Akihabara marks 1st anniversary of deadly stabbing rampage

Tokyo's Akihabara district, a popular electronics area which attracts both Japanese and foreign comic and animation fans, marked the first anniversary Monday of a stabbing rampage in which seven people were killed and 10 others were injured.

Tomohiro Kato, a 26-year-old former temporary worker, has been charged with running down pedestrians with a truck in a vehicle-free shopping area on the afternoon of June 8 last year, a Sunday, and fatally stabbing passersby with a dagger after getting out of the truck.

At a crossroads where the rampage took place, flower bouquets, paper cranes folded for peace, and message cards were placed. One message said, ''Please rest in peace,'' and some passersby offered prayers at the site.

Hiroshi Yuasa, 55, a taxi driver who was seriously injured in the incident, visited the crossroads early Monday morning and laid flowers.

Yuasa said Kato should ''tell all about the rampage honestly'' in order for the souls of the dead victims to find repose. The driver said he still suffers from chest pains and headaches.

Kato, who was arrested immediately at the scene of the assault, was later indicted on charges of murder and attempted murder. The Tokyo District Court is scheduled to hold a session on June 22 to decide proceedings for his trial.

The accused, who had served as a temporary staffer at an auto assembly factory in Susono, Shizuoka Prefecture, is known to have posted a series of messages on a mobile phone bulletin board warning about the deadly rampage in advance.

Naoya Sugino, a 30-year-old game maker who was in Akihabara on the day of the killing spree, said he feels he could easily have become a victim of the rampage himself. ''Why did such an incident happen? I still cannot figure it out,'' he said while offering a prayer.

The Akihabara stabbing spree took place on the seventh anniversary of a killing spree by a man at Ikeda Elementary School in Osaka Prefecture affiliated with the state-run Osaka Kyoiku University on June 8, 2001.

The attacker, Mamoru Takuma, was executed in 2004 for stabbing to death eight children and injuring 15 others in that case.

On Monday, about 700 people including bereaved families attended a memorial ceremony held at the elementary school to mark the eighth anniversary of the incident.

A six-grader pledged at the ceremony to make the elementary school ''a wonderful place full of laughter.'' Almost all the pupils and teachers who experienced the spree at first hand have graduated or left the school.

Following the incident, the elementary school was renovated to prevent entry by strangers. It now has security surveillance cameras and alarms.

Ikeda teachers also began offering classes from this spring focused on safety promotion to teach pupils how to protect themselves against strangers and traffic accidents.

The teachers observed classes given by schools in South Korea and Taiwan, which have been designated as ''international safe schools.''

Those schools have been recognized by the World Health Organization as they meet certain criteria such as having an infrastructure based on partnership and collaborations among teachers, pupils, parents and technical staff responsible for safety promotion in their schools.

Two high school classmates of victim Mai Muto, who was 21 and a fourth year student at the Tokyo University of the Arts at the time of the incident, laid flowers at the site. A man who was her colleague in a music club, said, “It still hasn't hit me that her life was taken last year and that she can no longer grow old along with the rest of us.”

A 24-year-old man, who had been a volunteer for a cleanup activity taking place in Akihabara on the day of the incident and had called the police, came to the site at precisely the same time at which the incident had taken place—around 12:30 in the afternoon—and reflected, “I couldn't sleep for a week following the incident. There were a lot of police in the area today, which brought back painful memories.”

Tsuyoshi Nagashima, 35, who comes to Akihabara every Sunday, witnessed Muto crying out in pain after being stabbed. “I can still hear her voice. Akihabara also died that day. I don't ever want anything like this to happen again.”

© Wire reports