Lucie Blackman (September 1, 1978 – July 1, 2000) was an English woman from Sevenoaks,
Kent who worked as a hostess in Roppongi in Minato, Tokyo. Common in East Asian nations,
"hostess" in this sense describes young women at bars who are paid to engage in conversation
with men, light their cigarettes, sing karaoke -- with a strict policy against men touching
the hostesses or making sexual propositions. Blackman had previously worked as a flight attendant
for British Airways and had come to Japan to see the world and earn money to pay off her debts.
At the time of her disappearance, she had been working as a hostess at Casablanca, a night club
in Roppongi,[9] later called Greengrass. She was 21 years old at the time of her death.
Blackman's mysterious death and disappearance,
as well as Obara's trial, received high press coverage in
Japan and internationally, especially in the British media. As a result
of the publicity surrounding the case, three foreign women came forward to describe
waking up, sore and sick, in Obara’s bed, with no memory of the night before.
(See drug-facilitated sexual assault.) Several of them, it turned out, had reported him
to the Roppongi police but had been ignored.
On July 1, Blackman went on a douhan (a paid date) with a customer
from Casablanca. Other than a few calls to a friend during the date, no one heard from
her again.[9] The Blackman family, wanting to find her, flew to Tokyo and took the opportunity
to start a high-profile direct media campaign, including approaching British Foreign Secretary
Robin Cook, who was in Tokyo at that time.[14] Newspapers started publicising Blackman's
disappearance on July 13, when British Prime Minister Tony Blair made mention of the case during
an official visit to Japan, where he met with Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori.[15] An information
hotline was staffed by British expats, and an anonymous businessman funded a reward of £100,000