Tokyo police have arrested the man they say attacked his fellow passengers on a train with a knife yesterday injuring 10, one severely.
The alleged stabber’s motive? He told police he was enraged by seeing “happy looking” women on the train and wanted to kill them all.
According to the AP:
The 36-year-old man told police he wanted to kill women who appeared happy, and chose his targets at random, public broadcaster NHK said. The initial victim, a woman in her 20s, was in serious condition, according to NHK and other Japanese media. …
He also told 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, who boarded the train with the knife, scissors, cooking oil and a lighter, moved to other carriages after stabbing the first woman. In one car, he poured cooking oil on the floor and tried to set it on fire, …
The man also told police he initially planned to attack a female shop employee who reported him shoplifting to police earlier in the day, but realizing it was past closing time, he decided to carry out attacks on the train, TBS reported.
The suspect later turned himself in to police, saying he was tired of running.
The AP, remarkably, described the stabbings as a “random burst of violence unrelated to the ongoing Olympic Games.” The tabloid The Sun, while reporting that the would be killer had been planning some sort of attack for six years, declared that “there were no immediate details about the attacker or a motive.”
What?
The stabbing spree might not have been related to the Olympics, but there was nothing random about it; it was an attack motivated by misogynistic rage, and not the first one seen in Japan. As the AP notes,
In 2019, a man carrying two knives attacked a group of schoolgirls waiting at a bus stop just outside Tokyo, killing two people and injuring 17 before killing himself.
It’s not known if this would-be killer was radicalized online, as many previous misogynistic killers have been.
But he’s already got fans amongst the readers of the incel forum The Black Pill Club, who have declared the news of his stabbing spree to be”lifefuel.”
“He stabbed 10 women today,” one incel happily announced, though the gender of most of his victims has not yet been reported.
Seems to be the first big ER event in a long time.
Praise Saint [name of suspect]. Indeed, he will go down among the greatest saints.
Thet were heartened by the motivation for the attacks . As another incel commenter wrote
Jfl based
Yea it makes me mad when I see women happy too
Still another commenter took it a little further.
To think of it, in 2021 a femoid that looks “happy” almost certainly just got raped by a chad/ a dog, aborted a baby or commited some other nasty thing.
Despite the acclaim the would-be killer is getting from incels, it’s not known if he identified as one.
We may learn more about the suspect in the next few days. Or the media may just drop the story as just a “random burst of violence.”
Violent attacks on women especially by a partner or ex, are so commonplace that, at least in the US, they rarely make the national news.
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I hope all the victims fully recover, physically and psychologically. I hope the assailant gets the maximum sentence. And I never, ever want to hear the phrase “lifefuel” again.
Can we finally wipe incel sites from the internet? It remains to be seen if the stabber was an incel but they don’t deserve a space to share their hate and encourage others. If they were this openly hateful against another group I think they’d be banned but because it’s “just” about women it get’s a shoulder shrug.
I doubt he’d call himself an incel. I’m sure there are Japanese language terms for whatever he is.
@timgueguen:
I doubt he’d call himself an incel. I’m sure there are Japanese language terms for whatever he is.
This article covers a protest group of discontented young men who self-applied the term “himote” (undesirable): https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/japanese-incels-marxist-revolution-kakumeiteki-himote
I hope the victims to fully recover too. I have a faint hope that maybe, perhaps, there’s a way for the perps to turn his life (after appropriate sentencing and all of course ; he is explicitely not a victim or innocent or anything in my mind). I hope ants in the clothes of all the incels and MTGOW.
I read the title at first as “happy looking woman stab ten ; men activist enraged ; incels rejoice”, so WTF brain I guess.
Seems I’ve missed a lot while I was taking a break (haven’t read why yet, but glad to see a migtoe subreddit was taken down). Came here specifically to see if there was an article about this.
Japan is still sexist as all hell, so it doesn’t really surprise me to see something like this happen. But I think it’s noteworthy that they’re one of the countries with the strictest gun laws, so the mass shootings that, tragically, have become so commonplace here in the US don’t happen there, instead you get mass stabbings like this, or other kinds of attacks. I’m not trying to diminish this horrific and shameful attack in any way, but at least the asshole “incels” (or whatever they choose to call themselves) can’t mow down the large numbers of people that they could with a gun in hand, and hopefully the victims will recover easier. I hope they all live and recover soon and that this piece of shit gets the max sentence possible.
And the repulsive MRAssholes cheering this on can catch Covid and croak. Sorry if that’s harsh, but I’m so sick of watching them literally celebrate violence and death toward innocent individuals, particularly women. The last few years in particular have just made me want to be done with people forever. You can’t even go about minding your own business without worrying about getting shot or stabbed or otherwise attacked by some vicious asshole who feels the need to take it out on someone else. We have politicians and world leaders enabling and encouraging the spread of a fucking deadly pandemic. We have shitbags attacking people for even looking “happy” and others cheering them on. What the hell. I want off this planet, please.
