Japanese police have asked the Canadian government to extradite a Chinese man who is living in Canada so he can be questioned about a fatal shooting of three part-time female workers at a supermarket in western Tokyo in 1995, Kyodo News reported on Tuesday.

Investigators in Japan's Hachioji police station say the Chinese man, who is said to have come from China's Fujian province and have stayed in Tokyo in the 1990s, may know the person responsible for the killing.

Japanese police have obtained a warrant to arrest the Chinese man on the suspicion that he has violated passport laws.

Japan, though, has no extradition agreements with any countries except for the United States and South Korea.

Japanese authorities are trying to use diplomatic channels to have the man extradited. Kyodo News said it would be "extremely rare" for such an attempt to prove successful.

Sources said the Chinese man came to light when police questioned Teruo Takeda, a former leader of a robber gang composed of Japanese and Chinese, in September 2009.

Takeda told Japan's police investigators that the Chinese man may know something about the person responsible for the killing, although no evidence was found suggesting Takeda himself was culpable in the case, sources said. Takeda was executed in China in April 2010.