[darktruth]

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=576771

A man has gone on a stabbing spree in a Tokyo neighbourhood famed for comic-book subculture, killing at least three people and leaving more than a dozen others injured, officials and reports said.

While the assailant's motives remained murky, the daylight attack fell on the anniversary of one of modern Japan's most ghastly crimes — a stabbing frenzy that left eight children dead at an elementary school in 2001.

A man swerved a truck into a crowd of pedestrians shortly after noon in Tokyo's bustling Akihabara area before jumping out and stabbing strangers.

Reports said the man had claimed to be a member of one of Japan's feared Yakuza crime gangs.

By the time he was subdued, 16 people were injured, some of them seriously, the fire department said.

Jiji Press and Kyodo News said that at least three people were dead — three men, aged 19, 47 and 74 — marking a rare deadly crime in a city famed for safety.

Reports identified the assailant as Tomohiro Kato, 25, who told police he was "tired of living."

"When I passed by, I saw a man collapsed on the street. He was stabbed in the chest and bleeding badly," a young woman told public broadcaster NHK. "He was unconscious."

Another witness said the assailant was screaming incoherently as he stabbed people around Akihabara, which was closed to motor vehicles on Sunday.

"I'm shocked to see this because I come here often," a man said.

Akihabara is best known for major electronics stores and in recent years has mushroomed into a haven for Japanese subculture, pulling in tourists from home and abroad interested in comic books and video games.

Akihabara's attractions include everything from a museum of Japanese animation to cafes where waitresses dress as maids and video-game characters, while it is also a major commuter hub.

Television footage showed ambulances with sirens blaring racing to the scene, as the assailant's white Isuzu truck lay abandoned with a shattered windshield.

Hundreds of people crowded around the area and looked on. Green plastic sheets were set up in the middle of an intersection to give privacy as medics gave emergency help.

It is seven years to the day since a mentally disturbed man went on a rampage with a butcher's knife at the Ikeda elementary school in the western city of Osaka.

Mamoru Takuma, who had an apparent grudge against children of the elites, stabbed to death eight children.

At Takuma's sentencing, the judge called the killings "one of the most heinous cases in Japan's criminal history." Takuma was executed in 2004 at the age of 40.

The elementary school attack stunned Japan, which prides itself on its safety and moved to step up security at schools.

But Takuma has also been the subject of a morbid fascination for a subset in Japan.

In 2004, a newspaper deliveryman tortured to death a seven-year-old girl he kidnapped, sending photos of the ordeal to the victim's mother.

At the trial where he was sentenced to death, the deliveryman, Kaoru Kobayashi, delivered a speech hailing Takuma.

I wonder if this is gonna put the otaku fandom in Akihabara in a bad light (not that it wasn't looked down upon in the first place anyway). I found it kinda strange that psychopathic man even said he was part of a yakuza crime gang but I guess it may be that he hated otakus.