All Nippon Airways Flight 857 was a scheduled domestic flight from Tokyo Haneda Airport to Hakodate Airport that was hijacked by a lone individual on June 21, 1995. The aircraft was boarded by police the next morning following an over-night standoff, in the first instance where force was used to respond to an aircraft hijacking in Japan, led by the Hokkaido Prefectural Police with support from the

Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department The , known locally as simply the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), is the prefectural police of Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolis, Japan. Founded in 1874, the TMPD is the largest police force in Japan by number of officers, with a staff of more than 4 ...

Special Assault Team (then known as the Special Armed Police).

Hijacking and response

At around 11:45 a.m., a single hijacker took control of the

Boeing 747 The Boeing 747 is a long-range wide-body aircraft, wide-body airliner designed and manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes in the United States between 1968 and 2023. After the introduction of the Boeing 707, 707 in October 1958, Pan Am ...

aircraft while it was flying over

Yamagata Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu. It has a population of 1,005,926 (1 February 2025) and an area of 9,325 Square kilometre, km2 (3,600 Square mile, sq mi). Its neighbours are Akita Prefectu ...

, and took the 365 passengers and crew hostage. The hijacker claimed to be a member of the

Aum Shinrikyo , better known by their former name , is a Japanese new religions, Japanese new religious movement and doomsday cult founded by Shoko Asahara in 1987. It carried out the deadly Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995 and was found to have been respo ...

religious cult, which was then under investigation for its role in the

Tokyo subway sarin attack The was a Chemical terrorism, chemical domestic terrorism, domestic terrorist attack perpetrated on 20 March 1995, in Tokyo, Japan, by members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult. In five coordinated attacks, the perpetrators released sarin on three line ...

s. The hijacker claimed to be in possession of plastic explosives and sarin gas, and used these assertions to threaten the crew. At the time, Japanese law enforcement and the public were worried that the hijacking may have been part of a plan to conduct terrorist attacks in order to ensure Asahara's post-apocalyptic Japan visions would be fulfilled. After the aircraft landed in Hakodate at 12:42 p.m., the hijacker demanded the release of Aum Shinrikyo leader Shoko Asahara, and that the plane be refuelled and returned to Tokyo. He only spoke through the cabin crew, and refused to allow food or drinks to be brought into the aircraft. In Tokyo, a task force was established consisting of Chief Cabinet Secretary Kozo Igarashi, Japanese Transport Minister Shizuka Kamei and the Public Security Commission chairman, Hiromu Nonaka to oversee the incident. As the stand-off progressed that evening, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police led a nationwide background search of each passenger on the flight and concluded that the hijacker was the only suspicious individual on board. This conclusion was supported by communication from the pilot and from passengers with mobile phones, who told police that the hijacker was acting alone. One of the passengers in contact with police was folk singer

Tokiko Kato is a Japanese singer, composer, lyricist, actress and activist. She was born in Harbin, Manchukuo, to Japanese parents and graduated from the University of Tokyo. She worked as a visiting professor at Josai International University. While b ...

, who was en route to a scheduled concert in Hakodate. The Japanese Self-Defense Forces were placed on high alert throughout the incident. The next day, at 3:42 a.m., at the direction of Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, the aircraft was stormed by Hokkaido and Tokyo police units that had previously been monitoring the aircraft from outside. The hijacker was arrested, with only him and one passenger injured. Some of the officers from the Hokkaido Prefectural Police masqueraded as airport employees when they made the arrest. The hijacker apologized for his actions and said that he had to do it when he was detained by police.

Aftermath

The hijacker initially used the name "Saburo Kobayashi," but was found to be Fumio Kutsumi, a 53-year-old Tokyo bank employee from Toyo Trust & Banking on leave for a

mental disorder A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness, a mental health condition, or a psychiatric disability, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. A mental disorder is ...

. The "plastic explosives" in his possession were found to actually be made of

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolinite, ). Most pure clay minerals are white or light-coloured, but natural clays show a variety of colours from impuriti ...

, and his plastic bag of "sarin" was found to actually contain plain water. The hijacker was ultimately sentenced in March 1997 to imprisonment for 8 years, and ordered to pay ¥53 million in civil damages to All Nippon Airways. On appeal, the Sapporo High Court lengthened the criminal sentence to 10 years. The hijacked aircraft remained in operation with ANA until it was retired in July 2003. ANA still operates the flight number 857 but it currently operates to

Hanoi Hanoi ( ; ; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Vietnam, second-most populous city of Vietnam. The name "Hanoi" translates to "inside the river" (Hanoi is bordered by the Red River (Asia), Red and Black River (Asia), Black Riv ...

from Haneda, utilizing a

Boeing 787 The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is an American wide-body airliner developed and manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. After dropping its unconventional Sonic Cruiser project, Boeing announced the conventional 7E7 on January 29, 2003, wh ...

Boeing 777 The Boeing 777, commonly referred to as the Triple Seven, is an American long-range wide-body airliner developed and manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. The 777 is the world's largest twinjet and the most-built wide-body airliner. ...

. Within a year following the incident, the Special Armed Police, which were then an unofficial unit of the Tokyo police, were upgraded to official status as the Special Assault Team, and similar teams were established in Hokkaido and other prefectures. The government was criticized in the wake of the incident for failing to disband the Aum group more quickly following the Tokyo subway attacks, on the basis that this may have prevented the hijacking from taking place at all.

News coverage

The incident generated a great deal of live news coverage within Japan while it was ongoing.

Nippon TV JOAX-DTV (channel 4), branded as (NTV) or Nippon TV, is a Japanese television station serving the Kantō region as the flagship station of the Nippon News Network and the Nippon Television Network System, owned and operated by the , a sub ...

carried live coverage following the end of a scheduled baseball game, while

TV Asahi JOEX-DTV (channel 5), branded as , and better known as , is a Japanese television station serving the Kanto region as the flagship station of the All-Nippon News Network. It is owned-and-operated by the a subsidiary of , itself controlled by ...

pre-empted halftime of a live

J-League The , commonly a.k.a. shortened to the , and officially known as the for sponsorship with Meiji Yasuda Life, is the men's association football league in Japan. It is responsible for organizing Japan's major professional football tournaments, in ...

soccer match for live coverage of the incident.

NHK , also known by its Romanization of Japanese, romanized initialism NHK, is a Japanese public broadcasting, public broadcaster. It is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television licence, television license fee. NHK ope ...

shipped a newly-developed video camera from Tokyo to Hakodate in order to provide clearer news footage of the incident, and provided live footage of the aircraft's landing in Hakodate from a robotic camera positioned at the airport. This was said to be the first live coverage of a landing of a hijacked aircraft. Several major newspapers published extra editions on the morning of the hijacker's arrest, as it occurred shortly after the deadline for their usual morning editions.

JASDF involvement in response

F-15 fighters were dispatched from the

Japan Air Self-Defense Force The , , also referred to as the Japanese Air Force, is the Aerial warfare, air and space warfare, space branch of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, responsible for the defense of Japanese airspace, other air and space operations, cyberwarfare and ...

Chitose Base to escort the hijacked aircraft to Hakodate. SAP forces were carried from Haneda to the site by JASDF Kawasaki C-1 transport aircraft based at Iruma Air Base.

References

Bibliography