A man has been arrested and charged with kicking a rabbit to death on Okunoshima, an island off the city of Hiroshima that has become internationally renowned as Japan’s “Rabbit Island”.
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Investigators also believe he is behind the deaths of at least 77 more of the island’s rabbits over the last two months.
Riku Hotta, a 25-year-old office worker from Otsu City, was arrested on Tuesday and charged with violating the Animal Welfare Act for kicking the rabbit. The creature was subsequently pronounced dead.
Hotta was witnessed allegedly killing the rabbit by Takayuki Nakamura, a photographer who has been documenting the island’s rabbits for 25 years with his wife, Maroya.
“Since November of last year, there have been mysterious mass deaths among the rabbits of Okunoshima,” Nakamura wrote in an entry on the couple’s blog detailing the incident.
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“There was a possibility that it was an infectious disease, but considering the circumstances, we thought it was probably caused by a person.”