Bits of news are still coming out of the Japanese news feeds about Tomohiro Kato, the man who murdered 7 people and injured 10 others in the centre of Akihabara on Sunday. He is reported as having told police he was unhappy with working conditions and the fact there had been personnel cuts at the car factory in Shizuoka where he was working. Apparently the decision to downsize the firm from 200 to 50 workers is sufficient to make a temporary worker go over the edge and decide to try and kill anyone within reach. It has also been revealed that Kato changed job a number of times after leaving college.

I’m sorry, but the sooner people realise the economic bubble in Japan burst about 15 years ago, the better. We no longer live in an age where you have job security for life, great conditions and working hours for workers, a salary that allows you to go to a hostess bar every night and a wife who is doesn’t do anything about the fact that you do. Well, maybe the latter is still here in Japan, but that’s a subject for another topic altogether. You have to put in hours of work these days, and lots of people don’t really like their jobs. Many Japanese companies still believe that the way back to success is to make workers to “voluntary” overtime until 9 or 10pm each night, but the fact of the matter is that productivity is going down like a lead balloon. And any temporary worker knows that they will be the first to leave a company when cutbacks are made. The word “temporary” can act as a slight giveaway to some. But it seems in Japan some people are still not realising the reality of it all.

And it was a sad sight yesterday to see Kato’s parents apologising and bowing deeply on the news, apologising for their son’s actions. I’m sure Tomohiro has made mummy and daddy very proud of him now. But as the cameras flashed, it is hard not to feel sympathy for the parents. It’s not as if Kato junior was 10 years old and the parents had bought the knives for him. There is only so much responsibility that parents can take over a child before it goes over to them to act like an adult.

Kato said he bought 6 knives the day before the attack, which was confirmed by shopping receipts. But he also said he gave one knife to a colleague, and police only recovered 5 knives from the scene of the attack. Now that could mean a couple of things. Did Kato have an accomplice, who was supposed to join him in the killing frenzied attack, but who then backed out? Did the colleague know about the attack beforehand, and if so why didn’t he contact the authorities? If not, why did he accept a knife given to him; did he not think to question why he was being given a blade?

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..as news of another knife attack (this time attempted) has made the top story here in Japan. Yup, the copycat people are out now, and we know how Japanese people like to follow the trends. Once again, Kyodo News with the story.

16-year-old boy arrested for barging into ex-girlfriend’s high school with knife in Kitakyushu
Tuesday 10th June, 10:35 AM JST

KITAKYUSHU - A 16-year-old boy was arrested Tuesday for trespassing in his ex-girlfriendfs high school and threatening staff with a knife in Kitakyushu City, Fukuoka Prefecture, on Monday afternoon. Police said 20 officers were mobilized but nobody was injured.

According to police, the boy, who cannot be named because he is a minor, entered the high school, brandishing a knife around 4 p.m. He told staff that he wanted to see his ex-girlfriend who is a student at the school. The boy became agitated and started waving the knife, a teacher said. Staff called police who took the boy into custody.

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Get the boy named says I. Get him named & shamed and put away rather than concealing his identity as he’s a child and doesn’t know any better. Anyway, just thought I’d throw that one in. No doubt there will be a further attack in the net hour or 2. If not, i might have to get a fruit peeler from the kitchen area at work and go crazy!!! (For those of you lacking a sense of humour, that was a joke).

Another day, another knife attack here in beautiful Japan. This time the victim was a schoolgirl and the attacker wasn’t known. This, from Kyodo News:

Man slashes schoolgirl with knife in Nagoya
Monday 09th June, 04:28 PM JST

NAGOYA - A man on Sunday night assaulted a schoolgirl on a street in Kita-Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, police said Monday. According to police, the girl, 13, was walking home after finishing softball around 8 p.m. when the suspect came up behind her. The girl told police the man grabbed a softball she was carrying and threw it at her.

The girl said that as she turned to run away, the man came at her with a knife and slashed her pants. Police said she wasnft injured because her wallet in the left back pocket of her jeans protected her from the blade.

The suspect fled on a bicycle, mumbling to himself, the girl was quoted as saying. According to the girlfs description, he was in his 40s and was wearing a white cap and black clothes.

