TOKYO, Jan. 26 -(Kyodo)- The police on early Thursday arrested a middle-aged man who has allegedly threatened to force a young woman to live with him and a group of 10 women and an infant living with him for some years in a bid to form a “harem” in suburban Tokyo.
The police identified the suspect as Hirohito Shibuya, a 57-year-old unemployed man from Tokyo’s Higashiyamato.
Shibuya allegedly threatened one of the women by saying, “I’m a former senior official of the Japanese Self-Defense Force, and there are some secret agents around me,” according to investigative sources.
A former 59-year-old wife of the man, however, told the police he had never worked with the SDF, the sources said.
Shibuya is suspected of pestering a woman in her 20s for about two hours from 4:15 p.m. on Oct. 20 to live with him and those women.
The police searched his house Thursday and called on the public to supply information based on suspicions he may have threatened other women.
According to investigations, Shibuya threatened her, saying, “If you leave here, you will be minced. He was also quoted as saying, “If you tell anyone, you will be killed.”
Shibuya denied the allegation, saying, “I just told her what appeared in a dream,” the sources said.
In a recent interview with Kyodo News, Shibuya initially said he had not threatened her, but later said, “I may have said things like that while I was carried away telling fortunes.”
“In a dream I became aware that I’d become popular with women if I made certain incantations,” he said. “Women began to gather at my home when I was fortune-telling. I’m now living communally with those women in a polygamy-like way.”
Shibuya, who was divorced in October 1999, began living with several women in February 2000, and repeatedly married and divorced with those women then aged 20 and 49 from December 2002, according sources close to him.
Most of the women continued to use his family name even after their divorce and continued to live with him, the sources said.
Shibuya told Kyodo News he cannot find work because he suffers from gout and panic disorder, and these women have been earning a living.
“I plan to visit a holiday cottage in Hawaii this weekend,” he said.