Japan's 300 schools, universities receive bomb, death threats; panic ensues

Hundreds of schools as well as universities across Japan received fax messages with bomb and death threats on Wednesday, stoking panic and subsequent closure of the schools. Most schools, however, were reopened on Thursday. According to an official statement, the threats were faxed to high schools and universities from a Tokyo-registered number. The authorities are yet to make any arrest(s) for the bomb threats.

Police said that no explosives were found in all the school buildings that it investigated after receiving the complaints related to bomb threats. The threats shocked the nation known for its historically low crime rate.

All the faxed threats used the name of a certain lawyer written in a unique font, according to the education ministry sources cited by the Japan Times.

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Japan schools bomb threat row: What happened?

According to law enforcement officials, the schools in Osaka, Saitama and Ibaraki began receiving the first wave of bomb threat messages on Monday.

Officials said that as many as 174 schools received bomb threats in Saitama prefecture, located just 31 km southwest of capital Tokyo. In total, threats were sent to about 300 senior high schools and universities across Japan, officials said.

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One message claimed that over 330 bombs had been set up. Another reportedly said: "I planted a major bomb."

Reports in Japanese media claimed that some fax messages demanded ransoms ranging from 300,000 yen ($2,320) to 3 million yen.

After Monday, schools received threats to kill students and teachers with homemade weapons on Tuesday.

Japan schools bomb threat row: What it means?

Experts cited in the media say it to be an act of organised criminal groups. Shinichi Ishizuka, a law professor and director of the Criminology Research Centre at Kyoto’s Ryukoku University, said the attacks seemed to be unsophisticated.

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"This is reminiscent of the ‘ore-ore’ scams that were common a few years ago but which people became aware of and they became less effective," he told South China Morning Post, referring to cold calls from organised criminal groups who targeted elderly people while posing as a relative in trouble.

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