Yamaguchi prefectural police are investigating the death of a newborn boy whose body was found floating in a fishing harbor in Hofu, after an autopsy found internal bleeding in his head and abdomen.
The body was found floating at the Nishiuura fishing port shortly after 3:30 p.m. on November 3, police said. The boy was 52 centimeters tall, weighed 2.9 kilograms and had black hair, and is estimated to have died in late October.
The internal bleeding came from external impact, and the cause of death was a loss of blood circulating through the body, the autopsy found. Police are investigating on the view that someone may have killed the boy and abandoned the body at sea, treating it as a possible murder and abandonment of a corpse.
Questions over the mother
No information has been released about the mother, including her age, whereabouts or whether she has been identified. Police have not said whether they are seeking her as a witness or a suspect.
Cases in which a newborn is abandoned soon after birth often raise the question of what support was available to a mother before the birth. Japan has no general system for anonymous hospital births, though a small number of institutions accept 内密出産 (naimitsu shussan), confidential births in which the mother's identity is kept from the child and largely from the state, and the practice has been debated amid calls for clearer legal footing.
Police have not said whether the mother in this case gave birth alone or sought help. They have released no details about where the boy was born or how long he had been in the water.