Members of the Tokyo metropolitan police force, Japan
Japanese media reported that eight people were injured in a hammer attack that occurred at a university in Tokyo on January 10, leading to a 22-year-old student being arrested at the scene.
According to NHK, citing police sources, the attack occurred at Hosei University’s Tama campus and all of the injured were conscious. This station and several other media outlets said the attacker was a sociology student who swung a hammer and attacked in class.
Authorities received the news at around 4:00 p.m. (local time) and arrested the perpetrator.
Some news reports said there were victims with bleeding heads and the perpetrator said he was angry because he was ignored. “I got angry and hit the students with a hammer at school,” according to the newspaper Asahi Shimbun quoted the above female student as declaring to the authorities.
Live footage broadcast by NHK showed a row of ambulances with flashing lights at the campus in the Japanese capital’s Machida suburb.
Hosei University was founded in 1880 with 15 faculties and was originally a law school. NHK said that this university had 3,700 students scheduled to take the exam on January 10 and participated in the exam as planned.
According to AFP, this is a rare violent case in Japan, where there are strict regulations on guns. Occasionally stabbings or shootings occur in this country, including the assassination of late Prime Minister Abe Shinzo in 2022.
Last month, a high school student was stabbed to death and another injured at a McDonald’s restaurant in southwestern Japan. A man was later arrested in connection with the attack.
