Osaka school massacre


The Osaka school massacre was a school stabbing that occurred on June 8, 2001, at the Ikeda Elementary School, an elite primary school affiliated with Osaka Kyoiku University in Osaka Prefecture, Japan.

The attack

On June 8, 2001, at 10:15 a.m. local time, 37-year-old former janitor Mamoru Takuma entered the school armed with a kitchen knife and began stabbing school children and teachers. He killed eight children, mostly aged seven and eight, and seriously wounded thirteen other children and two teachers.

Fatalities

All of the students were female second-graders except for one first-grade boy.
Takuma was diagnosed with paranoid personality disorder. He was later convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. He was executed on September 14, 2004.
The attack was the sixth largest mass murder, along with the Matsumoto incident, in recent Japanese history, exceeded in fatalities only by the Tokyo subway sarin attack, the Osaka movie theater fire, the Sagamihara stabbings, Kyoto Animation arson attack, and the Myojo 56 building fire. The incident set itself apart, however, by the age of the victims, its venue, and the perpetrator's history of mental illness. Because of these factors, the attack raised questions about Japan's social policies for dealing with mental illness, the rights of victims and criminals, and the accessibility and security of Japanese schools.
After the attack, Yoshio Yamane, the principal administrator of the school, announced that it would bring in a security guard, an at-the-time unheard-of practice at Japanese schools. Additionally, J-pop artist Hikaru Utada rearranged her song "Distance" in honor of Rena Yamashita, one of the murdered schoolgirls, renaming it "Final Distance".