by Frank Zeller, January 28, 2010
TOKYO (AFP) - A man on trial for killing seven people in a stabbing frenzy in Tokyo's neon-lit electronics district in 2008 pleaded guilty on Thursday to the attacks, Japan's bloodiest crime in many years.
"It is true that I am the culprit," auto worker Tomohiro Kato, 27, said as his trial opened at the Tokyo District Court, Jiji Press reported.
"Please let me use this occasion to apologise," he said about the bloody rampage that also left 10 people wounded in Tokyo's Akihabara district, the hub of Japan's comic-book and video-game subculture.
Kato is charged with multiple cases of murder and attempted murder and, if convicted, could face the death penalty for the attacks on June 8, 2008, which were Japan's worst mass-killing in seven years.
Defence lawyers were expected to argue he is not mentally fit for trial.
Kato was arrested on the spot shortly after the attacks, in which he rammed a rented two-tonne truck into a crowd of pedestrians before getting out and randomly stabbing people with a double-bladed knife.
Police say Kato documented his deadly journey to Akihabara on Internet bulletin boards, typing messages on a mobile phone from behind the wheel of the truck and complaining of his unstable job and his loneliness.
He swerved the vehicle into the pedestrians, jumped out and ran into the crowds raising the dagger in one hand and a smaller knife in the other, slashing and stabbing his victims, before being arrested.
Three people were killed by the truck and four died from stab wounds.
The son of a banker, Kato grew up in Aomori prefecture in Japan's north, where he graduated from a top high school. He failed his university entrance exams and eventually trained as an auto mechanic, reports said.
He reportedly had an interest in the subculture of manga comics, anime movies and video games.
While awaiting his trial, Kato wrote to a 56-year-old taxi driver whom he injured in the knifing spree, expressing his extreme remorse.
The victims "were enjoying their lives, and they had dreams, bright futures, warm families, lovers, friends and colleagues," Kato wrote according to a copy published in the Shukan Asahi weekly.
"I destroyed them all and they cannot be brought back, no matter how deep my regret. What I did cannot be undone. For my crime I deserve to die many times over, and naturally I will get the death penalty."
Japan prides itself on its low violent crime rate and had not seen such a deadly attack since a former mental patient stabbed to death eight children at an elementary school, seven years to the day before the Akihabara attacks.
After the 2008 rampage, Japan banned people from owning double-edged knives with blades longer than 5.5 centimetres (about two inches), punishable by up to three years prison or a 500,000 yen (5,600 dollar) fine.
Last Tuesday, an Akihabara neighbourhood association activated 16 new outdoor surveillance cameras and said it would install 34 more in the coming weeks, with footage to be monitored by its members, a report said.
Japan is the only major industrial democracy other than the United States that carries out the death penalty. No executions have taken place since a new centre-left government took power in September.
