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Terrorism in Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2012

Yasufumi Asai  and
Jeffrey L. Arnold
Yasufumi Asai*
Affiliation:
Chairman, Department of Traumatology and Critical Care Medicine, Sapporo Medical University, Sapporo, Japan
Jeffrey L. Arnold
Affiliation:
Medical Director, Yale New Haven Center for Emergency and Terrorism Preparedness, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
*
Department of Traumatology and Critical Care Medicine, Sapporo Medical University, Sapporo, Japan, E-mail: asai@sapmed.ac.jp
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Abstract

Although the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack probably was the most widely reported terrorist event in Japan to date (5,500 injured, 12 dead), the country has suffered numerous other large terrorism-related events in recent decades, including bombings of the headquarters of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Tokyo in 1974 (207 injured, 8 dead), the Hokkaido Prefectural Government office building in Sapporo in 1976 (80 injured, 2 dead), and the Yosakoi-Soran Festival in Sapporo in 2000 (10 injured, none dead). Japan also has experienced two other mass-casualty terrorist events involving chemical releases, including the 1994 Matsumoto sarin attack (600 injured, 7 dead) and the 1998 Wakayama arsenic incident (67 injured, 4 dead).

Until 1995, emergency management in Japan focused on planning and preparedness at the local level for the frequent disasters caused by natural events. Since that time, substantial progress has been made in advancing emergency planning and preparedness for terrorism-related events, including the designation of disaster centers in each prefecture, the implementation of several education and training programs for nuclear, biological, and chemical terrorism, and the establishment of a national Antiterrorism Office within the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare.

Keywords

bombingchemical disasterdisasteremergencyemergency managementJapansarinterrorism
Type
Special Reports
Information
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine , Volume 18 , Special Issue 2: Terrorism-I: Country Reports , June 2003 , pp. 106 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine 2003

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