Mamoru Takuma, the Osaka school massacre

Mamoru Takuma was the perpetrator of the Ikeda school massacre in Osaka, where he killed 8 children and seriously wounded 15 other people, children and teachers. To this day it is the deadliest school attack in Japanese history.

Mamoru Takuma

Mamoru Takuma was born in 1963 in Itami, Hyogo Prefecture. From an early age he showed violent and disturbed behaviour, including cruelty to animals. In his second year of high school he beat up a teacher, ran away from home for a few months and then dropped out. After violent arguments, his father sought psychiatric help for his son, but when the hospital refused to admit him, he disowned him.

Takuma then joined the Japan Air Self-Defense Force, but was thrown out. In 1984 his mother left the family to live with him, until her husband came to take her back.

Early crimes

In November 1984 Takuma was arrested for rape and sentenced to three years in prison. He was released in 1989, moved to the nearby city of Ikeda and did various jobs, such as bus driver and rubbish-truck driver, but was often fired for violent or erratic behaviour. In 1998, for example, he attacked a passenger over the perfume she was wearing.

He found work as a caretaker at an elementary school in Itami, but in 1999 he put a tranquilliser in the tea he served to teachers, sending four of them to hospital. He was arrested and admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where he attempted suicide, but was soon discharged as able to look after himself.

In 2000 he found work as a taxi driver, but a month later he was fired for assaulting a hotel bellhop and breaking his nose. On 23 May 2001 he voluntarily checked into a psychiatric hospital for depression, but left the next day without any treatment.

Before the massacre he had been arrested several times, including for attacking one of his ex-wives.

The massacre

On 8 June 2001 Takuma was due in court for assaulting the bellhop. Instead, after buying a kitchen knife in a shop, he headed for Ikeda Elementary School, an elite school affiliated with Osaka Kyoiku University. In his car he also had a second knife, with which he planned to kill his ex-wife.

Shortly after 10:10 he climbed through a window into the building housing the first- and second-grade classes. In silence, he went from one classroom to another attacking the children. In about ten minutes he killed eight children and seriously wounded thirteen more children and two teachers. The victims were between 6 and 8 years old: seven second-grade girls and one first-grade boy. Their names were Yuki, Mayuko, Yuuka, Ayano, Maki, Takahiro, Hana and Rena.

The massacre ended at around 10:20, when the vice principal and a teacher managed to subdue him, although the teacher was wounded in the face.

Sentence and aftermath

Takuma was diagnosed with paranoid personality disorder but was held legally responsible. In prison he said he had chosen that school precisely because it was an elite school, to prove that children from rich families could also be killed in a few seconds. He showed no remorse.

In August 2003 he was sentenced to death, and on 14 September 2004 he was executed by hanging.

The massacre sparked a major debate in Japan about how mental illness is handled, the rights of victims and school security. After the attack Ikeda school brought in a security guard, something almost unheard of in Japanese schools at the time.

Singer Hikaru Utada rearranged their song “Distance” in memory of Rena Yamashita, one of the girls who was killed, who had written in an essay that she wanted to become a singer like Utada.

Sources

• Ikeda school massacre, Wikipedia