Knife-wielding man injures 4 in Fukushima library

Makes me wonder how many people out there are on a short fuse. I always keep my wits about me for any loon who might wanna push me in front of a train but you never know what is gonna send otherwise normal-looking people over the edge.

Luckily nobody was seriously hurt. Everybody seems to bash the police, but it seems they came quick enough and prevented worse.

Makes me wonder how many people out there are on a short fuse.

Pretty much everybody. It's just that most deal with it better than the rest.

Luckily nobody was seriously hurt. Everybody seems to bash the police, but it seems they came quick enough and prevented worse.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted with that comment. You're right, it's good that they rushed in there. Although no one was seriously hurt, those who got hurt are now probably scarred and will avoid libraries for the time being. Hope the lunatic gets long jailtime.

This kind of this beautifully illustrates the difference between a society that has a sensible and serious policy on gun ownership, and others that don't. Imagine if he'd had a gun?

Thank god he didn't.

This kind of this beautifully illustrates the difference between a society that has a sensible policy on lending library books to out of town visitors, and others that don't.

I'm certainly not condoning his reaction but sometimes the inflexible rules in Japan can drive people crazy. No doubt he lost control after they told him that the proper course of action was to go to his local library, ask them to request the very same books through an inter-library loan, then wait a week, and then pay for all the wasted costs through his taxes. It's insane that someone within the same prefecture can't borrow a library book in a neighboring city.

He should have just googled the info he was trying to get from the book.

This kind of this beautifully illustrates the difference between a society that has a sensible policy on lending library books to out of town visitors, and others that don't.

＞ I'm certainly not condoning his reaction but sometimes the inflexible rules in Japan can drive people crazy. .... It's insane that someone within the same prefecture can't borrow a library book in a neighboring city.

A sensible possibly is to not lend books to people who have not at least registered and received a library card. And it is unlikely that the man was denied a book loan just because he lived in a neighboring city because in fact the Fukushima Municipal Library does in fact have a policy of loaning books to people from neighboring cities. The policy is also to loan books without charge to people who work or go to school in Fukushima but who are not residents. This is quite standard in Japan in my experience.

福島市、伊達市、伊達郡内にお住まいか、福島市内に通勤・通学しているかたであれば、どなたでも無料で貸し出しを受けることができます。

http://www.city.fukushima.fukushima.jp/site/toshokan/riyou.html

@bullfighter

Thanks for the info. That's my experience here in Kanagawa as well. If only you had been there with this info to calm things down.

Libraries are one thing that has changed dramatically. When I came in 1971 they were generally dark, grimy, open limited hours, and very user unfriendly. They are now bright, clean, open reasonable hours, generally very user friendly and offer all sorts of services other than just books and magazines to read.

@bullfighter

I agree. Here in Yokohama I can order my books online and collect them from a mobile library bus that rides around the city. But were still not allowed to take AV materials home, which would be nice. Unfortunately, the openness and welcoming nature of public libraries does tend to attract many mentally disturbed people.