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Julian Ryall

Recent viral clips in Japan of bullying, including one which later led to a mass murder revenge threat, have sparked concerns in the country about school violence.
The latest case centres on an email message sent to the board of education in Oita city, in Kyushu, at 11pm on January 11 warning of an imminent attack.
“On Thursday, January 15, I will intrude into the junior high school where the bullying video spread, together with several accomplices, and carry out a mass killing of students and teachers,” the message read, though the threat did not materialise on the day.
The education authority alerted prefectural police, with additional officers stationed at the school last week. Classes went ahead as normal after the three-day weekend but after-school events were cancelled. The sender of the mail has not been identified.
The mail arrived three days after the board confirmed it was investigating a minute-long video clip that was shared online showing a student in sports clothing assaulting another schoolmate. The footage shows the assailant jumping on the other student, punching him and kicking his head as he is on the floor.

The same day, the education authority and police in Tochigi prefecture, north of Tokyo, opened an investigation into a similar incident that occurred on December 19. Video footage, again shared on social media, showed a male student punching another student in a school bathroom and hitting him in the face.
The clip quickly went viral, with Jiji Press quoting police as saying the alleged assailant was “remorseful” for his actions and that “I am truly sorry for what I did”.
Experts say incidents of violence are rising in Japanese schools, and they caution that the official statistics are almost certainly short of the actual number of cases.
“There are a number of reasons why bullying numbers continue to increase,” said Izumi Tsuji, a professor of the sociology of culture at Tokyo’s Chuo University and a member of the Japan Youth Study Group.
“One of the main causes is likely to be economic problems in households today, making everyday life more difficult for families and that is something that will obviously affect children as well,” he told This Week in Asia.
“Also, I fear that young people in Japan have lost the dream they had for the future and they are taking it out on each other.”

The prevalence of social media is arguably the most influential contributing factor, according to Tsuji.
“We are seeing cases like this of physical bullying shared more and more on social media, but there is the other type of bullying, when people are ostracised from a group or criticised or mocked online,” he said, noting that this had become the most common form of bullying.
In late 2025, the ministry of education released statistics for financial year 2024 – which ended on March 31 – showing a record 769,022 reported bullying cases in junior, junior high and senior high schools across Japan. That total figure was up 5 per cent, or more than 36,000 cases, from the previous year.
Most incidents took place in junior schools, with more than 610,000 cases, but a record 1,405 children were the victims of what the ministry described as serious incidents, leading to long-term absences from school and, in worst-case situations, a child committing suicide.
Over the year, 413 students killed themselves, with eight confirmed to have been caused by bullying.
The ministry added a caveat to the new figures, however, saying they were higher in part because growing awareness of the problem led to teachers reporting more cases and additional measures being taken to deal with the issue.

Makoto Watanabe, a professor of communications and media at Hokkaido Bunkyo University in Eniwa, Hokkaido, believes the digitised, online world has to take some of the blame for the bullying crisis.
“Smartphones and all the other digital devices that young people have access to today have actually served to narrow their perspectives instead of broadening them, the algorithms giving young people more of what they like and reinforcing their perceptions,” he said.
“Students today have a sense of being almighty, they lack the self-control of previous generations and their entire world is centred on ‘me’.”
Children do not bear all of the blame, however, as parents are too often wrapped up in their own online experience, Watanabe said.
“Families are smaller and parents are now usually just focused on one child [and] let them use their mobile phones all the time,” he said.
Watanabe also said he was shocked by comments from the alleged assailant in the Tochigi case that he had not realised his actions were wrong.
“These children cannot tell right from wrong because they have not been taught by their parents or in schools,” he said.


A great deal of online criticism in both the Oita and Tochigi cases has been focused on the local boards of education, some suggesting they only acted decisively once the footage was online.
“The problem will never go away because boards are mostly concerned about public appearance and they just want to avoid trouble,” said a message linked to a Jiji Press article about the Oita incident.
“Human rights violations, defamation, assault, injury, property damage, blackmail, coercion and indecent assault are all criminal acts and should be dealt with as such,” the message said.
Chuo University’s Tsuji said the government and local education authorities had made efforts to solve the problem, citing a workshop he attended at his teenage daughter’s school organised by a leading social media firm to educate pupils about dangers in the online world.
He admitted, however, that he was not optimistic.
“I am sorry to say that I am not all that hopeful about what comes next,” he said. “Young people no longer have that dream about their future and I do not expect many of them to give up social media.”


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Viral bullying clips, mass murder threat sound alarm in Japan over school violence

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Experts say incidents of violence are rising in Japanese schools and caution that official statistics are almost certainly short of the actual number of cases. Photo: Shutterstock

Social media is a key contributing factor in the rise of bullying cases in Japan, according to professor Izumi Tsuji. Photo: Shutterstock

Japan experienced a record 769,022 reported bullying cases in junior, junior high and senior high schools across the country in the 2024 financial year. Photo: Shutterstock

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Experts cite social media as a key factor contributing to rising bullying cases in schools, warning of cases that go unnoticed


Experts cite social media as a key factor contributing to rising bullying cases in schools, warning of cases that go unnoticed.


Viral bullying clips, mass murder threat sound alarm in Japan over school violence

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Experts cite social media as a key factor contributing to rising bullying cases in schools, warning of cases that go unnoticed

Experts cite social media as a key factor contributing to rising bullying cases in schools, warning of cases that go unnoticed