<figure id="attachment_446991" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 640px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-446991"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="05652671"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/11/fe5052d808cb01ae0f147a5b4a669e37.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-446991" class="wp-caption-text">Satō and victim A moved into the Nakano tower apartment two months before the incident.</figcaption></figure>
<h2> A past of being pressured by a host</h2>
On November 12, the defendant questioning of Satō Kotomi (26)—charged with injury resulting in death for stabbing her boyfriend, certified public accountant A, in the neck with scissors in a high-rise apartment in Nakano Ward, Tokyo—was held.
According to the indictment, Satō is suspected of stabbing A, with whom she was then in a relationship, in the left side of the neck with scissors on September 16, 2024, causing his death. At the first hearing, Satō claimed:
“I did not stab him with scissors.”
and pleaded not guilty.
<a href="https://friday.kodansha.co.jp/article/446883">For details, please read the first part: [Nakano Tower Apartment Murder Case, Part 1: The Woman Accused of Stabbing Her Boyfriend in the Neck With Scissors Pleads Not Guilty — Another Side Revealed in Court].</a>
During the defendant questioning this day, Satō described the detailed circumstances of the incident. When her attorney asked again what she thinks about what happened, she paused for several seconds and then tearfully said:
“I feel terribly sorry for doing something irreversible to him.”
That day, Satō again spoke in her own words about her background.
Born and raised in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Satō graduated from a technical college and moved to Tokyo in 2019 for a job. However, she left the job after one year and attended a prep school aiming for university admission. When classes went online due to COVID-19, she gave up. She lived hand-to-mouth, surviving on part-time work at restaurants and real estate offices, and began accumulating immense stress.
During this time, she met a host on TikTok Live and began frequenting host clubs. The host pressured her:
“If you don’t spend money, you’ll be put in the cleaning group and won’t be able to see me,”
“If you don’t spend more money, I can’t beat the other hosts,”
and so she took on more and more debt. Her visits increased from once a week to three or four times, and her unsettled bills continued to skyrocket.
When she couldn’t pay her tabs, the host’s attitude changed drastically. He told her, “You have no choice but to do it,” and forced her to work in delivery health services.
She lied to her mother to borrow money and used it for repayment, but the debt continued to grow. When she finally confessed to her mother that she owed money to hosts, her mother and grandfather helped her pay 60 million yen—but still, she said, “I couldn’t pay it all.”
The host she was living with told her, “I’ll end your life,” and slammed her head against the wall repeatedly, leaving her face covered in blood.
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<h2>“Are you doing delivery health?”</h2>
Amid such hellish circumstances, the person she met on a dating app was A. When asked about her first impression of him when they met at the start of 2024, Satō said:
“He suggested date plans and invited me out, and that made me happy.” (All quotes below are Satō’s statements.)
She said she felt affection toward him.
In February, she accepted A’s proposal and they began dating. A, who accepted her despite her struggles with alopecia, grew increasingly affectionate toward her. Satō also expressed her feelings:
“He told me he liked how bright I was and how my emotions were easy to read because they were intense. I’d always thought having intense emotions was a negative thing, so I was really happy he accepted that.”
Looking toward their future together, the two moved into the tower apartment—the later crime scene—last July. Satō escaped her fear-filled life under the hosts and began living with the man she loved. But her debt remained. She secretly continued meeting former delivery-health clients privately to receive money. Naturally, she kept this from A.
“I think he had realized it. I told him I was doing video editing work, but I didn’t even own a computer. He once asked me, ‘Are you doing delivery health?’ I was shocked and brushed the question off.”
Satō testified this in court. She also spoke about her debt:
“I think he knew because I wasn’t able to get a credit card.”
Despite his suspicions, A continued the relationship.
Satō also recounted the events of September 16, the day of the incident.
Although it was a holiday, the two went to A’s workplace in Hibiya so he could pick up some documents. While shopping at a bakery on the way home, they got into an argument over something trivial. Their mood remained sour on the train back to Nakano. A stayed upset, and unable to endure it any longer, Satō said:
“If you don’t fix your mood, I’ll post a photo of me without my wig on my Instagram Story.”
“To make him think I’d never actually do something like that, I said, ‘I’ve uploaded the photo to my Story.’”
It was a lie. But A believed she really had posted it and became furious:
“This time I won’t forgive you. If you do something to me, I’ll do something back.”
Even after they returned home, his anger didn’t subside. Satō took scissors from a drawer in the TV stand, trying to get A to sit on the sofa:
“I held the scissors in my right hand, pointed slightly downward, and said, ‘Sit down.’”
A refused and grabbed both of Satō’s hands with his own.
“Since he grabbed both my hands while facing me, I said, ‘Let go.’”
Around 10 seconds later—
“When I realized it, there was blood.”
At A’s request, Satō called an ambulance at 119. Following instructions over the phone, she performed chest compressions. She was then arrested at the scene by responding police officers.
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead="Sato said, I did not intend to kill her."></div>
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<h2>“I thought I could go home once the misunderstanding was cleared up.”</h2>
After being arrested and questioned at the police station, Satō said:
“I thought he had been saved because he reacted while I was doing chest compressions.”
But A died at the hospital he was taken to.
“I never intended to kill him, and I thought I could go home once the misunderstanding was cleared.”
She had not grasped the seriousness of the situation.
〈He grabbed my hands, so I shook them off, and my right hand became free. I raised my right hand. With the scissors I was holding in that hand, I raised it. Since he resisted, I had the feeling of pushing back against that resistance, and I swung it with the intention of stopping just short around his neck. It pierced the area above the left collarbone, so I pulled it out immediately.〉
(From the prosecutor’s written statement of her earlier testimony.)
This was Satō’s statement immediately after the incident.
However, on this day, Satō denied her previous claim that “I raised my right hand”, saying: “That is not true.” She explained the reason for reversing her statement:
“I really don’t know why it was stabbed when I saw blood coming from his neck. If I denied it, I thought I wouldn’t be able to go home. I thought I wouldn’t be able to see him again. I felt it would be wrong to insist ‘I’m not at fault’ while being suspected. What I am saying now is the truth.”
When asked about her feelings toward A, her voice trembled:
“I loved how he accepted and validated me. I know I’m not the one who should be saying this, but I still love him deeply, and I desperately want to see him.”
On the other hand, the prosecution appeared skeptical about her retraction. When they asked, “Did you feel the sensation of stabbing him?” Satō answered:
“No. When I realized it, there was blood.”
Satō is 156 cm tall, while A was 170 cm. Despite facing each other, the wound was at a high position and the cut angled downward—details pointed out by the prosecution. Satō maintained: “I did not swing downward.”
Because this is a lay-judge trial, the conclusion is expected soon. Uncovering the truth will be the least that can be done for A’s memory.

 A woman who stabbed to death her boyfriend, a certified public accountant, with a pair of scissors in a room in a Nakano apartment building in Nakano Ward in September 2012 went on trial for the first time on November 7, 2012.

Part 2 – Nakano Tower Apartment Killing: Woman Who Stabbed Her Boyfriend Insists on a Not Guilty Verdict

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