According to the top-selling daily Yomiur Shimbun, police formally commended Sayuri Nagano, 23, for helping arrest the burglar. who also turnrd out tobe a martial arts exponent.
้his skiils failed him on the night he tried to break into the Nagano family house in Owase, western Japan.
Yomiur said Nagano, a second dan(grade) black belt in Karate, awoke to see a man's shadow on the paper over her bedroom window.
She aimed a series of kicks through the screen and theburglar, a 31-year-old unemployed man, doubled up in pain before limping away.
Nagano and her father caught up with him in the street and handed him over to police.
The man was a practitioner of a similar martial art. Shorinji kung fu, but only first dan.