Woman handed suspended term over hammer attack at Japan univ. campus
A Japanese court on Friday sentenced a woman to three years in prison, suspended for four years, for injuring eight students in a hammer attack at a university campus in suburban Tokyo.
The court found Yoo Ju Hyun, a 23-year-old South Korean, guilty of injuring the students on Jan. 10 at Hosei University's Tama Campus in Machida. The presiding judge put her actions down to a mental disorder she was suffering.
The series of attacks on defenseless students were "dangerous and shocking," said Presiding Judge Keita Nakajima in handing down the ruling at the Tokyo District Court's Tachikawa branch.
Yoo, who was a second-year student in the university's Faculty of Social Sciences at the time, had claimed she was bullied and insulted by some students.
Nakajima said while it cannot be said that there was no bullying at all, there was no evidence that the eight victims, some of which suffered head injuries, had insulted her.
However, the judge said that Yoo's actions were influenced to a considerable extent by an obsessive-compulsive disorder and other factors.
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Student arrested for Japan univ. hammer attack sent to prosecutors
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Japan Times
an hour ago
- Japan Times
Attacker wounds another Japanese national in China's Suzhou
An "unknown assailant" attacked and wounded a Japanese national accompanied by a child in the Chinese city of Suzhou, Tokyo's Embassy said Friday, calling on Beijing to prevent such incidents. According to Japan-China diplomatic sources, the victim was a woman. Local authorities have detained the suspected attacker, but the motive and other details of the incident remain unclear. The incident comes a year after a Japanese mother and child were wounded in a knife attack in the same city. A Chinese woman had died trying to stop the assailant. In Thursday's attack, "a Japanese national walking with a child was struck by what appeared to be a rock by an unknown assailant inside a Suzhou, Jiangsu province subway station," Tokyo's Embassy in Beijing said in a statement. A spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry said that "the suspect has been apprehended." The victim was "promptly taken to hospital for treatment, and there is no threat to life." China and Japan are key trading partners, but increased friction over territorial rivalries and military spending has frayed ties in recent years. Japan's brutal occupation of parts of China before and during World War II remains a sore point, with Beijing accusing Tokyo of failing to atone for its past. In June last year, a Japanese mother and child were attacked in Suzhou on the anniversary of the 1931 Mukden incident, known in China as a day of national humiliation. The 1931 explosion of a railway in China was used by Japanese soldiers as a pretext to occupy the city of Mukden, now called Shenyang, and invade the wider region of Manchuria. And in September, a Japanese schoolboy was fatally stabbed in the southern city of Shenzhen. Media reports about the latest attack in Suzhou were censored on the Chinese messaging app WeChat. "The Japanese government has urged the Chinese government to ... severely punish the suspect, prevent similar incidents, and ensure the safety of Japanese nationals," Tokyo's Embassy said Friday. Beijing's Foreign Ministry said "China will continue to take effective steps, to protect the safety of foreigners in China." Thursday's incident occurred at a time when anti-Japanese sentiment is seen as rising in China, fueled by recent films and dramas themed on the past war against Japan. To celebrate the 80th anniversary of China's victory in the war, a military parade is scheduled to be held in Beijing in September.
