A man, dressed in a Joker costume and flaunting a knife, stabbed at least one commuter on a Tokyo passenger train before starting a fire.
As per reports, the Tokyo Fire Department said 17 passengers were wounded, including three seriously. Not all of them were stabbed and most of the other injuries were not serious, the fire department said.
The criminal identified as 24-year-old Kyota Hattori, was detained on the spot after Sunday’s attack and was being investigated on suspicion of attempted murder, the Tokyo metropolitan police department said Monday.
The attacker, riding an express train headed to Tokyo’s Shinjuku station, abruptly took out a knife and stabbed a seated passenger in his 70s.
Police said he told the authorities that he wanted to murder people and get the death penalty. Nippon Television said he also said that he used an earlier train stabbing case as an example.
A man who stabbed 10 female passengers on a train in Tokyo was arrested by the Japanese police, public broadcaster NHK reported.
As per reports, the 36-year-old man told the police that he wanted to kill women who appeared happy and chose his targets randomly. A woman in her 20s who was attacked is critical, according to the Japanese media.
The Tokyo Fire Department said nine of the 10 injured passengers were shifted to nearby hospitals, while the tenth was able to walk away. All of the injured were conscious according to the fire department officials.
The Japanese capital is currently hosting the Olympics, which end Sunday. The site of the stabbing spree was about 15 kilometers (9 miles) away from the main National Stadium.
The suspect left his knife behind when he ran away, and later walked into a convenience store and identified himself as the suspect on the news, and said he was tired of running away. The store manager called the police after seeing bloodstains on the man’s shirt.
Another local media outlet said he told the police he developed the intent to kill women who “looked happy” and stabbed a woman who happened to be seated near him in the train. He also told the police that he chose to stage the attack inside a train because it offered the chance to kill a large number of people.
The suspect was also carrying cooking oil and a lighter, with which he allegedly intended to set fire inside the carriage, NHK reported.
A witness at a nearby station where the train stopped said passengers were moving out of the carriages asking for help and shouting that there was a stabbing. Another witness told NHK that he saw passengers smeared with blood come out of the train, as an announcer asked for doctors and for passengers carrying towels.
Paramedics and police immediately arrived at the station, one of the witnesses said.
A Pakistani, Haroon Qureshi, who arrived in Japan as a student some 30 years ago, is reaching out to those living on the margins of society.
According to a report published in Mainichi, the national daily of Japan, Qureshi, a businessman from Pakistan, helps the homeless and those foreigners who have been detained by immigration authorities after failing to get refugee status.
He is also involved in the running of a mosque in Tokyo, Otsuka Masjid.
According to the Japanese daily, Qureshi’s efforts started just when he arrived in Tokyo to study computer programming in 1991. He began distributing food to the homeless in his neighbourhood in the capital’s Kita Ward.
“Now, three decades on, he has enlisted Japanese university students in his goodwill endeavours, seeing their involvement as a vital part of raising society’s awareness of the plight of the less fortunate,” it said.
The 55-year-old Qureishi said he believed there was a lack of understanding in Japan of why people ended up on the streets. He thinks the public’s attitude to the homeless is “cold.”
“The reality is that many times the homeless suffer from mental health issues and cannot fit into society,” the daily quoted him as saying.
So far, Qureshi had asked for students from Tokyo-based Keio and Tokyo universities to volunteer in his activities, which included serving meals to the needy.
In collaboration with Tenohasi in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro area, students and volunteers from the mosque recently helped in providing food to over 360 people.
“Today I witnessed a stark difference between normal people who were walking on the streets all dressed up, and those who had come to get food here,” the daily quoted Satoru Soejima, 18, who is studying Arabic at Keio University, as saying.
Qureshi, meanwhile, also leads another project called Food Bank to help the students themselves, some of whom have gone hungry after losing part-time work because of the coronavirus pandemic.
A soft-spoken man, he has also been helping those detained after their failed asylum bids since around 2000.
In one month, Qureshi received around 30 letters on average seeking help from detainees, mostly from countries in Africa or elsewhere in Asia.
“We may have different religions, colour or race. But I request everyone to try and feel the pain of other members of this huge (human) family, and do what they can,” he urged.
In recognition of his services the Pakistan Embassy in Japan awarded him with a letter of appreciation.
Ambassador Imtiaz Ahmad invited three extraordinary Pakistanis living in Japan for their social work that has also been highlighted in the Japanese media, including Qureshi.
According to the embassy, Qureshi was appreciated for his services that include providing food for the needy, financial help for the destitute and homeless, running an Islamic school and managing a graveyard for the Muslims.
The ambassador appreciated Qureshi’s work while stating that it has contributed positively to Pakistan and Pakistanis’ image living in Japan.
Qureshi thanked the Ambassador for the appreciation and vowed to continue and expand his humanitarian work, the embassy said.
A gigantic 3D cat has been installed on a billboard at Tokyo’s busiest railway stations. The 1,664-square-foot curved LED screen shows a giant 3D calico cat in a 4K display between the hours of 7 am to 1 am. The 3D cat behaves like an actual cat.
It is first startled awake in the morning, by afternoon it stands and meows at people who pass by and then, in the evening, it lies down to fall asleep and rests its head on its paws.
It also greets pedestrians with “nyannichiwa” – a combination of “konnichiwa” for hello, and “nyan” for meow.
The display will officially launch next week. Test broadcasts have been going on since last month and many social media users have seen and shared how awestruck they are.
Japan is currently closed to tourists so the company behind the display has posted a live-streaming view of the billboard on YouTube. However, they said that specific angles can affect how the 3D effect is viewed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ-Cg5c0CD4
Takayuki Ohkawa is a spokesman for Unika, one of the two companies behind the feline display. He told The New York Times that the cat does not have an official name yet, although fans have been calling it “Shinjuku east exit cat”. He explained the reason behind creating the 3D cat was to help cheer people up during the current pandemic.
“There are many reasons we decided to display the cat, but one of the big reasons is that with corona, the world became very dark. Through the cat display, we wanted to revive Shinjuku and make it brighter,” said Ohkawa.
