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Man Arrested for Threatening Japan's Comike with Grenade (Updated)

Police arrested a 20-year-old man from central Japan on Friday morning for allegedly threatening online to throw a grenade at the ongoing Comic Market (Comike) dōjinshi convention. Hiroyuki Kageyama, an unemployed man from Kakogawa City in Hyogo Prefecture, allegedly wrote on the 2channel web forum on July 16, "I'll toss a hand grenade at the Comike site." Kageyama was officially arrested for "interfering with the operations" of the Comike organizers.

The 74th Comic Market is being held from August 15 to August 17. Last summer, 550,000 people attended the event at the Tokyo Big Sight exhibition center. The Comic Market organizers posted an urgent notice on their website on August 8 to announce that they are taking the unprecedented step of checking attendees' bags "to prevent people from carrying dangerous items." They explained that there have been several online threats against Comic Market since July. They also notified people that some escalators will not be in service in the aftermath of the accident that occurred on August 3 during the Wonder Festival model kit convention. On Friday, the Comic Market website posted another urgent notice to announce the arrest in the 2channel threat case.

Police arrested a 23-year-old man named Tomohiro Katō on June 8 after he allegedly struck pedestrians with a truck and then stabbed people at Tokyo's Akihabara otaku shopping district. Seven of his victims eventually died. The authorities say that Katō made a series of posts on a mobile phone bulletin board to announce his intentions in the seven hours before the incident. A 21-year-old man named Masaki Hori was arrested on July 3 for posting on 2channel that he would "use a dagger knife and a two-ton truck to commit a massacre" on voice actress/singer Nana Mizuki and her fans at the Tokyo site of her July 5-6 concerts.

Source: Fukui Shimbun, ITmedia

Update: FNN posted a video news report.