A MAN rammed a lorry into a crowd of shoppers, jumped out and went on a stabbing spree in central Tokyo yesterday, killing at least seven people and wounding ten others.
The lunchtime assault paralysed the Akihabara neighbourhood, a popular district selling electronic goods which is wildly popular among the country's cyber-wise youth. The killings are the latest in a series of grisly knifings that have stoked fears of rising crime in Japan.
Tomohiro Kato, 25, was apprehended during the attack, which lasted three minutes, with blood on his face and later told police he was "tired of life".
"The suspect told police that he came to Akihabara to kill people," said Jiro Akaogi, a spokesman for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. "He said he was tired of life. He said he was sick of everything."
The violence began when he crashed a rented, two-ton lorry into pedestrians. Reports said he jumped out and began stabbing the people he'd knocked down, before turning on horrified onlookers.
Police confirmed seven deaths – six men and one woman – but could not say whether the victims had died of injuries from the vehicle or were stabbed to death.
Early reports suggested Mr Kato was a gangster, though these were later played down.
Reports said the attacker grunted and roared as he slashed and stabbed at shoppers crowding a street lined with huge stores packed with computers and other advanced electronics, and the latest in video and computer games.
"He was screaming as he was stabbing people at random," a witness said.
James Slaymaker, a Briton working in Japan, got to the area shortly after the stabbings. He said: "As I walked down the street, I noticed there were a lot of police cars. I noticed there was a guy literally just lying there with tape on his eyes and blood pouring out of the side of him. I was appalled.
"I could see carnage – bodies everywhere. Some were conscious, some were not, lying by the side of the road and on the road. There were people everywhere, a lot of onlookers."
Another eyewitness said: "The man jumped on top of a man he had hit with his vehicle and stabbed him with a knife many times. Walking toward Akihabara station, he slashed nearby people at random."
The attack paralysed the district and sent thousands of shoppers into a panic.
The Akihabara district specialises in electronic gadgets and video games and is especially popular with people interested in manga comic books and distinctive fashion. It is usually crowded at weekends.
At least 17 ambulances went to the scene, and TV footage showed rescue workers tending to victims in the street.
A witness said the suspect dropped the knife after police threatened to shoot him. And an amateur video filmed by a mobile phone showed policemen overpowering the bespectacled suspect.
In this picture taken by a pedestrian, Tomohiro Kato is detained by police officers
Another amateur video taken five minutes after the rampage showed shoppers helping the victims and a man screaming: "Ambulance, Ambulance!"
As night fell on Akihabara, several pedestrians stopped by and prayed at the crime scene. A bouquet of flowers, bottles of green tea and incense sticks were placed at the site.
Once rare, stabbing attacks have become more frequent in Japan in recent years as violent crime has increased.
In March, one person was stabbed to death and at least seven others were hurt by a man who went on a slashing spree with two knives outside a shopping mall in eastern Japan.
In January, a 16-year-old schoolboy armed with two kitchen knives injured several people on a crowded shopping street in Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward.
Yesterday's attack occurred on the same date as one of the worst attacks. A man with a history of mental illness burst into an elementary school in Ikeda, Osaka, in 2001, and killed eight children and wounded 15 pupils and teachers. The killer was executed in 2004.
Scourge of knife crime all too commonTHE knife or, less frequently, the traditional Japanese sword, have long been the weapons of choice in Japan, primarily because of the relative scarcity of guns outside the ranks of organised crime groups.
Gun-related crime in Japan remains rare, as the country's firearms controls laws are extremely strict, stating that "no-one shall possess a firearm or a sword". Exceptions to this law are rare. Gun ownership is minuscule, and so is gun crime
Yakuza groups purchase their hardware from Russia, China or the Philippines and have it smuggled into Japan.
Hunting is uncommon there, as is sport shooting, and anyone looking to purchase a rifle or pistol as part of a hobby will undergo a thorough investigation. Those laws were tightened last November in a move designed to curb the firepower of the yakuza.
With handguns largely unobtainable, anyone with murderous intent is inevitably drawn to knives. Their advantages are that they are relatively cheap, easy to purchase and arouse little suspicion when bought.
Yesterday's rampage fell on the seventh anniversary of the most notorious knife attack in recent Japanese history, when Mamoru Takuma entered the grounds of Ikeda Elementary School in Osaka and stabbed to death seven boys and one girl between the ages of six and eight.
A further 13 students and two teachers were also injured in the attack.
Yesterday's incident will prompt renewed soul-searching in a nation that still prides itself on being safe, although there is a growing acceptance that the security previous generations took for granted has vanished.
Academics and social commentators blame the increasing numbers of random crimes on the breakdown of the traditional Japanese family unit and young people's inability to communicate.
"They have a sense of loss, of being cut off from society, and believe that by committing a serious crime, they will force society to pay them some attention," said Makoto Watanabe, a lecturer in communication studies at Hokkaido University.