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OK, as much as this is providing fodder for my blog, I could really do without all these knife attacks to report. The situation is getting crazy here. What the hell would provoke a man to throw a softball (for those of you who don’t know what they are like, they are bigger than baseballs and their name is deceiving) at a 13 year old school girl and then try to slash the girl, before escaping on a bicycle? And then 2 of the other headlines here in Japan read “64-year old man arrested for strangling lover’s husband in Saitama” (yup, it’s in Saitama once again!) and “55-year old woman arrested for strangling 80-year old mother in Tokyo”. According to the woman, the excuse for the latter case was that “It is impossible for me to take care of her forever because she will never get better. I thought it would be bad for my husband, too”. Taking care of your old mother would be bad because she is going to die anyway, so why waste good time and money when we could kill her instead, it should read.

Oh, and if anyone has lost their left leg then please let police in Kumamoto know, as they have found a left leg severed below the thigh floating in a river in that area!

A chilling story for you here, which most of you have probably read about by now so I will try and give you a different slant and opinion on it. The news event I am talking about is the one which happened in the Akihabara district of Tokyo yesterday, in which a man went on what I believe constitutes a “spree”, killing 7 people and injuring 10 others.

For those that have yet to read the story, here is a brief summary. This guy, 25-year old Tomohiro Kato rented a truck in Shizuoka Prefecture, on the way to Tokyo. Once he got to the Japanese capital he headed to the Akihabara district. This is a popular area of Tokyo with both Japanese and foreigners. It is the electronics district of Tokyo and on Sundays some of the main roads are pedestrianised. Arriving in Akihabara at 12:30pm, this man proceeded to ram his truck into a bunch of people. He then got out and started stabbing wildly with a 13cm-bladed survival knife, aiming first for the people he had hit with the truck (slower targets) and then anyone he could get to, as he headed into the labyrinth of alleys in Akihabara. The police acted quickly (and deserve commendation for their actions), restrained & arrested the man, and seized his knife. Kato told police, “I came to Akihabara to kill people… I am tired of the world… Anyone was OK. I came alone”. At the time of arrest he was only charged with attempted murder as none of the suspects had died, but since then 6 men and 1 woman between the ages of 19 and 74 have died. The deceased have been confirmed as Mai Muto (21), Kazuhiro Koiwa (47), Katsuhiko Nakamura (74), Mitsuru Matsui (33), Kazunori Fujino (19), Naoki Miyamoto (31), and Takahiro Kawaguchi (19).

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Just as I was starting to write this entry on a particular news story, another one comes in that is equally as likely to make you think “What the…”. First off, remember not to point at ANYONE in Japan. Doesn’t matter who you are or why you did it, you could get run down, as these kids can testify:

Man held for attempted murder after driving car into schoolchildren in Chiba
Monday 02nd June, 03:10 PM JST

CHIBA - A 32-year-old man was arrested on Monday morning for intentionally driving his car into a group of schoolchildren, aged 6 to 10, who were on their way to school in Matsudo City, Chiba Prefecture. Three children were taken to hospital with injuries, police said.

Tsuyoshi Minaminaka, 32, a plumber, was charged with attempted murder in the incident which took place around 7:40 a.m. The suspect told police he got angry after some of the children pointed their fingers at him. According to police, he drove past the children, then turned around and plowed into them.

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My first reaction was shock that this guy didn’t come from Saitama, as that’s where a large proportion of the nutters come from in Japan though. I’m going for the trifecta though, and will predict that he’s single, living at home with his parents, and will keep his driving licence. I mean, how thin-skinned and weak have you got to be to be so offended by some kids pointing their finger at you that you stop your car, turn it around and mow right through them? This wasn’t just an instinctive thing of him turning his car into them. To take them time to stop and turn around requires some thought process and pre-meditation. He must be on some medication, or rather should be but isn’t willing to go to the doctor’s about his condition or take the medicine that is needed for it. As someone on a news website commented, “in most regards Japan is very safe, but the care in the community brigade are a danger”. I can understand this, especially after hearing a few stories recently about the areas surrounding my hometown. Apparently, the neighbouring town to mine has the highest proportion of crazies in all of Okinawa. What seems to happen is that quite a few of them are born there (currently for reasons unknown) and the sane people all leave. What we’re left with is a kind of town of the nutters type of thing. Maybe something you would expect from a bad horror film. Anyway, it’s pretty shocking but no doubt we’ll hear very little follow-up from this over the next few days. If we do I’ll be sure to report back. Something for you all to ponder: can you imagine if this had been a foreigner (and let’s heighten it all by saying a US Marine!) who had turned his car round and run into a bunch of Okinawan primary school kids?! I really cannot even contemplate the reaction it would cause.

