Nurse's corpse was sent across Japan in parcel marked 'doll'

The corpse of a young nurse was sent by parcel post across Japan in a box that was labelled as containing a doll, police revealed yesterday.

The body of Rika Okada was found in a storage lock-up in Tokyo. Investigators also found the two-metre box in which it had been transported from the southern city of Osaka, reports said.

The delivery service that ferried the package - marked with the Japanese word for "doll" - 400 kilometres to the capital had been paid in Okada's own name.

The bill for the lock-up's short-term rental had been settled using her credit card.

The body of the 29-year-old, who had been missing since late March, had more than a dozen stab wounds, but no defensive injuries were found on her hands or arms.

Police in Osaka refused to confirm the details, but reports said a woman who had been at elementary school with Okada had flown out of Tokyo earlier this month using the dead woman's passport.