Akihabara's Killer Hikikomori | The case of Tomohiro Kato

they say that we are all the products of our own upbringing but how much of that can be used as blame when looking at the sick and twisted actions of a killer my name is adrian and welcome back to coffee house crime today we're heading back to you guessed it japan to look at the case of tom hirokato the man responsible for the akihabara massacre in 2008. this incident would eventually become known as another case that highlights japan's growing concerns over violent ikikomori and just a quick heads up but i post both solved and unsolved cases here on a weekly basis so if true crime is your kind of thing please consider subscribing to coffee house crime so grab your favorite mug serve up a hot coffee and sit back this is the case of tomohiro kato [Music] this video is proudly sponsored by nordvpn being a channel all about true crime we are often reminded of the precautions that we must take to remain safe in the modern day world and this notion continues in the virtual world too with nordvpn all of your internet data stays safe behind the wall of next generation encryption meaning that you and your data are protected away from prying eyes not only will your internet traffic be hidden behind a vpn server but you can also choose from over 5400 servers across 59 countries meaning that she gets to enjoy the internet with no limits or borders personally speaking this has allowed me to read up on true crime news articles locked behind a specific country something that was crucial to get around in order to share international crime cases with you all and now being able to watch my favorite american netflix shows through an american vpn server is a huge benefit too join through nordvpn.com coffeehousecrime and you'll get a two-year plan at a huge discount with an additional four months for free if you are interested that's nordvpn.com coffeehousecrime or click the link in the description below and thank you nordvpn for supporting us content creators welcome back to japan if i had a penny for every time that i thought fondly of this country i'd be pretty rich being one of the most popular destinations to travel to for a holiday japan has made its mark in the world for its culture connection to nature and of course food and fun fact but did you know that you'll never have to walk more than 12 meters on average to find a vending machine in tokyo that means you'll never be more than a minute away from a snack or of course coffee but our case today takes us north of japan's bustling capital to aomori aomori which is the capital city of aomori prefecture is located on the northern coastline of japan's main island honshu like most of japan's northern regions aomori prefecture is mostly reliant on primary sect industries such as farming forestry and fishing but the city itself caters more towards manufacturing and services the year is 1982 the month is september and on the 28th day of that month tom hirakata was born he and his younger brother yuji both grew up in a comfortably sized home deep in the suburbs of aomori his mother and his father who was a senior manager in a financial institution wanted nothing but the best success from their children in the early years of tomohiro's childhood this was very much the case his grades were considered to be exceptional at elementary school and he quickly rose the ranks to become one of the school's best athletes and as a child tom hiro was known to be bright cheery and energetic he did have a short temper but he always tried his best with his studies similar success was found when he moved on to sakuda junior high school located on the eastern wing of aomori while there his grades remained admirable and he would eventually become president of the tennis club in middle school too but midway through his teenage years pressure from his parents started to show tomahera started to fall out with them on a regular basis very rarely returning home in the evenings allegedly throughout his younger years both of his parents held tremendous pressure over him and his brother to perform well at school and excel in their studies it wasn't only the general strictness that you'd expect from your parents either unfortunately it was much worse if one single word or character was wrong in his homework then his mother would rip up the page and force him to redo it entirely and allegedly she was abusive in more than just that way japan's way of work-life culture is to say the least very skewed when compared to the rest of the world while basic working hours for the typical salaryman are generally from nine to six many workers tend to stay in the office until much later often past 10 pm it is not unusual to see workers racking up to over 80 hours of work per week in fact this is the entire reason why japan's capsule hotels exist in the first place so workers could get their sleep in the city between shifts and not have to worry about the commute back home for many traditional families that left the mother to look after the children and for the cattle family things were no different on more than one occasion if tomohiro wasn't quick enough to eat his food his mother would throw his dinner on the floor and force him to eat it off the carpet and if he couldn't recite his multiplication tables fast enough his mother would dunk his head into the bathtub something that left the poor kid traumatized every time in the year of 1997 when he was 15 years old tom herrera's fortune took another turn into the negative he enrolled in taomori high school considered to be an elite school in aomori prefecture and from a social perspective for the first time in his life he was unpopular with his classmates often becoming the center of attention for bullying and name-calling academically he wasn't doing