TOKYO - A Japanese man pleaded guilty Thursday to murdering two Philippine women and chopping up their bodies, media reports said.

"I admit to everything," 49-year-old Hiroshi Nozaki was quoted as telling the Tokyo District court as charges were read over the murders of Elda Longakit Yoneda, 27, and Honiefaith Ratilla Kamiosawa, 22.

Both women, who had worked in Tokyo's Roppongi nightlife district, were strangled to death inside apartments - Yoneda in the port city of Yokohama in 1999, and Kamiosawa in Tokyo in 2008.

Previous media reports have said Nozaki burned Yoneda's body and flushed its parts down a toilet, and that he washed Kamiosawa's body parts in a laundry machine before hiding them in a suitcase in a coin locker.

According to prosecutors Nozaki killed the two women after they rejected his advances, media reported.

Nozaki previously served three-and-a-half years in prison for dismembering the body of Yoneda. The victim's cause of death was never established and he was convicted only of charges of destroying a body.

Nozaki was again arrested in April 2008 on suspicion of killing Kamiosawa, and police later issued a fresh arrest warrant over Yoneda's murder.

Defence lawyers said Nozaki, who has since been diagnosed with terminal cancer, had admitted to his crimes because he wants to be handed a death sentence as quickly as possible, Jiji Press said.