Police arrest student suspected of hammer attack at a Tokyo university

A police car sits at the entrance to Hosei University’s Tama campus after a woman brandished a hammer inside a classroom, in Machida in the western suburbs of Tokyo on January 10, 2025. Eight people were wounded in a hammer attack at a university in Tokyo on January 10, with a 22-year-old student arrested at the scene, Japanese media said.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Japanese police arrested a student suspected of a hammer attack at a Tokyo university, which local media said left several injured.

The 22-year-old South Korean sociology student was apprehended on the spot for allegedly attacking a male student during class at Hosei University’s Tama campus in Tokyo’s western suburbs on Friday, causing him minor injuries, according to the Tokyo metropolitan police.

Japanese media said seven more students suffered minor injuries as the suspect allegedly hit them in succession. It was not clear whether her actions were premeditated.

Kyodo News agency reported that the suspect told investigators she felt “frustrated” after being ignored and bullied by her classmates and used a hammer she found on campus.

Nearly 150 students were in class that day and one told Kyodo the attacker seemed to swing the hammer aimlessly, hitting those seated in the last row in the classroom, and that everyone ran away. Another said her face was expressionless and she did not seem to be targeting someone in particular, according to the agency.

Police said an investigation was still ongoing without providing further details.

Koreans still sometimes face discrimination in Japan because of the bitter past between the two countries, stemming from Japan’s brutal colonization of the Korean Peninsula, which ended in 1945 with Japan’s defeat in World War II.

Serious crime in Japan is rare but random stabbing and shooting have occurred in recent years.

In December, a junior high school student was stabbed to death and her friend injured while queuing up at a McDonald’s restaurant in the southwestern city of Kitakyushu in an alleged random attack, in which a man was later arrested.

In 2022, three people, including two students on their way to take entrance exams, were stabbed outside of the University of Tokyo. A 17-year-old student was arrested and later convicted of attempted murder.