Tokyo knife attacker blames toxic parenting: Reports
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Police officers stand guard at an entrance of Todai-mae Station on Tokyo Metro's Namboku Line after a stabbing incident in Tokyo on May 7.
PHOTO: AFP
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TOKYO - A knife-wielding man arrested in Tokyo this week said he wanted to warn parents nationwide that tough love can ruin their children, citing his own miserable childhood, Japanese media reported on May 9.
The 43-year-old has been charged with attempted murder after he allegedly assaulted a man in his 20s on May 7
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, who 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.
He chose Todai-mae Station for the attack, believing the top university is a byword for the concept of “educational abuse” by overly competitive parents, the reports said.
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 shootings
A day after the Todai-mae Station knife attack, five staff members sustained minor injuries at a primary school in Tokyo after two men intruded onto the premises
On May 9, 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.
In 2021, a 24-year-old man stabbed a passenger
