THE GUARDIAN


 

Tomohiro Kato, who killed seven people in 2008, was hanged on Tuesday in Japan’s first execution this year

A man convicted of stabbing seven people to death during a frenzied attack in Tokyo 14 years ago has been executed, Japanese media said.

The public broadcaster NHK and other news outlets said Tomohiro Kato, 39, had been hanged on Tuesday for the June 2008 rampage, which began when he drove his two-tonne truck into a crowd of pedestrians in Akihabara, a district of the capital known for its electronics stores and geek subculture.

He then got out of his truck and fatally stabbed seven people, including a man he had run over only moments earlier.

Kato, a loner who had complained of being “tired of life,” told police at the time: “I came to Akihabara to kill people. It didn’t matter who I’d kill.” The attack was the worst in Japan for seven years and shocked a country with very low rates of violent crime.

He was arrested by shortly after the attacks after a confrontation with an armed police officer, and had documented his journey to Akihabara on internet bulletin boards, typing messages on a mobile phone from behind the wheel of the truck and complaining about his unstable job and feelings of loneliness.

Kato had visited the area several times and knew it would be packed with shoppers and tourists drawn to its discount stores.

The son of a banker, Kato grew up in Aomori prefecture in northern Japan, where he graduated from a top high school. He failed his university entrance exams and eventually trained as an auto mechanic, reports said.

Prosecutors said Kato’s self-confidence had plummeted after a woman he had chatted with online abruptly stopped emailing him after he sent her a photograph of himself.

His anger grew when his online comments, including his plans to go on a killing spree, were met with no reaction at all, prosecutors said.

While awaiting trial, Kato expressed remorse in a letter to a 56-year-old taxi driver he injured had during the stabbing spree.

The victims “were enjoying their lives, and they had dreams, bright futures, warm families, lovers, friends and colleagues,” he wrote, according to a copy published in the Shukan Asahi weekly magazine.

Kato was sentenced to death in 2011, with the supreme court upholding the decision in 2015.

His execution comes as Japan continues to resist international pressure to abolish the death penalty.

Prisoners typically spend many years awaiting execution and are given only hours’ notice before they are led to the gallows, a practice that prompted two death row inmates to sue the government in 2021, claiming that it was “inhumane” and unconstitutional, since it does not give condemned people enough time to contact their lawyers to file an appeal against the execution order.

Japan’s use of the death penalty, which is usually imposed in cases that involve multiple murders, has long been criticised by international human rights organisations for the mental anguish it causes.

In a 2009 report, Amnesty International accused Japan of subjecting death row inmates to “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment.

Opinion polls, however, show high levels of public support for capital punishment, particularly in the aftermath of high-profile crimes such as the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway by members of the Aum Supreme Truth doomsday cult.