The Osaka District Court on the 5th found Akari Shibata, 38, guilty of abandoning the body of a 6-year-old girl encased in concrete and gave her a suspended sentence, in a case that has drawn attention to how children can disappear from official records.
Judge Hiroki Ito sentenced Shibata to one year in prison, suspended for three years, matching the prosecutors' demand of one year. Shibata was the girlfriend of the girl's uncle.
The girl, Rena Iwamoto, was believed to be 6 when she died. Her body was found in Yao, Osaka Prefecture, in February 2025, packed in concrete inside a garment case.
What the court found
According to the indictment and other court records, Shibata conspired with the uncle, 43, in November 2024 to move the case, with Rena's body inside, by cart from one nagaya — a row house — in Yao to another in the same city, and abandon it there. The uncle has been sentenced to eight years in prison on convictions for abandoning the body and for fatal injury, and that sentence is final.
The defense admitted Shibata moved the garment case but argued she did not know a body was inside, and had sought an acquittal.
A death kept quiet for 18 years
Prosecutors said in their opening statement that Rena, born in 2000, died around December 2006 to January 2007 after her uncle, who had taken her in and was raising her, assaulted her. The cause was traumatic shock, according to the statement.
Her uncle and grandfather then encased her body in concrete inside the garment case, and it was left in place for years. In February 2025, a building manager who found the case suspicious called police, and the case came to light about 18 years after her death.
Erased from the registry
In 2004, before the uncle took her in, Yao city deleted the resident registrations of Rena and her mother. The procedure, called shokken shōkyo — removal of a registration by administrative authority — means that if no new registration is created, school enrollment notices and other official mail do not reach the child, even if the child is living elsewhere. It can also leave welfare offices and police unaware of problems such as abuse.
The Asahi Shimbun surveyed 74 municipalities in 2025: all government-designated major cities, prefectural capitals and the 23 wards of Tokyo. It found that at least 197 children under 18 whose registrations had been removed this way could not be accounted for. Several municipalities have since carried out fresh checks.