"It's Time," Tokyo Stabbing Suspect Warned

A man suspected of killing seven people in a knifing rampage foretold the mayhem in a series of messages posted on the Internet, including one just before the attack saying, "It's time," police and media reports said Monday.

Tomohiro Kato, the 25-year-old man accused of ramming pedestrians with a truck and then stabbing 17 bystanders in Tokyo's popular Akihabara district on Sunday, posted the messages on an Internet bulletin board from his cell phone, a police spokesman said.

The police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing protocol, refused to release the Internet messages, but news reports said they were posted in a message board thread titled, "I will kill people in Akihabara," hours before the stabbings.

"I want to crash the vehicle and, if it becomes useless, I will then use a knife. Goodbye, everyone," Kyodo News agency quoted one message as saying.

That was followed several hours later, the report said, by a chilling message sent via cell phone that read: "It's time." The attack began 20 minutes later.

The reported messages gave Japan a limited glimpse into the mind of a man accused of the deadliest knife assault in Tokyo in recent memory.

According to police, Kato said he had "gotten sick of the world," but investigators were trying to find out his motives, why he chose Akihabara and whether he had planned the criminal act over the past few days as reported.

Police say Kato - reportedly a factory worker - rammed a rented two-ton truck into a crowd of afternoon shoppers in Akihabara, a prime shopping area for electronic goods and a hangout for young people, particularly comic book fans.

Kato himself reportedly had a penchant for computer games and anime - like vast numbers of Japanese youths. Kyodo said he listed a female computer game character as his "favorite person" in his junior high school yearbook.

After ramming the pedestrians, the man jumped out and began stabbing the people he had knocked down with the truck before turning on horrified onlookers, police said.

The rampage shocked Japan, which boasts a low crime rate compared to other industrialized nations. Tokyo, with a population of 12.7 million, is considered relatively safe, with guns tightly restricted and shootings rare. The exception is gang violence, but gangsters do not generally attack the general public.

Takashi Kiuchi, who was on a high school judo team with one of the victims, said many Japanese live with the assumption that their country is safe, but that assumption was under attack.

"It's gotten so you can't even walk down a crowded street," he said.

On Monday, the scene of the attack was covered with flowers, comic books and soft drinks left for the souls of the dead. The offerings were shielded from the rain by a small white tent.

"Everyone says that Japan is a safe country, but I'm not sure if that's true anymore," said Sayaka Itoda, a young woman who had come to leave flowers.

On Monday, local television broadcast agents at Kato's apartment in Shizuoka, about 100 miles southwest of Tokyo.

Government officials scrambled to respond. The ruling coalition held an emergency meeting with Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda to come up with ways to secure crowded public spaces, and the government is considering limiting access to large knives like the one used on Sunday.

"Obviously, the suspect possessed the knife without a legitimate reason," said Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said. "I think we have to seriously consider what we can do to step up the restrictions."

Compared to gun violence, stabbings are less rare in Japan.

In March, one person was stabbed to death and at least seven others were hurt by a man who went on a slashing spree with two knives outside a shopping mall in eastern Japan. In January, a 16-year-old boy attacked five people in a shopping area, injuring two of them.

A spate of knife attacks also has occurred in schools, the worst being June 8, 2001, when a man with a history of mental illness burst into an elementary school near Osaka killing eight children. He was executed in 2004.