The family of a British teacher murdered in Tokyo a year ago have arrived in Japan to urge detectives to step up the hunt for her killer.

However, as relatives of Lindsay Ann Hawker prepared to mark the first anniversary of her death with a candlelit vigil and a pilgrimage to the scene of her murder, Japanese investigators had only grim news.

The trail of the prime suspect, Tatsuya Ichihashi, 29, who is thought to have bound the 22-year-old teacher in tape and buried her naked in a bath of sand, has gone cold.

The police are resorting to increasingly desperate measures in their search for the suspect, including issuing a wanted poster in which he is disguised as a woman.

Lindsay’s father, Bill, close to tears and holding a photograph of Mr Ichihashi, condemned the pace of the investigation. He appealed to the “honourable people of Japan” to raise the pace of the hunt for his daughter’s killer. “Somebody somewhere must be hiding Ichihashi,” he said. “How can he keep evading detection? Japan is a modern society. Surely somebody cannot just disappear.”

Mr Hawker also said that he had received a letter from the parents of the chief suspect in which they described the incident as “regrettable”. “What a choice of words,” he said.

In recent weeks there has been a steady trickle of video footage and other images of Mr Ichihashi taken from railway stations and other public places that he visited before the murder. There have also been plenty of responses from the public, but not one solid lead. Many investigators have reached the conclusion privately that the suspect is dead.

But the Hawker family still holds out hope that the missing man will eventually be brought to justice.

Speaking in Japanese, Lindsay’s sister, Lisa, appealed directly to Mr Ichihashi. “You have taken one life and destroyed many more,” she said.

“You have taken away my best friend and broken our hearts. I implore you, please atone for your crime.”

The family’s frustration has been heightened by the apparent way in which the police allowed Mr Ichihashi to slip through their fingers. Nine officers went to the small apartment block where Lindsay’s body was found to question him, but he managed to evade them all, apparently escaping without his shoes.

The Hawker family are expected to receive a fuller account of the investigation today but they have already been told where the search so far has been focused – on barber shops, gymnasiums and Japan’s many thousands of cheap “love” hotels that guarantee anonymity to their guests. Mr Hawker said that the past 12 months had been dreadful for the family, from Brandon, near Coventry. “The year has just stood still for me. I should be standing here with all three of my girls.”

It is the first time that the whole family have travelled to Japan. Mr and Mrs Hawker, both 51, last visited the country in September. They and Lisa, 26, and Louise, 23, have been learning Japanese in preparation for the trip.

The family are expected to lay flowers at the scene where Lindsay’s body was found, before they return to Britain tomorrow. A postmortem examination showed that Lindsay had been suffocated and suffered severe injuries to her arms.

A page set up on Facebook, the social networking site, called “Don’t forget Lindsay Hawker, Please remember this face”, now has more than 20,000 members.

The investigative powers of the Japanese police remain under heavy domestic scrutiny and criticism.

Only 24 hours before the Hawkers arrived in Japan there was a multiple stabbing at a train station outside Tokyo in which a 72-year-old man died and several others were seriously injured.

A day before the incident the attacker told the police where and when he was likely to strike; 170 officers were positioned in readiness, but failed to prevent the violence.

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