Osaka school massacre

Osaka School Massacre
Location	Ikeda, Osaka, Japan
Date	June 8, 2001
Attack type	mass murder, stabbing
Weapon(s)	kitchen knife
Death(s)	8[1]
Injured	15
Perpetrator	Mamoru Takuma

The Osaka School Massacre took place on June 8, 2001, at Ikeda Elementary School, an elite primary school affiliated with Osaka Kyoiku University in Osaka Prefecture, Japan.

The attack

At 10:15 that morning, 37-year-old former janitor Mamoru Takuma entered the school armed with a kitchen knife and began stabbing numerous school children and teachers. He killed eight children, mostly between the ages of seven and eight, and seriously wounded thirteen other children and two teachers.

Aftermath

Takuma was later convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out on September 14, 2004.^[2] The Osaka School Massacre was the second largest mass murder, along with the Matsumoto incident, in recent Japanese history, exceeded both of the crimes only by the fatalities caused in the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. This incident, however, was set apart by the young age of the victims, by its occurrence at a school, and by the murderer's history of mental illness.^[2] Because of these factors, the Osaka School Massacre raised questions in Japan about the country's social policies regarding the treatment of mental illness, the rights of criminals and victims, and the accessibility and security of Japanese schools.^[3][4]

After the attack, Yoshio Yamane, the principal administrator of the school, announced that it would receive a security guard, an at-the-time unheard-of feature in Japanese schools.^[2] Additionally, J-Pop artist Hikaru Utada rearranged her song Distance in honor of Rena Yamashita, one of the murdered schoolgirls (because of an essay contest she had won, talking about how she respected and wanted to become like Hikaru), retitling it Final Distance. Exactly seven years later, a similar stabbing massacre called the Akihabara massacre took place, though not in a school but in the streets of Tokyo.^[5]

Deceased victims

The boy was in the first year and the girls were in the second year.^[6]

• Yuki Hongo (本郷 優希 Hongō Yūki)
• Mayuko Isaka (猪阪 真宥子 Isaka Mayuko)
• Yuka Kiso (木曽 友香 Kiso Yūka)
• Ayano Moriwaki (森脇 綾乃 Moriwaki Ayano)
• Maki Sakai (酒井 麻希 Sakai Maki)
• Takahiro Totsuka (戸塚 健大 Totsuka Takahiro) (the only male student to die in the attack) ^[2]
• Hana Tsukamoto (塚本 花菜 Tsukamoto Hana)
• Rena Yamashita (山下 玲奈 Yamashita Rena)

See also

	Osaka portal
	Schools portal
	Crime portal

• Akihabara massacre
• School massacre
• Mass murder
• List of massacres in Japan

References

1. ^ "At least eight dead in Osaka school rampage" June 8, 2001. cnn.com
2. ^ ^{a b c d} "Japan mourns school victims." CNN. June 10, 2001. Retrieved on February 5, 2010.
3. ^ Human Rights in Japan - Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions
4. ^ Watts, Jonathan (July 2001). "Japan reviews policy on mental illness and crime" (fee required). The Lancet 358 (9278): 305. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(01)05527-1. PMID 11498227. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T1B-43N6Y44-V&_user=10&_coverDate=07%2F28%2F2001&_rdoc=1&_fmt=summary&_orig=browse&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=635fde54f41649921eaffb46e1a8ed5d. Retrieved 2008-06-09. 
5. ^ Masters, Coco (2008-06-09). "Japan Reeling from Stabbing Spree". Time (Magazine). http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1812808,00.html. Retrieved 2008-06-09. 
6. ^ "Knife-Wielding Man Kills 8 Children at Japanese School." The New York Times. 2.

External links

• Time Magazine article - "Cutting Into Innocence," June 10, 2001.