By JAY ALABASTER, AP
June 10, 2008
TOKYO - As mourners, some weeping, piled Japanese comics, flowers and other mementos at the scene of a deadly stabbing rampage, news that the attacker had posted Internet messages warning of the attack added to the shock.
The messages were specific, saying Tomohiro Kato intended to kill people in the Akihabara district, the heart of Tokyo's comic-book and youth culture.
According to national broadcaster NHK, Kato sent another message by cellphone just 20 minutes before Sunday's rampage, which left seven dead and 10 wounded.
It read simply: "It's time."
"It's unbelievable that things like this are happening in our country," said 19-year-old Tsutsumo Hirano, who attended high school with one of the victims and was paying respects at the makeshift memorial.
Kato, 25, a temporary worker at a factory outside Tokyo, was splattered with blood when he was arrested during the lunchtime attack in the shopping district.
Police say Kato rammed a rented truck into a crowd of shoppers, then jumped out and began stabbing victims who had been knocked down before lashing out at others.
Yesterday, Internet sites and the media carried a series of messages posted on an electronic bulletin board in the hours before the attack.
NHK said Kato posted messages under a thread titled, "I will kill people in Akihabara," and wrote, "I want to crash the vehicle and, if it becomes useless, I will then use a knife. Goodbye, everyone."
Government officials scrambled to respond to the attack.
In an emergency meeting, the ruling coalition considered limiting access to knives like the one used in the stabbing, which had a 5-inch blade.
"I think we have to seriously consider what we can do to step up the restrictions," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura.
The attack was a blow to Akihabara, once a low-cost electrical supply district that has grown over the past 15 years into Tokyo's premier computer and youth-culture center, with everything from huge multistory electronics emporiums to cafes where young people read comic books and hostesses dress as popular animation characters.
Kato shared this fascination with anime, Japanese animation. In a page from his junior-high-school yearbook, he had made a drawing of his favorite video-game character holding a dagger. He wrote in English, "Personality Crooked."
