Fears of exposure of drug use, kinky sex habits and a "harem" of women led a Tokyo man to batter his ex-wife to death, but his trial revealed an even more chilling side to his actions than the heinous acts he was accused of, according to Shukan Gendai (5/10-17).

Koji Shiga is now serving 10 years in jail after the Tokyo District Court found him guilty of inflicting injury resulting in the death of his former spouse, 40-year-old Miho Shiga, in a vicious overnight onslaught on May 27 last year.

Shiga lived in a three-story house in Tokyo's Adachi-ku. He set up ex-wife Miho and their children on the first floor, kept his lover, 34-year-old Tomoko Hitomi, on the second floor, and occupied the entire top floor himself. He had another lover he frequently called over to his home, and, as if that wasn't enough, he also owned a home in Shinjuku-ku together with the Chinese woman who is currently his legal wife. Shiga spent much of his time moving between the homes in Shinjuku-ku and Adachi-ku, the latter the place where Miho Shiga lost her life.

"I punched Miho on the right cheek, then made her kneel on the floor. I grabbed a double handful of her hair and dragged her up on her feet so high she had to stand on tiptoe. Then I slapped her around, I guess about 30 times. Miho was exhausted, so I grabbed her by the earlobes and dragged her into a sitting position. I then kicked her 20 times with as much force as I could muster. After that, I stripped her naked and burned her with a lighter," Shukan Gendai quotes Shiga telling his trial.

Miho Shiga collapsed, and it took more than a full day to pass before her ex-husband realized she had died as a result of the beating he'd unleashed on her.

Naturally, he responded by going to a hardware store in Saitama Prefecture and buying a load of equipment to dispose of his one-time wife's corpse. He insisted his lover Hitomi assist him with the gruesome task of cutting up the body into little pieces and dumping it.

Shiga then began working Hitomi over to take the rap for the death.

"Koji told me he'd killed Miho," the men's weekly quotes Hitomi telling the court. "He said that Miho and I had always been natural enemies because of something that had happened between us in previous lives. I believe in reincarnation, so I said that I did it. After that, Koji told me to say she'd suffocated. So I said she had suffocated and it must have been a horrible death. The reality was that nothing like that happened at all, but all I could think about was Koji's violence. I denied doing it a few times, but I was scared of what he'd do to me, so I gave in."

Shiga also revealed in his trial why he started battering his ex-wife in what ultimately proved to be a deadly attack. His ex-wife had begun a relationship with a man working at the chiropractic clinic located on the first floor of Shiga's Adachi-ku home (the same clinic where he and Miho had once worked together, before he became an NHK license fee collector). Shiga feared that his ex-wife would reveal some of his kinky sexual proclivities to the man she had started seeing.

"I forced Miho to kneel on the floor, demanding she tell me what she'd told him. 'What did you tell him about me? The cross-dressing? My S&M? That I take drugs? What did you say?!' I screamed at her," Shukan Gendai quotes Shiga telling his trial. "Miho kept denying she'd said anything, so that's why I kept slapping her around." (By Ryann Connell)