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       Suspected Gunman Holds Hostages in Post Office Near Tokyo

       As schools in a nearby city were locked down, its mayor said a gunman had fired a handgun at a hospital and fled. Incidents involving guns are rare in Japan.

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       Police officers taking position outside the post office where a man believed to have a gun is holed up in Warabi, just outside of Tokyo, on Tuesday. Credit...Kyodo News, via Associated Press

       By Motoko Rich and Hikari Hida

       Reporting from Tokyo

       Oct. 31, 2023, 4:37 a.m. ET

       A man believed to have a gun was holed up in a post office in a Tokyo suburb on Tuesday and holding an unidentified number of hostages, in an episode that was unsettling in Japan, where gun violence is extremely rare.

       An employee inside the post office in Warabi city called the police at around 2:15 p.m., saying there was a gunman inside, according to Taira Masuda, a spokesman for the police headquarters in Saitama Prefecture, who declined to say how many hostages were being held.

       That report, Mr. Masuda said, came about an hour after two men, one in his 40s and one in his 60s, had been shot at a nearby hospital, in Toda city. Another official, the mayor of Toda, said on social media that a man had fired a handgun at Toda Chuo General Hospital and fled on a motorcycle.

       Students and faculty at a dozen elementary schools and six middle schools in Toda went into lockdown, according to a spokesperson for the Toda City Board of Education.

       Mayor Fumihito Sugawara, in a statement on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, described the suspect as between 40 and 50 years old, about 5 feet 3 inches tall, with a medium build and holding “what appeared to be a handgun.”

       The post office where the suspect was holding hostages was less than a mile from the hospital in Toda. The two men shot at the hospital had non-life-threatening injuries, according to NHK, a public broadcaster.

       A hospital spokesman referred inquiries to the police.

       Japan has some of the toughest laws for buying firearms in the world, and fatal shootings are extremely rare. Last year, Shinzo Abe, the former prime minister, was assassinated by a gunman during a political campaign speech. It was one of only four deaths by a firearm in all of 2022.

       Motoko Rich is the Tokyo bureau chief, where she covers Japanese politics, society, gender and the arts, as well as news and features on the Korean peninsula. She has covered a broad range of beats at The Times, including real estate, the economy, books and education. More about Motoko Rich

       Hikari Hida reports from the Tokyo bureau, where she covers news and features in Japan. She joined The Times in 2020. More about Hikari Hida

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