BEIJING (Kyodo) -- A Chinese court sentenced a man to death on Friday for fatally stabbing a 10-year-old Japanese boy in Shenzhen last September, Japan's government said, a day after another court handed down the same penalty in a separate knife attack involving Japanese citizens.

At the first hearing on the case, the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court convicted the Chinese man of killing the boy in the Sept. 18 knife attack near a Japanese school in the southern city, Japanese Ambassador to China Kenji Kanasugi told reporters.

Zhong Changchun, 45, from Jiangxi Province, attacked the boy -- the son of a Japanese father and a Chinese mother -- after buying a knife to "draw online attention" through the assault, the envoy quoted the ruling as saying.

The accused told the hearing that he hoped to speak with the victim's family as well as the Japanese Embassy in China, but he did not say he had particularly targeted Japanese nationals, Kanasugi said.

Although the ruling made no mention of Japan, the ambassador vowed to keep taking measures to ensure the safety of Japanese citizens in China, such as recommending them not to speak Japanese loudly, while remaining cautious on politically "sensitive" anniversaries.

The hearing at the Shenzhen court was closed to the media. The boy's family as well as Yoshiko Kijima, Japan's consul general in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, which also includes Shenzhen, attended the session.

The boy died a day after being stabbed while on his way to school.

The stabbing occurred on the 93rd anniversary of the Japanese bombing of a railroad track near Shenyang, which marked the start of the Manchurian Incident that led to Japan's invasion of northeastern China.

The incident sent shockwaves toward Japanese expat communities in China. Tokyo has repeatedly asked Beijing to ensure the safety of Japanese nationals living in the country.

About a dozen pupils at the Shenzhen Japanese school returned to Japan following the stabbing, according to a source familiar with the educational institution.

The Shenzhen ruling was handed down a day after a court sentenced a man to death over a knife attack near Shanghai last June that injured a Japanese mother and her child and killed a Chinese bus attendant who tried to protect them.

While there had been speculation that the assailant Zhou Jiasheng, 52, might have targeted Japanese nationals, the court in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, made no mention of Japan in rendering the ruling.