A 52-year-old man was sentenced to life in prison Thursday for murdering a female acquaintance and mutilating her body in 1999 while on parole from a life term for a murder he committed two decades ago.
According to the court, Kenji Yokota, a former construction worker, strangled Akiko Saga, 21, of Tokyo's Kita Ward, after a quarrel at his home in Adachi Ward in February 1999. He chopped the body into several parts with a kitchen knife, put them in vinyl bags and dumped them at several locations along the nearby Arakawa River.
Yokota had been on parole for a year, after having served time for a 1978 robbery-murder. At the Saitama District Court, presiding Judge Masaki Hara said Yokota's responsibility is grave, but not to the extent that warrants capital punishment. Prosecutors had demanded the death penalty.
The judge, noting the accused spent most of his adult life in prison, said, "Although he committed a serious crime just one year after returning to society, (the murder) was an accidental crime triggered by a quarrel with the victim."