Police question man with homemade gunpowder in front of U.S. Embassy

The Yomiuri Shimbun

12:07 JST, August 10, 2022

A man in front of the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo on Monday was found carrying what appeared to be a homemade incendiary substance. The Metropolitan Police Department is investigating the man on suspicion of violating the Explosives Control Law.

Police officers questioned the man in a voluntary interview and quoted him as saying, “I learned how to make gunpowder online and came to throw it at the embassy.”

According to investigative sources, the man described himself as a college student in his 20s living in Osaka Prefecture.

Riot police checked his belongings on the street in front of the embassy at around 9 p.m. on Monday and found a cup wrapped in a cloth in his pocket. A simple substances test showed that a granular substance inside the cup could be gunpowder.