Fukui school cancels sports festival after threat against children

Sunday 18th May, 12:43 AM JST

A school in Sakai, Fukui Prefecture has canceled Sunday’s sports festival after receiving a note from someone threatening to harm children during the day’s events, school officials and police said Saturday.

According to police, the principal of Naruka elementary school received a letter on A4-size paper in the mail on Friday. A message, written in katakana, said that children would be harmed if Sunday’s annual festival went ahead. After consulting with police and the local neighborhood council, the schooll decided Saturday morning that, in the interest of protecting the children, the festival would be canceled.

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Latest 15 of 20 Total Comments Show All

pizzaboy at 07:22 PM JST - 17th May

it's not weird, it's a prank, and they should have said f-u to whoever wrote it by just getting some extra people and dads to be on the look out. i feel sorry for the kids who had their special day cancelled b/c of some low-life who wrote the letter and pu$$y school offials.

Why a message in katakana? For making believe that a foreigner wrote it. The whole story is really weird.

give us all a break and quit playing foreigners up to be such victims, it's just pathetic.
antizombie at 07:38 PM JST - 17th May

Just for clarification, Katakana is used in Japanese comics to refer when foreigners speak even if they are proficient. I am just referring to that issue. Why not using hiragana that would be more natural and more used by Japanese when writing family names in waiting lists in restaurants? I did not try to play or nothing. It is only a strange.
romulus3 at 08:00 PM JST - 17th May

maybe the use of katakana was from one of Japans more elite criminal masterminds who used the ruse to completely baffle the j-cops. they were right to call it off. maybe a Japanese Hannibal was lurking in the bushes. It also takes a person a few seconds to stab there way through a bunch of kids before even the bravest and most astute father, mother or teacher can rush to subdue such a beast.
KaptainKichigai at 08:00 PM JST - 17th May

What about the poor local police that had to put down their newspaper and get out of the box? They are the real victims here.
weedkila at 09:05 PM JST - 17th May

Why a message in katakana? For making believe that a foreigner wrote it.

Katakana can be used instead of kanji/hiragana for emphasis or effect. Usually it's for single words only but I can see it being extended in a letter like this.
eresay at 09:06 PM JST - 17th May

What a soft reaction. How about beefing up security or, as someone mentioned, getting some Dads in the action. It's most likely a prank. Someone who seriously wanted to do some harm wouldn't forewarn so this cowardly individual has got their way. Very soft.
romulus3 at 09:51 PM JST - 17th May

oh dear eresay, the guy who randomly stabbed all those people in Tokyo last month forewarned. Cops were watching out for him and they had a positive ID yet they still messed it up and he still stabbed he way through a few people in just a few seconds. what the hell are a few Dads to do when the potential threat could be coming from even a teachers who works at the school for all they know. No point in taking the risk. If they did nothing and some massacre happened I can imagine the scathing comments put forward by you and a few others posting such bravado nonsense here.
Himajin at 10:07 PM JST - 17th May

Poor J-dads having to show up at 5 AM just to get their plastic picnic sheet at the most prime location so they can video the all day event. J-mom slaving away in the kitchen making bento's.

It's a fun day, actually! It's hardly as deary as you make it.

Katakana is pretty straightforward, not much chance of individual handwriting quirks showing up, as they would with kanji...

>
proxy at 10:20 PM JST - 17th May

All they had to do was close off the campus and only allow parents and siblings to watch
jinjapan at 10:28 PM JST - 17th May

as the old saying goes, "it's better to be safe than sorry" . especially after last weeks article when the police gave a man doused in kerosene a cigarette & lighter. don't want to put your children in their hands for protection.
telecasterplayer at 01:15 AM JST - 18th May

makes you wonder what constitutes a "credible" threat.. scrawled in purple crayon in katakana? how about hold the festival and if some dipstick shows up, all of the dads get up and kick the living crap out of him?

seriously! the teenage twerp who ran amock in shinagawa slashing at people.. the twerp who stabbed the old guy at the train station in ibaraki-ken.. why can't men in the land of the samurai, judo and kyokushin just beat the living hell out of these twits? That girl in saitama a few weeks ago.. she was a black belt who performed some "body modifications" on the crotch of the guy that tried to grab her. FIGHT BACK. Fight back HARD.
lipscombe at 03:33 AM JST - 18th May

using katakana is as said above a way of hiding handwriting traits and the equivalent of cutting up and pasting newspaper letters which the individual involved in this case didn't have the brains to do.
Zaphod at 03:19 PM JST - 18th May

What idiots. One crank call and they cancel an event? That is only an encouragement for the next intimidation.
VOR at 06:43 AM JST - 19th May

Himajin, to each his own. If you been to as many of these as I have and still enjoy them, you are a better person than I.
KyouNoNippon at 01:50 PM JST - 19th May

lipscombwe nailed it

lipscombe +2