A woman has been arrested after flying out of Japan using the passport of a dead woman whose body was sent by courier in a box claiming to contain a doll across the country.

The Japanese-Brazilian woman was arrested earlier this morning in Shanghai, China, after she handed herself to the Japanese consulate where she is being held for an alleged immigration offence, local media reported.

Japanese authorities are expected to seek her extradition later today.

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Her arrest comes shortly after the body of Rika Okada, 29, was found in a 2-metre box labelled "doll" in a storage facility in the city of Hachioji, west of Tokyo. Her body had more than a dozen stab wounds, but no defensive injuries in her arms or wrists.

Her credit card details were used to pay for the delivery of the package containing her dead body from Osaka, 400 kilometres away from the Japanese capital, to Tokyo. The bill for the storage space was also in her name.

Ms Okada was last seen on 21 March. Before she went missing, she posted on her Facebook page she was meeting an old friend she hadn't seen for many years.

Local media reported that the Japanese-Brazilian held in Shanghai was a former schoolmate and had left Tokyo en route to Shanghai using her passport earlier this month accompanied by a Chinese woman.