On 8 March 1974, a 22-year-old ethnically Japanese man from Hiroshima named Yagi Tatsumi entered the office of Asari Giichi (浅利義市), the also-Japanese mayor of Shiraoi, Hokkaido, and stabbed him in the neck. The attempted assassination was performed, according to the statement Tatsumi read before the stabbing, to protest the exploitation and commodification of the Ainu people of Hokkaido. The incident was a part of a string of anti-Japanese violent actions performed by pro-Ainu groups such as the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front.