff member telephoned emergency services.
She later told investigators she had wanted to leave sooner and did not, because Sakurai frightened her. Records place her at the residence since roughly April 2025.
NHK reported the woman gave police a brief account of what preceded the assault, saying a dispute had angered the suspect before her lips were sewn.
Neighbors describe a property that drew attention long before the arrest. Sakurai moved into the previously vacant house about a year ago and refused to join the neighborhood association, according to TV Asahi. Seven or eight men and women came and went regularly, one resident said, and nobody on the street knew how any of them earned a living. Roughly a month before the arrest, neighbors reported seeing a woman crouched outside the building through a night of heavy rain, wearing only a t-shirt and shorts, without an umbrella. Whether that woman was the victim has not been established.
Senior local police official Makoto Hiyama said investigators are examining reports, so far unverified, that a third person was inside the residence when the assault occurred. Officers are questioning others believed to have been staying at the property.
Koga sits in eastern Ibaraki Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo. What connected the two women, and what drew the others to the house, remains open.
