May 18:

Events

• 1870 - Telegrams started between Tokyo and Yokohama. (Japanese Date: Eighteenth Day of the Fourth Month, 1870)
• 1899 - The Bangkok Peace Conference is first held in the Hague.
• 1936 - In a crime that shocked Japan, Sada Abe strangled her lover Kichizo Ishida, cut off his genitals, and carried them around with her for several days until her arrest.
• 1984 - Nationality Act Amendment is established.

Births

• 1904 - Shunryū Suzuki (d. 1971), Japanese-American monk and educator
• 1947 - Akira Terao, singer and actor
• 1956 - Naomichi Ozaki, golfer
• 1971 - Nobuteru Taniguchi, race car driver
• 1988 - Kōji Seto, actor and singer
• 1990 - Yuya Osako, footballer

Film and television

• 2012 - The Complex, a horror film starring Atsuko Maeda and Hiroki Narimiya