OKYO - In Japan's worst-ever incidence of school violence, a
man wielding a 6-inch knife slipped into an elementary school yesterday
and stabbed eight first- and second-graders to death while wounding at
least 15 other pupils and teachers.
Horrified Japanese stayed glued to nonstop television coverage of the
aftermath, watching the death toll mount, bloodied children being carried
out of the school, and panicked parents wailing. Many wondered what had
happened to the country they had long believed was among the safest in the
world.
The assailant, identified as 37-year-old Mamoru Takuma, was believed to
have a history of psychological problems. In the end he turned the knife
on himself but suffered only superficial wounds. He was captured by police
immediately after the attack and hospitalized.
''Heartbreaking,'' was how Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi
characterized the killings, a sentiment shared by many Japanese, who until
recent years had rarely known such brutal crimes. Today, however, the
crime rate stands at a 23-year high (although still much lower than US
rates), and every few months, after another heinous killing, Japan engages
in national soul-searching about what has gone wrong.
With strict gun-control laws, most slayings, in Japan, like this one,
are committed with knives.
About 10:15 yesterday morning (9:15 p.m. Thursday EST), police and
witnesses said, Takuma entered a second-grade classroom in the school in
the western Japanese town of Ikeda and began systematically knifing
pupils. He chased children who fled into the hallway, then moved on to a
first-grade classroom.
One first-grade girl said she saw the knife-wielding man run into the
classroom. ''He came in running, rushing, breathing so hard. There were
three boys standing nearby the blackboard and they were cut with the
knife,'' she told Japan's NHK television. ''I was so frightened. I ran
away.''
Many of the pupils had multiple knife wounds, mostly in the back and
stomach. The attack lasted an estimated 10 minutes. The attacker was
finally subdued by several teachers.
Police were alerted when a handful of pupils fled to a nearby
supermarket for help. ''One boy's back was covered with blood, and he
collapsed in front of the cash register. His lips were deathly pale, and
he could hardly speak,'' a supermarket employee told the Kyodo News
Agency.
Police said the alleged assailant, who was taken from the scene in the
back of a police car, his face concealed from cameras by a blue cloth, had
been under the care of a psychiatrist. He told interrogators that before
the attack he had taken 10 times his normal dose of antidepressants.
Otherwise, his statements were incoherent, according to reports.
''This is another case that continues to shatter the safety myth of
this country,'' said social commentator Yuko Kawanishi. ''And of all
places, this happened in an elementary school. It's indescribably
shocking.''
''A social trust has been breached,'' she added.
The last time Japan was faced with a slaying in a school was in 1999,
when a 21-year-old man entered the grounds of an elementary school in
Kyoto and stabbed a second-grader to death.
Schools and students in Japan enjoy an openness and freedom that long
ago vanished in the United States. Schools are easily accessible to the
public, and pupils as young as 6 take the subway by themselves. Now,
Japanese worry they may have to turn their schools into fortresses.
Japan has been faced with a rising tide of violence over the last year,
including stabbings, beatings, a hijacking, and most recently, the beating
death of two men in cases of ''subway rage'' on crowded commuter trains.
The growing violence is being attributed to a host of social ills:
financial pressures, insecurity and anxiety brought on by Japan's
decade-long economic slump; rising family tensions; more aggressive youth;
and increased societal isolation due to technology like video games and
computers.
Yesterday's killings are expected to highlight what many consider
another problem: Japan's mental health care system, which critics say
offers minimal services.
While details of Takuma's background were sketchy, he appeared to have
a history of mental illness. In 1999, when he was a janitor at another
elementary school, he allegedly mixed tranquilizers into tea and served it
to some teachers. They became ill, and Takuma was immediately suspected.
News reports said he was believed to have been hospitalized temporarily at
a psychiatric institution after that incident, and released with a
prescription.
''Psychiatrists just tend to give drugs and concentrate on that.
There's no counseling, no follow-up care, really,'' said Kawanishi, the
commentator.
Most of the Japanese worry over crime has been focused on youth
violence. Many of the most publicized recent slayings have been committed
by Japanese in their teens and twenties.
Last year, a 17-year-old boy hijacked a bus at knifepoint, killing an
elderly woman and keeping his knife at the throat of a 6-year-old girl.
Days before that, another 17-year-old stabbed his 64-year-old neighbor to
death.
The phrase ''17 and deadly,'' to describe dangerous youths, has entered
the lexicon. Parliament last year moved to toughen statutes on juvenile
offenders.
