Date 8 June 2001 | Non-fatal injuries 15 Total number of deaths 8 | |
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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.
Contents
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 diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder and paranoid personality disorder. He was later convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out on September 14, 2004.
The attack was the 5th largest Mass murder, along with the Matsumoto incident, in recent Japanese history, all of which were exceeded only by the fatalities caused in the Tokyo subway sarin attack, the Osaka movie theater fire, the Sagamihara stabbings, and the Myojo 56 building fire. 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. Because of these factors, the attack raised questions about Japan's social policies regarding the treatment of mental illness, the rights of victims and criminals, and the accessibility and security of Japanese schools.
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. 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), renaming it "Final Distance".
Fatalities
The boy was in the first year and the girls were in the second year.