so well either out of a class of 360 students his academic ranking plummeted to 300 and sadly his reputation at elmer high school seemed to linger too one student in the same class as tomahiro described him as he gave off the feeling of being all alone and i heard that he used to walk around school with a knife and that's when the arguments and strictness at home really became a problem neighbors in the nearby area recalled tomohiro being forced by his parents to stand outside for hours in the middle of japan's cold winter begrudgingly tomohiro worked through those three years in high school but his grades failed to improve one of his teachers described him by saying he wasn't outstanding at all in his studies or extracurricular activities he was really just a mediocre student and the final nail in the coffin to tomorrow's education was struck early in the year 2000 when he failed his entrance exams to enroll in takaido university his mother had decided long ago that he would go to this university to become a professionally recognized engineer and tomahiro himself had dreams to become an automotive design engineer but with this fresh result that no longer looked likely and his mother was sure to express her disappointment when she would find out tomorrow would try taking the same exams again the following year but second time wasn't the charm he still failed to make his way in to university slipping into his own world of depression self-shame and resentment tomahiro grew more angry at himself his mother and eventually society in what was felt to be a previous lifetime he used to be academically gifted sporty and well-liked but that was no more a slow shift in the family's dynamics also started to appear where his mother once overburdened him with pressure and at times anger she now appeared to be almost entirely careless with her older son the attention seemed to shift towards tomaher's younger brother yuji and tomahiro was left to deal with his own self-disappointments alone he eventually enrolled in tanaka nihon automotive college training up to become an automotive mechanic maybe if he couldn't become a design engineer he could start from a slightly lower position in the garage in april of 2005 tomahero finally picked up some work it was in a truck factory in saitama prefecture located in the area of greater tokyo this was finally his chance to become independent and hopefully rihanna's mother's love but tokyo is expensive not an easy place for a mechanic to afford rent and gradually over time his savings depleted rather than grew all in the meanwhile his parents didn't seem to care much either the year of 2006 was a new found low for tomohiro deeply in debt with no self-worth or any profound direction in life and believing that his family had given up on him tomohiro was at the end of his rope it was in the late hours of one spring night that he got into the driver's seat of his car targeted a wall and in an attempt to take his own life rammed his vehicle into it but tomaheru lived to see another day in fact other than a mild concussion and several cosmetic injuries he was pretty okay after the crash and things soon after started to look better for him as well by the end of summer a company known as kanto motor industry reached out to his agent to offer him a job and just several weeks after the crash tomohiro was now working in susano city at a slightly more comfortable rate of 200 000 yen a month tomohiro was known to be an honest worker he didn't speak much to his colleagues but he did have a good working attitude it was for this reason that after his first year of work his contract was renewed to keep him on for another 12 months while at work tomohiro was seen to be quiet and composed but outside of the garage he was even more quiet inward and barely sociable in fact he had no friends at all all of his communication with the outside world at the time was through an online bulletin board and here for the most part he would remain anonymous complaining about society and his lack of companionship his main hobby was to stay at home and watch anime nothing wrong with that but it's all that he did with himself he would draw for hours rarely be seen outside of his apartments and have very little to say outside anime to the people who knew of tomohiro outside of work they would describe him as short-tempered angry and reclusive and they were right he would lose his call very often he was unhappy with his life he had no direction no purpose no money no partner and no family that he felt comfortable in and the messaging boards that he frequented seemed to often harass and bully tom hero online even in his area of respite he couldn't escape stress or abuse and things would get a lot worse in june 2008 with the recent news that kanto motor industry was set to reduce its number of temporary workers from 200 to 50 tom hero was emotionally on a knife's edge about the whole situation not only did he rely on his job to keep himself afloat but the one-bedroom apartment that he was renting was from his agency too on the 5th of june he arrived at work to find his uniform missing from his locker strange this hasn't happened before but then remembering the company's recent announcement on redundancies all he could think of was that the reason his uniform was missing was because he'd been sacked in a blind rage tomohiro had slammed his locker door shut screaming at his colleagues asking for his uniform those colleagues went to go find their boss but by the time they returned tomahiro had disappeared he never returned to work not later in the day or the next instead he wrote messages online i don't have a single friend and i never will in the future i'll be ignored because i'm ugly if i had a girlfriend i wouldn't have just left my job or be addicted to my cell