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Crisis of Japanese youth, blow to public safety

Japan faces a furious round of public soul-searching as it struggles to make sense of a frenzied killing spree that left seven dead and 10 injured on streets that are supposed to be among the safest in the world.

After ploughing his truck into a crowded street in the electronics district of Tokyo, a 25-year-old man, named by police as Tomohiro Kato, jumped out and began to stab the first people he came across. Six men and one woman died.

Witnesses described a scene of panic, with injured shoppers, some covered in blood, seeking shelter in nearby shops. After being apprehended by the police, Kato reportedly told them he was “sick of everything” and “tired of life.”

While most experts will describe the killing spree as a one-off, others are already pointing to a malaise at the heart of Japanese society that is behind a worrying rise in violent crime, cyber-bullying among primary school children and a new wave of suicides.

Nobuo Komiya, a professor of criminology at Rissho University in Tokyo, described the killer’s actions as a form of terrorism expressed by disaffected men who believe they have no other way of making themselves heard.

“Most murder victims know their killer, and most killers have no intention of being caught,” he said. “But we are beginning to see indiscriminate killings by people who don’t care if they are caught, or even whether they die.”

Though violent crime is still rare in Japan, a string of attacks targeting innocent bystanders in recent years and months has dealt a serious blow to its reputation for safety. Sunday’s incident took place on the seventh anniversary of a mass stabbing in an elementary school, in which eight children were killed. In January this year a 16-year-old boy attacked five people with kitchen knives in Tokyo, injuring two of them.

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