Parents in Japan trust the streets are safe for children. Then a man stabbed 17

A man pays respects at a makeshift memorial for the victims of a knife attack in Kawasaki, just outside Tokyo. Photos / AP

Every morning across Japan, parents say goodbye to their children and send them off to school. Students as young as 6, dressed in easily identifiable uniforms and shouldering boxy leather backpacks, travel to school on their own, their families secure in the knowledge that Japan is one of the safest countries in the world.

That peaceful assumption was shattered Tuesday when a man wielding two long-blade knives stabbed 17 schoolgirls and two adults at a bus stop in a suburb southwest of Tokyo, according to police. One of the girls, an 11-year-old, and a 39-year-old man died in the assault, and the attacker fatally stabbed himself.

It was a shocking event for a country where violent crime is rare and the kinds of mass shootings that have devastated schools across the United States have never occurred because of strict gun-control laws.

By Tuesday night, police had not identified a motive. Officials at Caritas, the Roman Catholic school in Kawasaki that the children attended, said they had received no warning and did not know the attacker, who was identified by NHK, the public broadcaster, as Ryuichi Iwasaki, 51.

The attack took place in the Noborito-Shinmachi area of Kawasaki, less than 300 metres from the local train station, where many students had arrived that morning before walking to the bus stop. Fourteen of the 18 girls who were stabbed were in first grade.

A man pays respects at a makeshift memorial for the victims of the attack. Photo / AP

"This is a very safe neighbourhood," said Toki Kudo, owner of a Century 21 real estate office not far from where the stabbings took place. "I was born and raised in this town, and I have never heard of any crime like this."

Kudo, 37, said he sent his 8-year-old son to school alone by train and bus every day.

"I can't imagine what the parents must be feeling," he said.

NHK identified the child who died in the attack as Hanako Kuribayashi, 11. Hanako was in sixth grade at Caritas, a private institution with students in kindergarten through 12th grade that was founded by Canadian missionaries in the 1960s.

While not naming Hanako, Teiko Naito, the elementary school principal at Caritas, told reporters at a news conference Tuesday afternoon that every morning the girl would greet her with a wide smile and an energetic "Good morning!"

"I still cannot believe she is gone," Naito said. "I was just hoping to see her smile and hear her say her regular greeting."

The principal added that parents just wanted to be able to send their children to school and know they would be safe.

"But today, after such a tragic incident, I am extremely saddened and feel such pain," she said.

Investigators work near a bus stop at the scene of an attack in Kawasaki. Photo / AP

NHK, citing the Kanagawa prefectural police, said that a father of a student at Caritas had also died. The broadcaster identified him as Satoshi Oyama, 39, a diplomat with the Foreign Ministry. The ministry declined to comment.

Satoru Shitori, the vice principal, said he had been waiting at the bus stop Tuesday morning, as he did every morning, to help children who had come from the train station to board one of the eight private buses that the school runs back and forth to the campus.

About 70 students, most of whom had been escorted by a teacher from the train station, were standing in line. Shitori said he had just helped about six students board the bus when he heard screams coming from the back of the line.

Shitori said he saw the attacker racing toward the bus stop, slashing at students as he ran. Shitori added that he chased the attacker and that the man ran away. The bus driver came off the bus and continued to chase the attacker, so Shitori turned to help the injured children and call the police.

Five of the children who were stabbed, along with about 15 other students, ran to a convenience store less than 100 metres away to hide. The vice principal ordered the uninjured children still in line to board the bus while he waited with the stabbing victims for paramedics to arrive.

Toshichika Ishii, 57, was sitting on a bench nearby when he heard the fleeing attacker shout in Japanese, "I'm going to kill you!"

School officials stand in front of the media during a news conference. Photo / AP

While violent crimes, particularly mass killings, are rare in Japan, they tend to involve knives, rather than guns, when they do occur. Three years ago, a former employee of a centre for people with disabilities in Sagamihara, also southwest of Tokyo, killed 19 people in the facility with a knife in the worst mass killing in Japan since World War II.

In 2001, an apparently deranged man burst into an elementary school in Osaka and killed eight children with a kitchen knife. And in 2008, a 25-year-old man who had posted a series of warnings on an online bulletin board ploughed a rental truck into a crowd of pedestrians in the Akihabara electronics district of Tokyo before stabbing passersby, killing a total of seven people.

In Kawasaki, residents were stunned by the stabbings in this community of commuters, who have the option of two train lines that can take them either to central Tokyo or to Yokohama, Japan's second-largest city.

"This is just a quiet and convenient location," said Hideharu Nakajima, 79, who woke to the sounds of young girls screaming Tuesday and then stepped into his well-tended garden with blooming hydrangeas and azaleas. Outside, he saw groups of children huddled in fear and ambulances pulling up, and one man on the ground across the street from his house, where a doctor was administering CPR.

Akino Kawato, 89, had just come out of her home to collect a newspaper from the bus stop when she saw a man lying on his side, bleeding and apparently unconscious. She also saw an injured young mother, along with her son. Three doctors from a family clinic rushed out to help, Kawato said.

After the attack, a steady stream of children were escorted away from Caritas by their parents, who had been told by school officials not to talk to reporters.

Caritas Elementary School students leave their school with parents following the attack. Photo / AP

One father, who had come to pick up his second-grade daughter, said that his wife had seen news of the stabbings on television, and that he had received a message from the school on Line, a Japanese messaging service, asking parents to pick up their children.

"There was no reason given," said the father, who asked not to be named. "I just received a standardised alert asking us to pick up our children."

Later in the afternoon, parents returned to the school for a briefing with administrators. Dressed in somber dark suits and dresses, the parents gathered in an auditorium to hear about plans for counselling for students and upgraded security measures.

The attack occurred on the last day of President Donald Trump's visit to Japan. He and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe were visiting a Japanese military ship and greeting U.S. troops when news of the stabbings emerged.

"On behalf of the first lady and myself, I want to take a moment to send our prayers and sympathies to the victims of the stabbing attack this morning in Tokyo," Trump said. "All Americans stand with the people of Japan and grieve for the victims and for their families."

Throughout the day, residents and commuters placed flowers and offerings of juice, tea and yogurt drinks at a makeshift memorial that sprang up at an intersection across the street from the convenience store where some of the children had tried to hide.

Some of those who stopped were themselves parents. After they laid down the flowers, they bowed their heads, pressed their hands together and prayed.

Written by: Motoko Rich, Hisako Ueno and Makiko Inoue

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