phone a man with hope could never understand this i am lower than trash because at least the trash gets recycled it seemed that the moment tomahero freaked out at work something inside the man had finally snapped snapped in a way that was not healthy normal or justifiable in the afternoon of june the sixth tomaheru decided to travel to a weapon protection store where he purchased six daggers leather gloves and special batons all for 35 000 yen and the next day in the morning of june the 7th he then took the local shinkansen to akihabara in tokyo and sold his computer and other belongings akihabara located in central tokyo is an interesting place originally known as the black market in japan's post-war era it has now evolved over the decades to become better known as electric city and is also known worldwide as the mecca of otakus an otaku is a person who is obsessed with the world of anime and is often depicted as a reclusive and lonely person something that many would define tamahiro as tying things together following strong influence akahaba has become the modern day center for popular japanese culture and is a major shopping district for video games anime manga made cafes and arcades a paradise for many but the reason that tomahera was here was to great surprise not for fun quite the contrary actually with the money that he had made from selling his computer and his personal possessions he then hired out a rental truck supposedly to move everything out of his home but being in acahabara tomohiro was over 100 miles away from his house and neither did he share any previous plans of moving in the early hours of the next morning he posted several messages online rayna's forecasted bad news i'm used to playing the role of a good man everybody is so easily deceived am i incapable of having friends the time has come let's go it seems i'll be battling against my headache what dreadful rain even though i prepared everything perfectly into kanagawa and having a rest things are going well at the moment awful jam will i be in time reach takahabara it's the day of pedestrians paradise isn't it just minutes left now just 48 minutes after his last message at 12 33 pm on the 8th of july tom hirokato drove to a crossing in acahabra and after ignoring a red light he sped through it and barraged his five-ton truck into a crowd hitting five people along the way it was a sunday meaning that chodori was shut to traffic making it a widespread walkway for pedestrians terrified bystanders gathered to care for the victims that were hit little to their knowledge they assumed that this was a car accident but sadly there was more tomahiro then broke out of his truck before brandishing a knife and violently attacking anyone within his reach he began to scream randomly targeting people regardless of their age or status and once he got cold feet he fled the area running down the nearby alley a police officer who was on duty in the nearby area responded as soon as he heard the commotion and while running towards the incident he crossed paths with tomohirokato [Music] drawing his baton and striking it over tomohiro's head the suspect did little to react and so the officer drew his gun instead this finally elicited a response tomohiro dropped his knife and only two minutes since the attack had began tomahira was held down by the officer and other pedestrians and arrested by police [Music] over 17 ambulances rushed to the scene but with great sadness five of those victims who were at the mercy of tomohirokato went into cardiac arrest at the scene it was initially reported that two people had died from the attack but during that same day the death toll would increase to seven and it was later determined that through autopsy reports three victims died as a result of being hit by the truck while the other four were fatally stabbed caught in the act with literally hundreds of cameras all around him tomohiro admitted his guilt pretty much from the very beginning he was also very open with his motives and there were three the first motive was his own hatred towards himself and his fortune once a popular and well-educated child his luck seemed to run out around high school he felt like a failure with a life that was destined for nothing great and while he did share that his mother was abusive and rarely gave the love or acceptance that he wanted he refused to blame her for his actions the tipping point for his first motive was for believing that he had lost his job at kanto motor industry he would be out of work with no house or no money however the company would later reveal that he never did lose his job he just assumed incorrectly the next motive for his actions was due to his lack of companionship he felt cold ugly lonely isolated in his world and according to him if he had a girlfriend none of this would have ever happened and finally motive number three he felt resentful of his experience on the social messaging board slowly over time he had been beaten down by anonymous users and with the harassment his hatred grew grew into something he could no longer cope with something that had to be served back in short recap when questioned by police officers he said he did it to vent his pent-up rage and anger and demonstrate his revenge to all those that did him wrong in the past he wanted to teach other users of his internet forum that there must be consequence to their actions putting it blunt he killed innocent people just to prove a point to those that made fun of him tomohirokato's case made global headlines and it sent shockwaves across the nation of japan a country that was once traditionally considered as a society safe from violent crime and there were economic consequences to this case too the tokyo metropolitan public safety commission announced that the 35 year old practice