Japan Is Among the World’s Safest Countries, Though It Has a Grisly Record of Mass Violence

A 41-year-old man shouting “you die!” ran into an anime studio in Kyoto and set it ablaze Thursday morning, killing 33 people and injuring 36 others.

Police said the man sprayed sprayed an unidentified liquid accelerant before starting the fire, according to the Associated Press.

The violent attack — one of the worst incidences of mass violence in Japan’s history — shocked the country, where violent crime is rare.

According to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, Japan has one of the world’s lowest murder rates at 0.2 per 100,000 people in 2017 (compared with 5.3 per 100,000 people in the U.S.).

But the country has a grisly record of violent rampages, and they appear to be becoming more common. Here’s a short history of mass violence in Japan.

Sarin gas on the Tokyo subway

In 1995, members of a Japanese religious cult released sarin gas in the Tokyo subway during rush hour. Twelve people died, and more than 6,000 people sought medical attention.

The same group killed eight people and harmed more than 200 the previous year, also using sarin gas, which was released into the air in a residential neighborhood near the homes of judges who were working on a court case involving the cult.

Aum Shinrikyo, the doomsday cult behind the attacks, was designated a terrorist organization by the State Department in 2010. Recent estimates suggest the group still has around 1,500 followers. Most of its current members live in Japan, but a few hundred can also be found in Russia.

The Osaka school massacre

Unemployed former janitor Mamoru Takuma, 37, entered an elementary school in Ikeda, Osaka prefecture on June 8, 2001 and began stabbing teachers and students. Eight children were killed, including seven girls in second grade and a boy in first grade. Thirteen other kids and two teachers were seriously injured. The attacker was subdued by a teacher and arrested.

The killer had been convicted of rape before the Osaka school attack. He had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and psychiatrists suspected that he had paranoid personality disorder. He was executed by hanging in September 2004.

The Akihabara ‘random attacker incident’

In June 2008, 25-year-old Tomohiro Kato drove a rented truck into a pedestrian area in Akihabara, a shopping district known for electronics and video games in Tokyo, before he jumped out of the vehicle and began stabbing onlookers, some of whom were helping other victims. He killed seven people and wounded 10.

During his trial, the attacker told the court that he had been bullied online.

Kato — who had posted messages about his intentions online before embarking on the attack — was sentenced to death.

Tokyo bus stabbings

In December 2010, Yuta Saito, a 27-year-old man, boarded a crowded bus outside the Toride Station in Tokyo’s Ibaraki prefecture and began stabbing passengers. He continued the attack on a second bus.

Fourteen people, 11 of whom were students at nearby schools were injured in the attack.

Stabbing at a care facility

In July 2016, a 26-year-old man named Satoshi Uematsu entered a disabled care center in Sagamihara, south of Tokyo, carrying a bag of knives and sharp tools and began attacking patients.

Nineteen people were killed, ranging in age from 18 to 70 years old.

The man was a former employee of the facility. He had been “involuntarily committed” to a hospital a few months prior to the attack for saying he wanted to kill disabled people, according to the Guardian.

Knife attack in Kawasaki

In late May, a man wielding knives in both hands approached a bus station and began stabbing children and other passengers waiting for their morning bus.

Eighteen people were injured, and two died, including a child.

The suspect, a man in his 50s, was detained at the scene but later died from self-inflicted wounds.