Japanese police arrest man over bomb threats to Nintendo headquarters
Police arrested a 27-year-old man after bomb threats hit Nintendo’s Kyoto headquarters, forcing the company to absorb another security scare with no explosives found.
A bomb threat aimed at Nintendo’s Kyoto headquarters forced police and company security into immediate response, even though investigators later found no explosives or suspicious devices at the site. Kyoto Prefectural Police arrested a 27-year-old unemployed man from Hekinan, Aichi Prefecture, on May 12 in connection with the threats, and the reported charge was forcible obstruction of business.
The envelope arrived at Nintendo’s office in Kyoto’s Minami Ward on March 16. Multiple reports say the letter claimed that several bombs had already been planted and included an explicit threat to blow up the office; one account quoted the message as saying, “I’m going to blow you all the hell up.” Nintendo reported the incident and police investigated the threat as a serious case, not a prank.
That response fits the way Nintendo has handled earlier security scares. In 2023, the company said threats against employees had spread to staff and attendees ahead of Splatoon Koshien 2023, and it later canceled Nintendo Live 2024 Tokyo because of persistent threats. The pressure reached beyond one event, with safety concerns becoming part of planning for the company’s public-facing competitions and gatherings.
Nintendo has also dealt with a separate prior threat case involving a woman who was arrested after mailing a threatening letter and a death certificate to a Nintendo executive. Put together, the incidents show why any threat aimed at Nintendo is treated as an operational problem, not just noise from the internet. The company’s brand is usually built around characters, hardware launches, and packed fan events, but each new incident adds another layer of security work for employees in Kyoto and for organizers trying to keep the company’s live events moving safely.
For Nintendo, the cost of a threat like this is not limited to police reports and an arrest. It means interrupted routines at headquarters, shaken staff, and extra scrutiny around an already sensitive moment for the business, when attention on Switch 2 and the company’s wider hardware plans is especially intense.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
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