A 47-year-old former assistant at Jikei University School of Medicine in Tokyo is suspected of allowing vocational school students to dissect cadavers without a permit, the Metropolitan Police Department said Tuesday.
Police searched the university on suspicion that the former assistant violated the law regulating the dissection and preservation of bodies.
The man is suspected of bringing chiropractic students from the Japan branch of a vocational school based in Australia to an anatomy room of the university several times from about 2003 to 2004, where they dissected cadavers without a permit.
The university said the assistant graduated from the pharmaceutical science department of another university and was not a licensed physician but it declined to comment further on the case, citing the ongoing police investigation.
Each session lasted one to two days, police said.
The assistant resigned from the university last February for personal reasons.
The law he is suspected of violating prohibits dissection of cadavers without the authorization of public health centers and must be performed by doctors, dentists or university professors teaching forensic medicine and human anatomy.