Japan rethinks its stalking laws after Pokemon store murder

Long before Moe Harukawa was killed, she lived in fear. The 21-year-old shop assistant had reported her ex-boyfriend to police and a court had ordered him to stay away from her.

Yet weeks later, Taiki Hirokawa, 26, walked into Harukawa’s workplace – a packed Pokemon store in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district – and stabbed her repeatedly in the neck and torso before turning the knife he was carrying on himself. Both later died in hospital.

Harukawa’s gruesome murder in March at the hands of a man who had already been arrested and charged with stalking her has stirred debate in Japan on how to stop such fixation-driven attacks.