Posts Tagged ‘akihabara’

Aso gives speech in Akihabara

Taro Aso giving a stump speech in Akihabara:

“I can cheer up when I come to Akihabara,” Aso said as supporters, mostly in their 20s and 30s, yelled in chorus: “Aso, Aso, Aso.”

Akihabara knife attack survivor shows his wounds

A taxi driver injured during the Akihabara knife rampage shows his wound to the press:

He had been driving his taxi near the crossing where the incident took place and had rushed out to provide aid to injured people, becoming a stabbing victim himself in the process. The taxi diver has since been released from the hospital and can walk around, but the knife wound is not yet fully healed and still causes him a great deal of pain.

Another knife attack in Akihabara?

A man was arrested in Akihabara the other day for apparently slashing a police officer after attempting to flee from officers that had found a knife in his bag. The knife in question was a tool knife with a 3-inch blade – a weapon that wouldn’t be very useful if one wanted to go on a psycho knife rampage.

The police officer hurt while trying to stop the man suffered only light injuries to one of his hands. According to a post on Akiba blog, the Asahi Shinbun’s coverage of the incident claimed that a police officer may have actually grabbed the knife by its blade when attempting to seize it, effectively causing his own injury:

Around 13:25 on the 26th, when police officers questioned two men, one of them kept a tool knife (the length of a blade was 7.5cm) in his backpack, so police was going to let him get in the police car to ask him to go to the police station voluntarily. Then, he took the knife back from the police and ran away. Police captured him right a way, but since police grabbed the knife, he got injured. Manseibashi Police Station arrested the guy for a charge of inflicting bodily injury and the interference with a government official in the execution of his duties.

Other newspapers were more vague in their coverage, and it is unclear if Asahi’s story is true or not.

One thing, however, does seem to be clear: one should avoid carrying any knives in their bags when going to Akihabara, even if the knives in question are seemingly harmless tool knives. Police seem to be regularly performing searches of individuals, and even knife owners that don’t react like fools have to deal with a lot of BS before police allow them to go free.

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Did an overbearing mother turn Tomohiro Kato into a killer?

The media continues to investigate possible reasons why Tomohiro Kato went on a knife rampage in Akihabara, and one tabloid is focusing on his strict mother:

“We had an excess of love from our mother, who believed good education leads to a good future,” his younger brother told the Shukan Gendai weekly.

Speaking about the family and calling Kato “that” or “culprit”, he said their mother was strict, recalling one evening when Kato was around 13.

“The four of us were at the dinner table without saying a word as usual… Mother suddenly grew angry about ‘that’, spread newspaper sheets in the hallway and poured his rice, soup and rest of the meal over them.”

“‘You eat there!,’ she said. ‘That’ was crying while eating from what was piled up on the newspaper,” the brother said, adding the father had just remained silent at the family home in the northern city of Aomori.

The mother used to order her sons to redo homework so that it would impress school teachers, the brother said.

“She always cast her eye on what we wrote in what we called ‘censorship’. She always sought perfection.

“We were ordered to rewrite if she spotted one incorrect or ugly character … It wasn’t a correction by using an eraser but trashing the entire piece of paper and starting writing again.”

Kato started acting violently at around the age of 15, the brother said.

After entering a prestigious high school, his class rank quickly slipped as he rubbed shoulders with the region’s brightest children. He felt he was losing his mother’s affection.

“The culprit quickly realised her affection had shifted to me and misunderstood he was useless,” the brother said.

The brother said he saw Kato shouting to his mother: “You are dumping me!”

I don’t know if this made him crazy, but it was probably more traumatic than all that anime he watched.

Police swarm around Akihabara, bully man for legal possession of a swiss army knife

Following last weekend’s knife attack in Akihabara, the area was overflowing with cops yesterday. As one might have been able to predict, no copycat knife rampage took place. Instead, police officers spent the day searching for killers than did not exist, at one point bullying a man after finding a swiss army knife in his bag.

The man, who was apparently aware of his legal right to carry such a small knife, shrugged off threats of arrest from an officer. He was quickly surrounded by 18 police officers, because a dull-bladed tool knife is supposedly a very serious thing. After spending an hour and half attempting to bully and intimidate the man, the officers allowed him to leave.

[story via Danny Choo, photo via Mike's room]

Authorities suspend Akihabara’s “pedestrian paradise”

For 35 years, Tokyo’s Chiyoda-ku has closed some major roads to vehicle traffic on Sundays and created a “pedestrian paradise,” making a nice atmosphere and preventing sidewalks from overcrowding in the popular shopping area. However, authorities have announced that they are planning to suspend the Akihabara “pedestrian paradise” following the knife rampage that occurred last weekend. It is not clear how long the suspension will last, but sources have said it will continue until at least the end of July.

Here’s a FTV news report about the decision:

Pedestrians interviewed were generally surprised and disappointed by the decision, and I have to say that I am too. There’s simply no logical reason why authorities should close down the “pedestrian paradise.” This does nothing to stop a copy cat criminal from repeating the crime- anyone can rent a truck and drive into pedestrians by jumping a curb or waiting for crowds to walk across a crosswalk, and a determined madman could attack people on a sidewalk just as easily as in a vehicle street.

Combined with police tactics that include walking around with menacing nightsticks and searching random people, this new policy will no doubt make Akihabara less appealing to shoppers and tourists.