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It was inevitable that after my post about suicides last week, related stories would be hitting the front pages. Just a day after, one of the Japanese statistics groups revealed that suicides in Japan were over 30,000 for the 10th straight year, and they were trying to work out what was going wrong. I really should send them a link to my site for some ideas. And then we had this story as the lead on the news websites this morning:

16-year-old girl hangs herself after message on blog tells her to die
Monday 02nd June, 03:21 AM JST

KITAKYUSHU - Police on Sunday said they are investigating the death of a 16-year-old high school girl who hanged herself on Thursday apparently after receiving an anonymous message on her school blog telling her to die.

According to police, the girl - a student at Mihagino Girlsf High School - hanged herself in her room at home on Thursday morning. Her parents notified police and the school. The parents told police that she had left a suicide note saying that a message on her blog had told her to kill herself. A school official said the message had been sent to the girlfs blog on Monday.

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This is yet another tragic loss of someone young and probably with a whole lot to live for. Now first of all, I think there has got to be some more to this story than a simple blog message saying “I want you to die” and her killing herself. Surely it can’t have been a single comment like that which drove her to take her own life. You would have to question if she was having issues at home or at school which started making her feel this way, and that this was the final straw. Issues at home could be something like parents only having a couple of minutes to talk to their child properly due to working so late, doing their “voluntary” overtime. Hopefully the police will trace this message that someone sent to her telling her to kill herself. Maybe the author of that message will be the key to finding out what has caused this tragedy.

As anyone who lives here in Japan or reads Japanese news can see, the suicide rate here is a big problem. In 2005 there were over 32,000 suicides and Japan has the second highest suicide rate of all OECD countries (S. Korea being top) and the 10th highest in the world (Lithuania topping that list). There is never a week goes by that you don’t read at least one story in the news about someone killing themselves by jumping off a bridge (the Rainbow Bridge in Tokyo seems a popular spot), overdosing on someone of gassing themselves to death (most popular at the moment).

The most recent high profile suicide has been that of Ako Kawada (see right). Kawada was a 29 year old TV announcer who had worked on TBS here in Japan for 5 years. Last year she left TBS and started to branch out doing some freelance announcing on TV Asahi. On her blog last week she said that she was feeling really worn down and needed a break from things. It seems like things came to a head over the weekend. At 6am on Monday morning, she was found slumped in the drivers seat of her car with a pair of charcoal briquettes in there. She was already dead when the police arrived? It always baffles me to think about what could cause someone who’s young, beautiful, and seemingly doing very well in her career field of choice decide that taking her life is the best way to solve her problems.

Last year the Japanese media almost ended up destroying the life of a singer called Kago Ai, who used to sing in a J-pop group called Morning Musume. In Japan your pop stars have to be squeaky clean and if you do the slightest thing wrong, you will be crucified for it. Anyway, photos came out of Ai smoking underage (shock, horror!) and holding hands with a boyfriend (even more shock and horror!). The media had a field day about how much of a failure she was, and Ai was promptly fired from the band and her management company. It started a very quick downward spiral which culminated in her slitting her wrists. Fortunately she was saved and has made a recovery, but still has the scars on her wrists as testament to what could have happened. gI still have the scars where I cut my wrists… I’ve made up my mind never to do such a thing again” she said in a recent press conference. One interesting point to note about Ai’s situation was the reaction of her management company. As soon as the first of these two scandals came out, the Up-Front Agency distanced themselves from her, and she was removed from Morning Musume. When the second scandal emerged, they dropped her straight away. Even in the companies statement’s, there was nothing said about supporting her, or hoping that she could get over these scandals in the near future. It seemed the most important thing was for the company to retain integrity and not really care about Ai and what her problems were.

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You’re gonna love this one! I was going to start a very serious entry but have to give you this story from Kyodo News first:

Man disguised as schoolgirl arrested for trespassing in Ibaraki school
Tuesday 27th May, 10:02 AM JST

IBARAKI - A 30-year-old man was arrested Monday night for sneaking into an Ibaraki high school, wearing a schoolgirlfs uniform and wig, police said Tuesday.

