Woman handed reduced sentence over role after daughter allegedly beheaded man in Sapporo hotel

TOKYO – A Japanese high court on Feb 19 handed a reduced suspended prison term to a woman over her role in connection with her daughter’s alleged murder and beheading of a man in a Sapporo hotel in 2023, scrapping a lower court ruling.

Hiroko Tamura, 63, was given a sentence of six months in prison, suspended for two years, with the Sapporo High Court finding her guilty only in aiding her daughter, Runa, in desecrating the corpse, and not in its abandonment as the lower court had found.

Runa, 32, whose own trial is yet to start, is accused of stabbing the 62-year-old man in the neck at a hotel in the Susukino entertainment district in July 2023, then beheading him and taking his head home in a suitcase.

In May 2025, the Sapporo District Court sentenced Hiroko Tamura to 14 months in prison, suspended for three years, for aiding in the abandonment of a corpse and allowing the head to be hidden at their home as well as desecrating it.

Scrapping the lower court ruling, the high court’s Presiding Judge Kiyoshi Aonuma said the corpse had already been abandoned when Runa brought the victim’s head home, therefore her mother is cleared of the charge.

But asking her husband, Osamu Tamura, to film her daughter inflicting damage to the head indirectly “strengthened their daughter’s criminal intent”, and the charge of aiding the desecration of a corpse was upheld, the judge said.

Runa had originally asked her mother to film the act, according to the ruling.

The mother’s defence counsel argued that she was not guilty and is prepared to appeal against the decision. KYODO NEWS