One victim was fighting for his life and at least 16 others were injured when a man dressed as the comic book character the Joker rampaged through a moving Tokyo train, stabbing people at random and setting fire to a carriage.
The attacker was quickly arrested by police on suspicion of attempted murder. He identified himself as Kyota Hattori, 24. According to Japanese media he told detectives that he was copying an attack on another Tokyo train in August, and that he carried it out because he wanted to be executed for murder.
Footage shot by witnesses and posted on social media showed screaming passengers fleeing in panic down the narrow length of the train and squeezing through windows to escape once it stopped in a station.
A separate film shot on a mobile phone through the train window shows a bespectacled man, identified as Hattori, sitting and smoking a cigarette inside the carriage of the non-smoking train, with a bag on the seat next to him. He wears a blue suit and green shirt in a similar colour scheme to the costume worn by the Joker, the film and comic villain.
Witnesses said that at about 8pm he began to wave a 30cm blade at passengers on an express train on the Keio express line bound east for Shinjuku, the world’s busiest railway station. He stabbed in the chest a man in his 70s, who was reported to be unconscious and in a critical condition in hospital.
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He then poured fuel or lighter fluid from a plastic bottle onto train seats and set them on fire. Film on social media showed motionless figures lying at the far end of a carriage. In the carriage beyond orange flames can be seen after what sounds like a small explosion.
The train made an emergency stop at Kokuryo station, where fire fighters and police quickly converged. One passenger described texting her mother to say goodbye, in the belief that she would die.
Little is known about Hattori, who carried no identification documents. According to Japanese media, he told police that he “wanted to kill people and be given the death penalty”, and believed that he would be executed if he killed two or more people.
Large-scale Halloween events in Tokyo were cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic but the incident occurred as some people were travelling across the city in costume.
“People rushed along the moving train from the carriages in the back,” one 22-year old man told the Yomiuri newspaper. “I thought it might be something to do with Halloween, but then a man slowly walked towards us waving long knife. I ran for a bit, but then I sat on the seat and waited the man to pass by.”
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He added: “There was blood on the knife. It’s a miracle that I am still alive. I was terrified.”
Another woman said: “He had no expression on his face, and that terrified us. He was spreading some liquid.”
Rates of violent crime are low in Japan, but in the last few months there have been two incidents on trains. In speaking to police, Hattori reportedly referred to an incident in August in which nine people were wounded, when a man started stabbing passengers on a Tokyo commuter line before handing himself in to police.
Yusuke Tsushima, 36, told police that he was bitter after romantic rejection. “I came to want to kill happy looking couples and women,” he said. “I have been wanting to kill happy looking women for the past six years. Anyone would have been okay.”
Later the same month in another station, a middle-aged man threw acid into the faces of two strangers, injuring them, though not seriously.
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Japan’s worst act of terror occurred on the Tokyo subway in 1995, when members of the apocalyptic religious cult, Aum Shinri Kyo, released home made sarin nerve agent, killing 14 people and sickening 6000 more.