Tokyo knife attacker blames toxic parenting: Reports

CNA

09-05-2025

TOKYO: A knife-wielding man arrested in Tokyo this week wanted to warn parents nationwide that tough love can ruin their children, citing his own miserable childhood, Japanese media reported on Friday (May 9).
The 43-year-old has been charged with attempted murder after allegedly assaulting a man in his 20s on Wednesday at Tokyo's Todai-mae Station, near the University of Tokyo, Japan's most prestigious higher education institution.
The suspect "with the intent to kill slashed the victim's head and other body parts with a knife-like object that he was carrying, causing injuries", a police spokesman previously told AFP.
When questioned, the suspect spoke of his demanding parents, whom he said were obsessed with his academic achievement, local media said.
Because of them, "I stopped going to school and had a hard time" as a teenager, public broadcaster NHK and other outlets quoted him as telling investigators.
"I wanted to show all these parents trying to get their kids into Todai that if they go too hard on them, their kids can go reckless and become criminals like me," he said, using a common nickname for the University of Tokyo.
He chose Todai-mae Station for the attack, believing that the top university is a byword for the concept of "educational abuse" by overly competitive parents, the reports said.
But he and the victim were strangers to each other, and he chose to attack the man "because he happened to be nearby", according to NHK.
Violent crime is relatively rare in Japan, which has a low murder rate and some of the world's toughest gun laws.
But there are occasional stabbing rampages and even shootings, including the assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe in 2022.
A day after the knife attack, five staff members sustained minor injuries at a primary school in Tokyo after two men intruded onto the premises.
And in 2021, a 24-year-old man stabbed a passenger and started a fire on a train in the capital on Halloween while wearing an outfit resembling comic book villain the Joker.
On Friday, a 34-year-old man was reportedly arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after allegedly slashing a man with a knife in the city of Osaka, causing minor injuries.