of closing traffic on chodori on sundays and holidays was to be officially suspended until safety measures were reviewed and games developer konami also cancelled three upcoming launch events in tokyo with the safety of its fans in mind the media had their say on the matter too labeling tom hero's attack as just one of several other events that signaled a growing epidemic of kireru an act of rage that is committed by fringe youth and otakus as the answer to the antisocial behaviour and following the discovery of tomohiro's messages people saw his actions and hate as another case committed by a hikikomori a person who experiences total withdrawal from society and suffers extreme isolation and confinement some of those messages revealed as plans to use a vehicle and then to use a knife to continue the attack on foot he wanted to maximize casualty and so he waited for jodori to close at noon to traffic before commencing the attack following his grievous actions tamahiro's parents officially released an apology to his victims they did this live on television while being interviewed by a popular show in japan and very soon after his father who was in a senior position at a bank was forced to retire early the pressure that he received from his colleagues was just too much to handle and shortly after threatening and arresting calls were made to their home back in aomori eventually forcing the two to cut their own telephone line although tomohiro himself was cooperative during his inquiry to the shock and disgust of many he remained entirely unapologetic despite this he did admit that he posted the messages ahead of the crime in hopes that police would notice and stop him leading up to his trial defense lawyers argued that tom hero had quote mental impairments which prevented him from understanding the true scale of his actions however along with tomohiro's own admission health officials who conducted review of his mental state at the time of his crimes found that he was fully aware and accountable for his own actions prosecutors accused him of following the devil's deeds and in conclusion on the 24th of march 2011 tom hirakato was officially found guilty on seven counts of murder and as a result he was sentenced to death by tokyo's high court he still remains behind bars awaiting his sentence tomaher's actions had a profound impact not just to his victims but to those around him in his former years too in february of 2014 just six years short of the akihabara massacre his younger brother yuji kato ended his own life yuji who didn't deal well with the aftermath very quickly slipped into depression and left his job instead of his once-happy day-to-day life he then found himself in the headlights of media and while coverage of his brother's case decreased over time it never really ended and he never stopped feeling guilt and remorse for his brother's actions between the years of 2008 and 2013 he took up several new jobs but as soon as he was found out to be kato's younger brother he felt that he was looked at differently in a memoir that he left behind yuji said my brother shared that he was a copy of his mother and according to that law if my brother is copy number one i am copy number two and i see that i see that same part of my brother in myself things would eventually fall apart for tomohiro's parents too his mother who ended up divorcing his father was eventually admitted to a mental hospital she's still there to this day and hasn't quite been the same ever since and his father who is the last of the family to be in day-to-day society still lives in the same home but he is seldom seen and when he is he refuses to talk or express his opinion he simply bows in silence and at night lights are never on in the kato household instead small flames can be seen through the window the man living in quietness and candlelight from the very minutes commencing 12 33 pm on june 8th 2008 the lives of seven families and hundreds of friends changed forever katsuhiko nakamura was a 74 year old dentist who was having lunch with his wife and son when his life was abruptly ended and maimuto a 21 year old student at toku university studying arts was tom hira's only female victim she was on her way to a part-time job when she met her end and while not much can be found about the other five victims fujino kazaran kawaguchi takahiro koiwakazahiro miyamoto naoki and matsui mitsubishi all perished at the hands of tomahiro cattle leaving a void in the hearts of many all round this is a very sad case to talk about and to add to the sadness it's the inherent fear that we all feel when we realize that this attack was random just seven people going on about their day with no warning or premonition something that couldn't be avoided all by the hands of a twisted individual thank you for watching another video today about coffee house crime i really appreciate you taking time out of your day to be here if you found this video interesting or if you learned something new today then please remember to like the video and subscribe to coffee house crime if you haven't yet so what do you think about tomohiro's case sure he was a monster but do you think it was his family and his lifestyle that were strong factors to this please go ahead and let me know what you think in the comments below thank you again for watching today folks and as always i'll be right here behind this camera waiting for you in the next one until that moment arrives so look after each other goodbye [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Coffeehouse Crime

Views: 1,678,678

Keywords: coffeehouse crime, hikikomori, akihabara, tomohiro kato, tomohiro, kato, japan crime, japanese crime, japanese true crume

Id: GYtrIoV1rdA

Length: 26min 9sec (1569 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 09 2021