Chen Shifeng

Chen Shifeng (born 1991) was from Yanchi County in the city of Wuzhong, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, in western China.

Liu Xin (born 1992) was from Chengyang District in the city of Qingdao.

After graduating from a middle school in Dingbian County in the city of Yulin, Shaanxi Province in 2004, he entered Huaqiao University in 2009 and graduated in 2013.

Following graduation, he worked at a Confucius Institute in Kasetsart University in Bangkok, Thailand, where he taught calligraphy.

In the summer of 2010, she

began her major in Japanese at Taishan University in Qingdao and in 2014, she came to Japan for her further studies.

In April 2015, she started studying abroad at a Japanese language school and in April 2016, she was admitted to the first-year postgraduate degree program at Hosei University in Tokyo.

In April 2015, she enrolled as a graduate student at Daito Bunka University in Tokyo.

In 2015, he moved to Japan where he attended a language school in Fukuoka and in 2016, he entered the graduate school of Chinese studies at Daito Bunka University.

Before the incident, he lived in Itabashi Ward of Tokyo.

The murder of Jiang Ge occurred in Nakano, Tokyo, Japan, on 3 November 2016, when Jiang Ge, a 24-year-old graduate student from China at Hosei University, was stabbed to death by Chen Shifeng, a 25-year old Chinese national, at her apartment.

The case was controversial in China after it was discovered that Jiang's roommate Liu Xin, who initially claimed that she did not know the identity of the murderer, was the murderer's ex-girlfriend.

It later emerged that during the murder, Liu entered the apartment ahead of Jiang, locked the door, and did not make any attempt to save Jiang from her murderer.

Jiang Ge (1992 – 3 November 2016) was from the city of Jimo (present-day Jimo District in the city of Qingdao), Shandong Province, in eastern China.

She was raised by her mother Jiang Qiulian, who had divorced her father when she was one year old.

After the completion of her college entrance examination, she moved to Weihai to study in a junior college and later took Self-Taught Higher Education Examinations in Qufu to study for her undergraduate degree.

Liu moved to Jiang's apartment in September 2016.

On the afternoon of 2 November 2016, Chen Shifeng located the apartment where Liu Xin and Jiang Ge resided and proceeded to harass Liu.

She refrained from opening the door and used WeChat to contact and seek assistance from Jiang, who was not at home at that time.

Jiang suggested calling the police, but Liu rejected her proposal due to her not wanting to attract attention.

Subsequently, Jiang returned to the apartment in an attempt to persuade Chen to leave.

Following this, Jiang resumed her university studies while Liu went to work at a Chinese restaurant.

Chen stalked Liu to her workplace and on the way, he threatened her and insisted on reconciling with him.

Upon arriving at the restaurant, she sought aid from a friend, who posed as her boyfriend to extricate herself from Chen's persistent harassment.

He then departed and subsequently inundated Liu with multiple threatening messages.

Around 11 pm, Liu sent a message to Jiang requesting for her to wait at Higashi-Nakano Station and accompany her home due to fear of Chen's threats but neglected to inform Jiang about the threats.

Jiang arrived at the station to wait for Liu and during this time, she engaged in a WeChat voice call with her mother back in China.

The call lasted until Liu's arrival at the station.

At approximately 12:15 am on the following day, the pair returned to their apartment and entered the corridor at the second floor.

Chen, who had been following the pair, rushed to the second floor of the apartment and brandished a knife upon encountering Jiang.

Liu, who walked ahead of Jiang, entered the room and locked the door just moments before Chen encountered Jiang.

An altercation erupted between Jiang and Chen resulting in her being unable to escape back into the room and Chen then stabbing her ten times, including once on the neck, before fleeing the scene.

During this entire time, Liu remained inside the room and contacted the police, and only opened the door when the police arrived.

Jiang was then transported to the hospital where she succumbed due to excessive blood loss.

Initially after the incident, Liu Xin claimed not to know who the perpetrator was and had no clues about the perpetrator until four days later on 7 November 2016, when the Tokyo Metropolitan Police arrested Chen on suspicion of intimidation after he had sent a threatening email to Liu on the day of the murder.

During the subsequent investigation, the police found evidence of his involvement in the crime and issued an arrest warrant for him on the suspicion of murder.

On 14 December, the prosecution formally charged Chen with intimidation and murder, and the case was later scheduled for trial in December 2017.

On 14 August 2017, Jiang Ge's mother Jiang Qiulian posted an article on Chinese social media platforms and collected signatures for her petition from the public through online and postal means, urging the Japanese judicial authorities to sentence Chen Shifeng to death.

In November of the same year, just before the trial began, she traveled to Tokyo and conducted a multi-day signature collection campaign at Ikebukuro Station's west exit park and reportedly collected over two million signatures before the trial proceedings began.

However, some legal professionals, including Jiang's then-legal representative, believed that the impact of this petition campaign might be limited and it would be unlikely that Chen would be sentenced to death.