A 38-year-old Japanese man was recently arrested for phone-stalking his own wife, calling her over 100 times a day anonymously and saying nothing until she hung up.

On July 10, a 31-year-old woman from Amagasaki, in Japan’s Hyogo Prefecture, started receiving strange phone calls from someone who would just remain silent until she hung up in frustration. This went on for weeks, because the calls came from an anonymous phone number, so the young woman couldn’t just block the calls. On most days she would get dozens of phone calls, but sometimes, the phone stalker would ring over 100 times per day. Luckily, the phone never rang during the night or when she was playing video games on her husband’s phone, which ultimately got her thinking about who the mystery caller could be…

Photo: freestocks

As July turned into August and the phone calls kept coming, the desperate woman started thinking about ways to expose her stalker. The more she analyzed the patterns of the calls, the more suspicious she became of her husband. The only times she never got any annoying calls were at night when they slept in the same bed, and when she used his phone to play video games.

Eventually, the 31-year-old woman turned to the police to help her solve the mystery, sharing with them her suspicion that her husband could be the stalker. Following an investigation, officers confirmed the woman’s fears, and on September 4th, her husband was arrested in Amagasaki for violating Japan’s anti-stalker law. When asked why he had harassed his own wife for over a month with his strange calls, the man simply answered “I love my wife, and made phone calls to her without saying anything,” as if the stalking was proof of his love for her.

It’s not uncommon for married couples in Japan to live separately, especially when one of them has to relocate because of their job, and sometimes one of the spouses gets so jealous that they start stalking the other party. However, police in Amagasaki have confirmed that this was the first case of phone stalking involving a couple living together.

Kobe Shunbun vis SoraNews