A former female prosecutor who says she was sexually assaulted by the old head of the Osaka District Public Prosecutors Office has now lost her job too.
Speaking under the name Hikari at a press conference in Tokyo on September 1, she said she handed back her prosecutor’s badge at the end of August. “Why must I, the victim, be stripped of my work and driven from my workplace?”
The man at the center is Kentaro Kitagawa, 66, former chief of that Osaka office. According to the case against him, after a 2018 work drinking party he got her extremely drunk, took her to his official residence, and assaulted her.
She threatened to report him right after. He allegedly sent a handwritten letter begging her to stay quiet “for the sake of the organization” and saying he would kill himself if she talked.
She stayed silent for years, developed severe PTSD, and took leave. She finally reported it in March 2024. He was arrested in June. At first he admitted it in court and apologized. By December his lawyers flipped and denied everything. Their new line: her PTSD came from overwork.
What happened inside the prosecutors’ office is the uglier part.
Once a secret investigation into Kitagawa started in early 2024, a female vice-prosecutor who used to be his secretary — and is suspected of having had an affair with him — started leaking investigation details to his defense. When superiors asked for her phone records she refused. Investigators seized the phone anyway and recovered deleted messages between her, Kitagawa, and his lawyers.
She also outed Hikari’s name to senior prosecutors and spread a story that Hikari had set a “honey trap” and begged him for kisses. That rumor traveled high. A senior official at the Supreme Public Prosecutors Office even emailed a lawyer at the International Criminal Court in The Hague repeating the claim that the victim was “deeply in love” with Kitagawa and had arranged the night.
They found evidence of leaks, deleted data, and defamation. They still refused to indict the second prosecutor, citing “lack of intent.” She got an administrative reprimand. On top of that, prosecutors handed Hikari’s confidential work logs and private emails to Kitagawa’s defense without her consent. Those are now being used to back the “overwork” story.
Hikari’s lawyer, former prosecutor Kazuko Tanaka, says the raid on the second prosecutor’s home was stopped from above. Hikari has petitioned the Osaka Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution, trying to force an indictment.
“When victims speak up, this is how they are treated,” she said. She added that she can no longer tell other people to raise their voices, because doing it cost her everything. She still doesn’t want it to end here.