Tokaido Shinkansen stabbings

On the night of 9 June 2018, an attack occurred aboard the Tokaido Shinkansen, a high-speed train line running through Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. According to a list of mass stabbing incidents compiled by Wikipedia, 22-year-old Ichiro Kojima attacked passengers on the train using a billhook. The attack resulted in one death and left two other people seriously injured.

Kojima was arrested by police in connection with the attack and was subsequently charged with murder along with other charges. In statements attributed to him in the source material, Kojima said he had wanted to go to prison, explaining, "I wanted to go to jail. It was a hassle to think for myself and live. I thought it would be easier to live within the rules set by others, so I aimed for life imprisonment."

The case proceeded through the Japanese court system, and in December 2019 Kojima was sentenced to life imprisonment. This sentence was confirmed in January 2020. According to the source, Kojima expressed joy at receiving the life sentence he had said he wanted.

Following the attack, companies that operate the Shinkansen worked to strengthen safety measures on the trains in response to the incident.

This dossier is based on a single detailed source describing the incident: a Wikipedia list of mass stabbing incidents in the 2010s. Two additional URLs were supplied as corroborating references associated with the broader Wikipedia article, but their retrieved text did not contain reporting specific to this incident; they are included in the citations list as sources but no factual claims in this summary are drawn from them.