Police in Tokyo are looking for a man who forced his way into an apartment, threatened the foreign resident with a knife and demanded money, speaking in Japanese and English.
According to police, the incident occurred at around 4 p.m. Monday in Nakano Ward. The resident, who is in his 20s, told police that he opened the door to his apartment after the intercom rang and was headbutted by an intruder, Sankei Shimbun reported.
The intruder pointed a knife at the resident and threatened him in English and Japanese, saying "Give me your wallet." However, the man resisted and the intruder fled without taking anything.
The resident suffered injuries during the struggle, including a torn retina and cuts to his fingers.
The intruder is described as being in his 20s, approximately 170 cm tall, and was wearing a black jacket with a hood covering part of his face.
Police said they are examining street surveillance camera footage outside the apartment building to try and identify the man.
© Japan Today
21 Comments
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Newgirlintown
We all know that xenophobia has gotten bad here but this is a bit much.
Namorada
It’s growing.
Before I could hear people talk about learning English or going abroad whenever they noticed a foreigner.
Now, those statements have changed into criticisms and fear.
Let the yen strengthen and give people better salaries. That will fix Japan faster than turning foreigners into some kind of scapegoat for inaction and a lack of follow through.
Speed
They always mention that it's a foreigner whenever a crime is being commited by one but here in this article it fails to mention that this criminal was Japanese. Just he spoke in English and Japanese.
Japantime
We don’t know if the intruder was Japanese or a foreign criminal. We will have to wait and see the result of the investigation. It sounds like it was a foreign criminal as they spoke in English with a little Japanese.
grc
Still the safest country in the world though. Until it isn’t of course
Sid
The attacker is obviously a foreigner because the sentence. 'Give me your wallet' could only be uttered by someone who had studied English to PhD level. If it was a regular Japanese they would not be able to form such a complex sentence, and even if they could would be too embarrassed to say it aloud in front of another person.
OssanAmerica
Oh give it a break. This is a crime not xenophobia.
Perp should be caught in a couple days.
Peeping_Tom
"We all know that xenophobia has gotten bad here but this is a bit much"
How do you KNOW a Japanese criminal is involved???
ian
Seems personal
ian
It's a bit much isn't it
Donald Seekins
Is the Japanese lumpenproletariat (look it up!) looking to target foreign residents?
It’s something to worry about.
@Japan Glimpsed
Meanwhile, look this up: https://share.google/RmlqwbEhzDSf3PHvL
In which the attacker is identified as a foreign male.
Likewise, the above link should help.
kaimycahl
A lot of denial here, regardless of a Japanese or foreigner committing the crime, what we do know is a crime was committed by a criminal in Japan speaking limited English. Since there aren't many foreigners in Japan and "BROKEN ENGLISH was spoken it is easy for most people here to say the criminal was Japanese.
@Japan Glimpsed
a criminal in Japan speaking limited English. Since there aren't many foreigners in Japan and "BROKEN ENGLISH was spoken it is easy for most people here to say the criminal was Japanese.
And your source for this is? Limited English? BROKEN ENGLISH? Where in the above story, pray tell. As I have been at some pain to alert readers of these pages, FNN and others have identified the assailant as foreign.
NCIS Reruns
This might qualify as a man-bites-dog story. It made me smirk to think of the skeptical reactions of the J-cops, who were probably asking themselves, "Hasn't he got this story backwards?"
@Japan Glimpsed
"They" is JT? In fact, Japanese outlets identify the attacker as a foreigner. (Obviously the foreign victim is the source of that crucial information.) One assumes that you want to believe the attacker is Japanese. ごめんね。
Agent_Neo
It's true that crimes committed by foreigners are on the rise in Japan today, but that doesn't mean that Japanese people blame foreigners when something goes wrong. (The rate of prosecutions for foreigners is now higher than for Japanese people.)
There are also problems with the way the Japanese media reports on crimes.
For example, they sometimes report on certain foreigners using their aliases, concealing their nationality. Japanese people also have doubts about the media's reporting style.
SaikoPhysco
It could be that the perp didn't know he'd find a "foreigner" on the other side of the door. It also makes me wonder if this type of crime happens often? I would assume this could be categorized as a "home invasion" or "home burglary". I just looked it up. Home burglaries in 2003 were around 190,000 incidents a year. Which increased when Japan's unemployment rate was above 4%. Recently Japan is seeing just around 15,000 incidents yearly. I think the numbers have dropped due to the employment rate and increased video surveillance everywhere. Either way, thank you Japan, them's good numbers!
stickman1760
One lesson here, never open your door unless you are expecting them..
Rioneru
Safest country? Personally I don't think any country is the safest. Every country has some punks with bad intentions. If I had to argue which country is the Safest, then I would probably say Iceland, they have the lowest crime rates, but still, I would not call it "safest".
Zaphod
Rioneru
Why not? There are crime statistics, in which of couse you find "the safest" for whatever you are looking at. Of course, you have to select what can be compared. Among the 30-million resident metropolises in the world, I would bet my head that Tokyo is by far the safest. Iceland as a whole btw has a population of about 300,000 --- of course you can not compare that with population centers.