The Yokohama District Court on Thursday sentenced a man to seven years in prison over the March kidnapping of a then 5-year-old girl from Isehara, Kanagawa Prefecture, and for his subsequent ransom demands and two other extortion attempts.

The sentencing of Tadashi Yamazaki, 51, a native of Suwa, Nagano Prefecture, fell short of prosecutors' demand for 10 years.

In handing down the ruling, Presiding Judge Ryoichi Tanaka said Yamazaki "targeted a child who was helpless to resist and took advantage of the family's feelings."

Yamazaki pretended to be a relative of the girl and phoned the kindergarten she attended around 10:30 a.m. on March 8. He told staff that one of the girl's relatives had died and then went to the kindergarten to pick her up, the ruling said.

He subsequently made five calls to a clinic run by the girl's grandfather and demanded 8 million yen be dropped off at a park in Atsugi in the prefecture.

Police found Yamazaki and the girl in the park at around 4 p.m. Yamazaki was taken into custody and the girl was released unharmed.

Yamazaki was also responsible for two other extortion attempts, the ruling said.

On Feb. 28, Yamazaki tried to extort money from a branch of a credit union in the city of Fuji, Shizuoka Prefecture, by falsely saying he had abducted the child of one of the staff.

On March 6, Yamazaki phoned a preschool in Suwa and posed as the father of one of the pupils in a foiled attempt to abduct the child, the ruling said.