Shigemitsu Kajiro, 30, was caught by a teacher in a corridor around 5:30 p.m. after the teacher noticed he was wearing shoes which did not match the schoolfs uniform. After discovering the student was a man, the teacher took him to a staff room and called police. The suspect has so far said nothing about what he was up to or whether he had done this before, police said.

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There’s not really much you can say about this is there? Interesting that the teacher only realised when this teacher noticed the man’s skirt didn’t match his/her uniform. Did he manage to look that much like the rest of the female student body (or should that be “bodies”)? I know for some Japanese guys it can be tough to judge their gender from a distance, but when you’re wandering around the school with students around, you’d have thought he might stand out a bit. Don’t think I could pull that off too well though… am thinking the hair on the legs might be a bit of a giveaway! Although if I wear the right shoes to match the uniform, maybe I could…

As for what he was doing there, it certainly wasn’t something innocent. But unless the police can “interrogate” a confession out of him, what could he be charged for? Trespassing?

My blog seems to have taken a slight drugs theme… not sure what the reason is but it’s nothing too sinister. I just read this story and it had me laughing, so I thought you would appreciate it too. Just as the week was starting to look normal, the Japanese authorities make sure I walk around with a smile on my face!

So let’s picture the scenario: you’ve just arrived in Tokyo after a 12-hour flight from the UK. You’re weary, jet-lagged and quite thrown by all the neon lights and kanji (Chinese characters) that you see around you. You queue up for immigration, get your photo and fingerprints taken, declare that you’re not Osama Bin Laden and have no intention of killing Hello Kitty or anything like that. You pick your bag up from the luggage carousel and get the train into the centre of Tokyo. Still trying to listen carefully for any English that might help you, you get a taxi to your hotel and check in. Now all you need is a relaxing shower, so you open your suitcase to get your toiletries out. What’s this? There’s a small metal box in your suitcase. You’re sure you didn’t pack it yourself so you tap it a few times and then open it up. Upon opening it, you find it’s full of 146g of cannabis, with a street value of Y1 million!

Your first reaction is probably “What the…”, followed by a little fear about what should you do. You’ve read Dave’s blog and know that the police are not the most effective at investigations; going to the police station with a bunch of cannabis telling them you found it in your suitcase might have you eating rice & fish heads in a prison for some time. You then start to wonder who could have done this. Was it the shady businessman who wore the dark glasses through the entire flight? The dreadlocked, unwashed guy on his way to Thailand through Tokyo? The Japanese guy who pushed into you on the train?

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Now here is a story that is provoking much debate on Japanese language forums here in the Land of the Rising Sun. On Friday a bill was agreed by the government to make the possession of child pornography illegal in Japan. While it may come as a surprise to some of you that this is not already the case, Japan is like many countries which has no specific laws against child pornography possession. This story comes from Kyodo News:

Ruling parties agree on bill criminalizing possession of child porn
Sunday 18th May, 12:50 AM JST

TOKYO - A project team of the ruling coalition basically agreed Friday on a bill to stiffen the law against child prostitution and child pornography to criminalize the possession of such pornographic material even for personal use, team members said. While the current law does not cover individual possession of child pornography, the revised bill states, eeNobody is allowed to own or keep child pornography,ff and stipulates a prison term of up to one year or a fine of up to 1 million yen for violators, the members said.

The bill also requires Internet service providers to contribute to preventing the dissemination of child pornography, which occurs across national borders, and to cooperate with authorities in investigations, they said. The bill does not cover pornographic animation or computer graphics, only focusing on photography and images.

But the project team postponed making a final decision at Fridayfs meeting, as there was an opinion asserting that a eetransitional periodff is needed for people who currently possess child pornography to give them time to dispose of them, and the team will discuss the matter at its next meeting, lawmakers from the team said.

The coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komeito party plans to submit the bill to the ongoing Diet session running through June 15, but it is expected that the coalition will not be able to reach an agreement with the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan over the legislation.

While the DPJ is now considering compiling its own revision bill, some of the partyfs lawmakers have voiced concern about punishing those who only own child pornography, with a senior member saying, eeIt may lead to unfair investigations.ff

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