Asahi Shimbun
2 hours ago
- Asahi Shimbun
Japanese woman in China was attacked with a stone-like object in Suzhou
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The Diplomat
3 hours ago
- The Diplomat
A Rare, Direct Warning From Japan Signals a Shift in the Fight Against Child Sex Tourism in Asia
A Japanese restaurant owner's call to action shed light on the scourge of transnational child sex tourism – and forced Japan's government to respond. Japan's embassy in Laos and its Ministry of Foreign Affairs have issued a rare and unusually direct advisory, warning Japanese men against 'buying sex from children' in Laos. The move was sparked by Ayako Iwatake, a restaurant owner in Vientiane, who allegedly saw social media posts of Japanese men bragging about child prostitution. In response, she launched a petition calling for government action. The Japanese-language bulletin makes clear such conduct is prosecutable under both Laotian law and Japan's child prostitution and pornography law, which applies extraterritorially. This diplomatic statement was not only a legal warning. It was a rare public acknowledgement of Japanese men's alleged entanglement in transnational child sex tourism, particularly in Southeast Asia. It's also a moment that demands we look beyond individual criminal acts or any one nation and consider the historical, racial and structural inequalities that make such mobility and exploitation possible. A Changing Map of Exploitation Selling and buying sex in Asia is nothing new. The contours have shifted over time but the underlying sentiment has remained constant: some lives are cheap and commodified, and some wallets are deep and entitled. Japan's involvement in overseas prostitution stretches back to the Meiji period (1868-1912). Young women from impoverished rural regions (known as karayuki-san) migrated abroad, often to Southeast Asia, to work in the sex industry, from port towns in Malaya to brothels in China and the Pacific Islands. If poverty once pushed Japanese women abroad to sell their bodies, by the second half of the 20th century – fuelled by Japan's postwar economic boom – it was wealthy Japanese men who began travelling overseas to buy sex. Around the 2000s, the dynamic flipped again. In South Korea, now a developed economy, men travelled to Southeast Asia – and later to countries such as Russia and Uzbekistan – following routes once taken by Japanese men. Later in the same period, the flow took an even darker turn. Japanese and South Korean men began to emerge as major buyers of child sex abroad, particularly across Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands and even Mongolia. According to the United States Department of State, Japanese men continued to be 'a significant source of demand for sex tourism,' while South Korean men remained 'a source of demand for child sex tourism.' The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime and other organizations have also flagged both countries as key contributors to child sexual exploitation in the region. A more recent and troubling shift appears to be unfolding within Japan. Amid ongoing economic stagnation and the depreciation of the yen, Tokyo has reportedly become a destination for inbound sex tourism. Youth protection organizations have observed a notable rise in foreign male clients, particularly Chinese, frequenting areas where teenage girls and young women engage in survival sex. What ties these movements together is not just culturally specific beliefs, such as the fetishisation of virginity or the superstition that sex with young girls brings good luck in business, but power. The Battle to Protect Children The global campaign to end child sex tourism began in earnest with the founding of ECPAT (a global network of organizations that seeks to end the sexual exploitation of children) in 1990 to confront the rising exploitation of children in Southeast Asia. Despite legal frameworks and international scrutiny, the abuse of children remains disturbingly common. Several factors converge here: endemic poverty, weak law enforcement, and a constant influx of wealthier foreign men. Add to that the digital age of information and communication technologies, where child sex can be advertised, arranged, and commodified through encrypted platforms and invitation-only forums, and the crisis deepens. While local governments often pledge reform, implementation is inconsistent. Buyers, especially foreign buyers, often manage to evade consequences. However, in early 2025, Japan's National Police Agency arrested 111 people – including high school teachers and tutors – in a nationwide crackdown on online child sexual exploitation, conducted in coordination with international partners. Why This Moment Matters The shock surrounding the Laos revelations and the unusually direct response from Japanese authorities offers a rare opportunity to confront the deeper systems at work. Sex tourism doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's enabled by uneven development, transnational mobility, weak regulation and social silence. But this moment also shows grassroots activism can force institutional action. Japan's official warning wasn't triggered by a government audit or diplomatic scandal. It came because Ayako Iwatake saw social media posts of Japanese men boasting about buying sex from children and refused to look away. When she delivered the petition to the embassy, it responded quickly. Less than ten days later, the Foreign Ministry issued a public warning, clearly outlining the legal consequences of child sex crimes committed abroad. Iwatake's action is a reminder: it doesn't take a government to expose a system. It takes someone willing to speak out – even when it's uncomfortable. As she told Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun: 'It was just too blatant. I couldn't look the other way.' It's commendable that Japan acted swiftly. But a warning alone isn't enough. Japan should strengthen and expand its international cooperation to combat these heinous crimes. A more decisive model can be seen in a recent case in Vietnam, where U.S. authorities infiltrated a livestream child sex abuse network for the first time in that country. Working undercover for months, they coordinated with Vietnamese officials to arrest a mother who had been sexually abusing her daughter on demand for paying viewers abroad. The rescue of the 9-year-old victim showed what serious cross-border intervention looks like. But for every headline-grabbing scandal, there are hundreds of untold stories. The Laos case should be the beginning of a broader reckoning with how sex, money and power move across borders – and who pays the price. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
