336 Online Posts Hinting Attacks Found during Lower House Race

Tokyo, Feb. 12 (Jiji Press)–A total of 336 posts hinting at assaulting dignitaries were made online in the lead-up to Sunday’s House of Representatives election, the National Police Agency said Thursday. Japanese police discovered the posts, made between Jan. 23, when the all-important lower chamber of parliament was dissolved, and Saturday, the final day of the official campaign period of the general election, through internet monitoring conducted as part of their efforts to prevent attacks by lone offenders. The campaign period began Jan. 27. One of the problematic posts said, “It’s time for a second Yamagami to get to work,” apparently referring to Tetsuya Yamagami, who was given an effective life sentence by a district court last month for fatally shooting former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during his election stump speech in July 2022. Among other cases, Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department issued a warning to a woman in her 40s, a resident of the Japanese capital, based on an analysis of her past online posts after the police department of Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan, identified a threatening social media post. In another case, the MPD, working with the security department, found and questioned a man at a stump speech venue who on social media had hinted at harming Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who heads the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Just before the election, the NPA asked in writing the Japanese branch of the operator of social media platform X, formerly Twitter, to cooperate for emergency information disclosures of accounts of users who uploaded posts deemed harmful. According to the police, the X operator provided information on about 70 pct of dozens of such disclosure requests. A total of some 60,000 police officers were mobilized to protect candidates of the election and others, discovering about 250 hazardous items mainly through security screenings at stump speech venues. Bag searches and metal detector checks were conducted at 99 pct of venues. The hazardous items found during the inspections included box cutters and scissors, with none of the cases leading to arrest. While some venues drew far-larger-than-expected crowds due to Takaichi’s popularity, there were no on-scene issues or incidents. Following the 2022 fatal attack on Abe, the NPA started to screen in advance security plans compiled by prefectural police departments to protect candidates and dignitaries during election periods. For the latest Lower House election, the agency altered 59 pct of the submitted plans, down from 82 pct in the previous Lower House election in 2024 and 71 pct in last year’s election for the House of Councillors, the upper parliamentary chamber. “The quality of security plans has improved,” an agency official said. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]