Theirhero, Hideto Matsumoto, a 33 year old Japanese rock star, was found dead on Saturday.

Police believed he commited suicide by hanging with a towel from a doorknob.

Unable to containm their grief, two female fans later took their lives in a similar fashion.

More than 100 police officers yhad to keep order as thousands gathered to view the star's body. Many of the mostly teenage girls and young women had spent the night on the pavement, hiding under umbrellas from the pouring rain, to be first in line to place flowers by the coffin.

And altar was decorated with candles and a line of el;ectric guitars, below a huge, framed photograph of Matsumoto with his trademark pink hair.

Mrs Sachiyo kaifu, wife of former Japanese prime minister Mr Toshiki Kaifu, also attended the funeral. She had known the singer during her work to encourage bone marrow donors.

Matsumoto's coffen was brought to the temple in a procession of fans that stretched more than 2 km at one tim, bringing traffic in the area to a halt.

As the coffin left the temple, girls screamed his name. At least 56 people were taken to the hospital, after they fainted or fell ill while standing in the crowd.

Representatives from Matsumoto's office requested fans not to imitate the rock star's death, saying it was not what the fan would have wanted. Matsumoto was a lead guitarist in the band X Japan. The group, enormously popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s, broke up last December. Matsumoto carried on with a solo carreer.
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I would have boxed the reporters' ears were I given the chance. They must have been hardened too much in order to give such reports in monotone words. Especially our local newspapers, it really looks like a composition I would have written had Hideto been another imaginary person and had Hideto not died. What why are they weeping for this man! They loved him! I wonder if those reporters have any feelings. And they reported this only one week after! Arrgh! Where's their sense of time?