Kawasaki stabbings

On the morning of 28 May 2019, an attack occurred at a city bus stop in the Tama ward of Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, four blocks west of Noborito Station. The Kawasaki city fire department received an emergency call at 7:44 a.m. JST reporting that a man was attacking students waiting at the stop using yanagiba, long thin knives typically used in Japanese cuisine to prepare sashimi and nigiri sushi, which he wielded in both hands. Students targeted in the attack were identified by NHK as all being girls. A bus driver who witnessed the incident said the man was holding two knives and walked toward the bus before stabbing the children. Authorities told reporters that the attacker struck people randomly as they lined up to board the bus.

The Kawasaki Fire Department reported that sixteen elementary school students from Caritas Elementary School, a private Catholic school, and three adults were injured in the attack, in addition to the suspect. In total, two people were killed and 18 others were injured.

The two people who died were identified as Hanako Kuribayashi, an 11-year-old student, and Satoshi Oyama, a 39-year-old Foreign Ministry employee who worked primarily as a diplomat to Myanmar. Both were declared dead at Musashi Kosugi Hospital. Other survivors were treated at that hospital as well as St. Marianna University School of Medicine, Kawasaki Municipal Tama Hospital, and Shin-Yurigaoka General Hospital.

The man suspected of carrying out the attack, 51-year-old Ryuichi Iwasaki, was born in December 1967 and was believed to reside in Kawasaki's Asao ward. He was found at the scene bleeding from a self-inflicted stab wound to the neck. Two bloodied 30-centimetre sashimi knives were found nearby, and two additional knives — a 25-centimetre all-purpose knife and a 20-centimetre sashimi knife — were found in a backpack he had been carrying, which was dropped near a nearby FamilyMart convenience store. Iwasaki was transported to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

According to the source material, Iwasaki was unemployed and a hikikomori, a term describing extreme social withdrawal. He lived in his elderly uncle's home. Before the attack, he reportedly had a dispute with neighbors but did not discuss it with his uncle.

Several days after the incident, a former Vice Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries killed his own hikikomori son, reportedly out of fear that his son might commit a similar crime, after the son had been violent toward family members and was described as reclusive. That individual was sentenced to six years in prison in 2021 in a separate, related case.