Boy Stabbed Near Japanese School in China’s Shenzhen Dies; Tension Builds in Japanese Community (Update 1)

By Takahiro Suzuki and Miho Tamura / Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondents

9:03 JST, September 19, 2024 (updated at 13:15 JST)

SHENZHEN, China — A boy stabbed while walking to a Japanese school in southern China on Wednesday morning has died, the Japanese Consulate General in Guangzhou said Thursday.

The 10-year-old boy, who attended Shenzhen Japanese School in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, died early Thursday in the hospital where he was taken and underwent surgery after the incident, the consulate general said.

A 44-year-old Chinese man has been detained by Chinese authorities investigating the matter. The motive for the stabbing is unclear.

The boy was attacked on a road about 200 meters from the school and suffered serious cuts to his abdomen and leg, according to witness reports.

The school was temporarily closed after the attack, and authorities have beefed up security at other Japanese schools around China as concerns heighten in the Japanese community.

The Japanese government has strongly requested that the Chinese government disclose details about the incident and take steps to ensure the safety of Japanese nationals to prevent a recurrence.

At a press conference Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said that “effective measures are being taken to keep foreign residents safe,” but did not provide any information on the stabbing.

Japanese Ambassador to China Kenji Kanasugi has called for the facts of the incident to be disclosed.

“There has been no detailed explanation from the Chinese side,” Kanasugi told reporters in Beijing on Wednesday evening. “I want the Chinese authorities to accept that the entire Japanese community in China is feeling a sense of danger and to handle this matter appropriately.”

Japanese community stunned

The stabbing sent shockwaves through the Japanese community in China, which has been on edge since a similar incident in June, in which a knife-wielding man attacked three people, including a Japanese woman and her child, in the eastern city of Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. A Chinese woman trying to protect them died in the attack.

The Japanese government requested that Chinese authorities ensure the safety of Japanese nationals after that incident.

In Wednesday’s attack, multiple witnesses reported that the boy was severely slashed in the abdomen and leg, and suffered a large loss of blood.

A woman believed to be the boy’s mother reportedly screamed in Chinese, “What have you done to my child?” and “Help!” The woman’s hands were red with blood.

A woman in her 40s whose son attends the same school as the victim expressed on Wednesday the prevailing shock and worries of the Japanese community.

“It’s scary that [this happened] on a road we often use,” she said. “I won’t let my son wear his randoseru [backpack] to school from now on because people will know he is Japanese.”

Said a 36-year-old mother of two young children, “We’ll try not to speak Japanese when we’re out in public.”

Shezhen is a hub for high-tech industries with a concentration of many Japanese companies, and is generally believed to have little anti-Japanese sentiment. “Nobody wants an incident like this to happen,” a Chinese man in his 40s who lives nearby said angrily.

Wednesday marked the 93rd anniversary of the bombing of a railway in Mukden by Japanese troops that heralded the beginning of the Manchurian Incident. Anti-Japanese sentiment is more likely to heighten at such a time. Many posts on social media urged people not to forget the “nation’s humiliation.”

Following the June incident in Suzhou, major Chinese IT companies restricted social media posts that sought to whip up anti-Japanese feelings.