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Mass Killing in Japan Shocks a Gentle Nation
| Wall Street Journal | - |
SAGAMIHARA,
Japan—A mass stabbing in Japan at a home for disabled adults shocked a
country with little violent crime, and left authorities pondering missed
signals.
Mass Killing in Japan Shocks a Gentle Nation
Nation has among the world’s lowest violent-crime rates, which many attribute to its wealth, social safety net and lack of guns
ENLARGE
Yuji Kuroiwa, the
governor of the prefecture where Tuesday’s mass stabbing took place,
praying to mourn victims as he visited the scene Tuesday.
Photo:
Issei Kato/Reuters
A 26-year-old former worker at the home, who quit abruptly in February after being admonished about abusive remarks to residents, turned himself in to police after the attacks and was arrested. The death toll stood late Tuesday at 19, with more than 20 injured.
It was among the worst attacks in modern Japanese history and left people wondering why their country was suddenly cursed with the kind of mass violence that has swept the globe this year, from the U.S. to France to Afghanistan. Tokyo officials said there was no connection to Islamic extremists, but the circumstances—defenseless victims slaughtered en masse—resembled those of the other tragedies.
The crime scene, about a 90-minute journey from central Tokyo, is typical of the Japanese countryside, with a small river and tree-covered mountains behind the home.
“I am just stunned,” said Takashi Suzuki, 81, who lives near the facility where the killings took place. “How can such a thing happen in a peaceful place like this?”
ENLARGE
Reported crimes and homicide cases reached a postwar low in 2015, according to the National Police Agency. Police and crime experts say that the country’s wealth, generous social safety net and low gun ownership are among the reasons for the low crime rate.
The country hasn’t experienced mass violence by extremists since 1995, when the religious group Aum Shinrikyo released lethal sarin gas in the Tokyo subways, killing 13 and sickening thousands. However, attacks by deranged individuals resembling the one Tuesday took place in 2001 and 2008, with the number of victims in the single digits.
None of the attacks involved firearms. In Japan strict laws make it difficult for average citizens to obtain a gun.
Kindai University professor Hideki Kiyoshima, who has researched how social networks can incite violence, said that Japanese traditionally lived in close-knit communities and monitored each other, which kept crime down.
“In old Japan, people would stop [a crime]. That’s the deterrence and monitoring capability of villages. That has collapsed in the current age,” he said, by way of explaining Tuesday’s violence. The suspect in the stabbing, Satoshi Uematsu, lives alone, said a person who knows him.
Authorities had multiple alerts that Mr. Uematsu had changed in dangerous ways. He was employed for several years at the Tsukui Yamayuri-en home and didn’t initially cause problems, said officials of the home. But then he began to make abusive remarks to the severely disabled people living there, said the home’s director, Kaoru Irikura.
That same month, Mr. Uematsu wrote to the speaker of Parliament’s lower house, officials said. They declined to reveal the contents of the letter, but Kyodo News quoted it as saying Mr. Uematsu wanted to carry out “euthanasia” on severely disabled people “to revitalize the global economy and prevent World War III,” and describing a “mission plan” that resembled Tuesday’s killings in some respects. According to Kyodo, it said he would break into two facilities during the night shift, tie down the employees, kill 260 residents and turn himself in. In the actual attack, Ms. Irikura said, employees were indeed tied down.
On Feb. 19, shortly after Mr. Uematsu quit his job, police detained him in Sagamihara, the city where the home is located, because of his agitation and apparent mental problems, a city official said. The city had him involuntarily hospitalized, and his urine tested positive for cannabis the next day, the official said. But he later calmed down, and the city allowed him to be discharged on March 2, the official said.
One subject of discussion among crime experts and politicians on Tuesday was the stress of working at facilities for the mentally disabled.
Workers at facilities for the elderly and disabled are often low-paid despite the physical and mental burdens. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said in recent months that pay for workers in such places should be increased.
A help-wanted advertisement for a part-time job at Tsukui Yamayuri-en on the website of Japan’s government employment-service center offered a basic hourly salary of ¥970 to ¥1,070, or about $9 to $10, just above the local minimum wage.
“Workers in such facilities are under lots of stress,” said Yuji Kuroiwa, governor of the prefecture where the home is located. “We want to figure out what, if any, initiatives have been taken in this facility to ease such stress, whether enough efforts have been made, and what should be done in the future.”
— Chieko Tsuneoka contributed to this article.
Write to Eleanor Warnock at eleanor.warnock@wsj.com and Mitsuru Obe at mitsuru.obe@ws 
