An individual found dead in the Tokyo neighborhood of Fussa on Thursday bore macabre injuries, police said. The victim’s face had been completely skinned with a knife.
Media reports said the victim, Yoshi Tsuchida, 38, was a former woman who had undergone a sex change. The rest of Tsuchida’s body bore no injuries. It lay wrapped in a blanket, with a plastic bag over the face.
The case is being investigated by the Metropolitan Police Department’s Fussa Police Station.
The body was discovered by a man in his 20s who shares the apartment with Tsuchida and who identified himself as the victim’s adopted son, police said. The man called an ambulance.
The Sankei Shimbun reported that the victim had undergone a sex change operation. The adopted son, who had been injecting female hormones, was in a relationship with the victim, the newspaper said.
Police had received several calls earlier this year from neighbors reporting shouting from inside the apartment, the report said.
The man reportedly told police that the two had returned home separately at around 5:30 a.m. and went to sleep in separate rooms. He said that when he woke up later in the day, he found the victim’s body.
The apartment is in a residential area half a kilometer northeast of JR Fussa Station.
