Shoko Asahara, born Chizuo Matsumoto, was the founder and leader of the Japanese doomsday cult known as Aum Shinrikyo. He was convicted of masterminding the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, and was also involved in several other crimes. Asahara was sentenced to death in 2004, and his final appeal failed in 2011. In June 2012, his execution was postponed due to further arrests of Aum members. He was ultimately executed along with other senior members of Aum Shinrikyo on July 6, 2018.
The Mainichi Shimbun is one of the major newspapers in Japan, published by The Mainichi Newspapers Co.
Ikeda is a city in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. As of 31 March 2023, the city had an estimated population of 103,064 in 49723 households and a population density of 4700 persons per km². The total area of the city is 22.14 square kilometres (8.55 sq mi). It is a suburban city of Osaka City and a part of the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe metropolitan area.
The Sankei Shimbun, name short for Sangyō Keizai Shinbun, is a daily national newspaper in Japan published by the Sankei Shimbun Co., Ltd, ranking amongst the top 5 most circulated newspapers in Japan. Together with its English-language paper Japan Forward, the Sankei Shimbun has been described as having a conservative, nationalist, right-wing to far-right political stance. It has previously published materials downplaying or denying Japanese war crimes.
Mamoru Takuma was a Japanese mass murderer who killed eight children in the Ikeda school massacre in Ikeda, Osaka Prefecture, on 8 June 2001.
Kaoru Kobayashi was a Japanese newspaper deliveryman who kidnapped, sexually assaulted and murdered 7-year-old Kaede Ariyama in Nara, Nara Prefecture, on November 17, 2004. Kobayashi, an ex-convict and pedophile with a record as a prolific sex offender, was sentenced to death for the murder of Ariyama and was executed by hanging at Osaka Detention House on February 21, 2013. Ariyama's murder caused a surge in the moral panic against otaku culture in Japan.
Tetsuya Shiroo was the former leader of the Suishin-kai, a Nagasaki-based yakuza group affiliated with the Yamaguchi-gumi, the largest yakuza organization in Japan.
Neyagawakōen Station is a passenger railway station in located in the city of Neyagawa, Osaka Prefecture, Japan, operated by West Japan Railway Company.
Natsuo Yamaguchi is a Japanese politician who served as the chief representative of Komeito from 2009 to 2024. He is a member of the House of Councillors since 2001 and previously served in the House of Representatives from 1990 to 1996.
The Akihabara massacre was an incident of mass murder that took place on 8 June 2008, in the Akihabara shopping quarter in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. The perpetrator, 25-year-old Tomohiro Katō of Susono, Shizuoka, drove into a crowd with a rented truck, initially killing three people and injuring two; he then stabbed at least twelve people using a dagger, killing four other people and injuring eight.
Yoshihiro Inoue was a former Aum Shinrikyo leader and terrorist who was executed in Japan in 2018. He was responsible for coordinating the Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995. His holy name was Aananda and his stage in the cult was Master Shogo.
Aleph, better known by their former name Aum Shinrikyo, is a Japanese new religious movement and doomsday cult founded by Shoko Asahara in 1987. It carried out the deadly Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995 and was found to have been responsible for the Matsumoto sarin attack the previous year.
The Gegenmiao massacre or the Gegenmiao incident was a war crime by the Red Army and a part of the local Chinese population against over half of a group of 1,800 Japanese women and children who had taken refuge in the lamasery Gegenmiao/Koken-miao (葛根廟) on August 14, 1945, during the Khingan–Mukden Operation in Soviet invasion of Manchuria.
The Sagamihara stabbings were committed on 26 July 2016 in Midori Ward, Sagamihara, Kanagawa, Japan. Nineteen people were killed and twenty-six others were injured, thirteen severely, at a care home for disabled people. The crimes were committed by a 26-year-old man, identified as Satoshi Uematsu, a former employee of the care facility. Uematsu surrendered at a nearby police station with a bag of knives and was subsequently arrested. Justin McCurry of The Guardian described the attack as one of the worst crimes committed on Japanese soil in modern history. Uematsu was sentenced to death on 16 March 2020, after the prosecution sought the maximum penalty for murder in his trial; as of July 2022, he was on death row awaiting execution. As of 2023, it is currently the deadliest mass stabbing in Japanese history.
The 2019 Tokyo car attack was a vehicle-ramming attack that occurred on January 1, 2019, in Tokyo, Japan. 21-year-old Kazuhiro Kusakabe told authorities he intentionally rammed into pedestrians crowded into narrow Takeshita Street in Harajuku district as a terrorist attack in retaliation for the execution of Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult members. The New Year's Day attack left eight injured. A ninth person was also directly injured by the driver. Kusakabe said he initially planned an arson attack by spreading kerosene with a high-pressure washer at the crowd at the nearby Meiji Shrine but found that vehicles were not permitted there.
A mass stabbing is a single incident in which multiple victims are injured or killed with a sharp object thrusted at the victims, piercing through the skin and injuring the victims. Examples of sharp instruments used in mass stabbings may include kitchen knives, utility knives, sheath knives, scissors, katanas, icepicks, bayonets, axes, machetes and glass bottles. Knife crime poses security threats to many countries around the world.
The Kawasaki stabbings occurred on the morning of 28 May 2019 in the Tama ward of Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, four blocks west of Noborito Station. Two people were murdered, and 18 others were injured after being stabbed at a city bus stop by 51-year-old Ryuichi Iwasaki. After carrying out the attack, Iwasaki committed suicide by stabbing himself in the neck.
A mass stabbing incident occurred 6 August 2021, on a commuter train in the Odakyu Electric Railway in Tokyo, Japan. Ten people were injured in the incident.
At around 8 p.m. JST on 31 October 2021, 24-year-old Kyota Hattori carried out a knife and arson attack on a Keiō Railway train as it was travelling to Kokuryō Station on the Keiō Line in Chōfu, a city in the western suburbs of Tokyo, Japan. He injured 17 people, one critically. Japanese authorities later identified Hattori and he was arrested at the scene.
