A man was arrested Sunday morning at a railway station in southern Osaka after allegedly stabbing at least one nearby passenger aboard a train, leaving at least three injured, media reports said.
At around 10:30 a.m. a local fire department received an emergency call from a West Japan Railway (JR West) station attendant at Rinku Town Station in the city of Izumisano, Osaka Prefecture, claiming that a person had been stabbed, NHK reported.
According to the Osaka Prefectural Police and the Senshu-Minami Regional Fire Department, three people were injured, at least one of them by a knife, Kyodo News reported.
NHK said a train conductor in his 20s and two other men, one in his 20s and another in his 70s, had been taken to a hospital. None of the injuries were life-threatening.
The suspect, 37-year-old Kazuya Shimizu, was quickly apprehended on the station platform and arrested on the spot on suspicion of attempted murder. Shimizu admitted to the stabbing, Kyodo reported, with police saying he had three knives with him at the time of the attack.
Rinku Town Station is home to a large shopping mall and is one stop away from Kansai International Airport, Japan’s third-busiest airport.
The incident comes after the Tokyo District Court earlier this month sentenced a 37-year-old man to 19 years in prison for attempted murder after he stabbed three people and lit a fire on a Tokyo train in August 2021. That stabbing spree inspired a separate attack two months later on Halloween night, where a suspect dressed in a Joker costume stabbed one and started a fire on a Tokyo train.