Japanese police said Monday, December 15, 2025, they arrested a man in connection with the claimed stabbing of two people at an entertainment complex housing the female pop music group HKT48 in the southern city of Fukuoka, leaving them with non-life-threatening injuries.
Fukuoka police said they arrested a 30-year-old person of interest accused of stabbing a 44-year-old man in the chest at the facility on Sunday, December 14, 2025, with what appeared to be a kitchen knife.
Police said they are investigating the case as a possible attempted murder but declined to give further details, including the person of interest’s motives, and they also did not comment on the second stabbing.
Kyodo News agency and other Japanese media said the injured man, who worked for the HKT48 theatre inside the complex, was stabbed when he saw the person of interest in an unauthorised area and told him to leave.
The person of interest is also said to have stabbed a 27-year-old woman in the back in an elevator hall at the facility before he fled the scene, media reports said.
HKT48 said the group’s fan event scheduled for Sunday night was cancelled.
Violent crimes are rare in Japan, which has strict gun control laws. But in recent years, there have been several high-profile cases involving knife attacks and home-made explosives.
This comes days after police arrested a 30-year-old South Korean man on suspicion of fatally cutting his ex-girlfriend’s throat in a residential district of Setagaya Ward, after she recently sought police help over threats of violence from him.
The Metropolitan Police Department’s international crime division arrested Park Yong-jun on suspicion of murder. He has remained silent during questioning.
The victim was identified as 40-year-old Bang Ji-won, also a South Korean national who ran her own business in Tokyo.
Park is said to have slashed Bang’s neck with a knife within the grounds of her office in Setagaya, killing her. He fled the scene but was detained about three hours later at Haneda Airport, where he had reserved a ticket for a flight back to South Korea. When questioned, he told police, “I know her, but I didn’t see her today.”
Investigators said the two first connected in April through a Japanese-language learning app and began dating shortly after. Park entered Japan from South Korea on August 23, 2025, and stayed at Bang’s home in Tokyo’s Minato Ward.