/rant
Queen of Harpies : I usually have my doubts about gun control doing something against mass shooting. While the USA is both the country with most mass shooting and least gun control, getting hold on a handgun or rifle is still very easy in say, France or Swiss, and they have only a fraction of the mass shooting nonetheless
(not that I am against gun control ; it’s like a common sense thing to do)
However, as you say, Japan make a compelling case in favor of it having an impact, since not only do they have a low amount of mass shooting and a lot of gun controls, they also have a worrying amount of non gun attacks, which suggest the guys here take the weapons they can easily find.
That being said, the best thing would be to change western and japanese culture so as it don’t create such toxic persons.
It’s clearly more difficult to attack masses of people with bladed weapons than guns. IIRC, in some very rare cases (in China) knife attackers have managed to kill double digit numbers, but usually it’s something like “attacker stabs eight people in a crowd, two end up dead”. This is literally an example from Finland a few years back. In a country as big as China, that probably happens quite often, but it doesn’t get reported as far as our Western media. In the US, a mass attack that kills two is basically business as usual.
CW: dark humor
Several years ago I saw news of an attack in Germany, where an ax-wielding teen boy injured 14 people on a train. Apparently all of those survived – if even half of them had died it would have been a bigger news event than it already was.
Then, I envisioned an Onion-style news parody in the following style:
“Attacker without gun fails to kill 14 people at Crowded Location”
“In a tragedy that unfolded today at Crowded Location, young male attacker lacking a firearm failed to kill any of the 14 victims he hastily stabbed with knife in desperate attempt to commit a massacre anyway. According to police, he had been legally unable to buy the the high-powered weapon that wasn’t used in the attack. When confronted by the police, the wannabe gunman failed to kill himself by incompetently trying to cut his own throat before getting resuscitated by medics…”
When a man attacks or kills a mixed group of people we are (justifiably) horrified and search for answers but when a man attacks or kills group of women we are still horrified but stop short of blaming misogyny. For some reason society doesn’t want to admit that this is a major problem and will blame anything else. We need to socialize boys better.
This.
Life fuel is food. This is literal death fuel.
@Hambeast:
“Lifefuel” sounds like the name of a sports drink or energy bar, though I suppose it could be a good meal (for that I rather like the old-but-should-make-a-comeback term “bellytimber”).
@Hambeast:
From the perspective of “normies” like you or I, it certainly sounds Orwellian. From the perspective of incels… many of them are severely depressed, and desperately need to feel something… but only misery, hatred, sadistic glee (usually via schadenfreude), and the apparent validation of their worldview seems real, and even then often only because of the affirmation of incel communities. (Depression can screw with one’s head to the point where genuine emotions seem fake.) Experiencing “real” feelings, even negative ones, partially negates the constant drain on mental energy, and helps stave off suicidal ideation.
It’s “life fuel” for them because, for the more extreme cases who are severely depressed and addicted to misery and hate, it’s literally keeping them alive and semi-functional. Even for the (much more common) less extreme cases, it’s often the only thing which makes them feel good anymore, even as it poisons them and makes them hazardous to people around them.
Despite that, I wouldn’t pity them much. If they were good people, they most likely wouldn’t have fallen into it, or stayed for long if they did. The fact that most of them are also broad-spectrum bigots, and that many of them are willing to also harm men for upholding a reality which “oppresses” them (there *are* some issues in play which society does need to deal with, but most of it is really delusional self-oppression) is pretty good evidence of that.
TL;DR – The actual usage of the term is from a perspective which only makes sense if you’re a terrible person who is also suffering depression.
Well, all of them are assholes. Some of them are depressive assholes, other are non depressive, but still assholes. A lot of people see the world as a 0 sum game and sincerely think that if anyone they don’t like get in trouble it make them better ; I doubt they all are depressive.
The incel movement do seem to have more depressive people in it than other, but I fear I overestimate the amount via projection.
…Although, I didn’t mean to imply that every incel has issues with depression. I’m not sure what percentage does or doesn’t. That’s just the perspective from which the term “life fuel” makes sense.
Also note, just in case: “makes sense” does not in any way imply “true”. A lot of stuff only makes sense to people disconnected from certain realities.
So most of the time women get told to “smile!” and when you look naturally happy, some loser stabs you.
No, misogyny isn’t a problem. <heaviest sarcasm possible>
@GSS ex-noob:
So most of the time women get told to “smile!” and when you look naturally happy, some loser stabs you.
No, misogyny isn’t a problem. <heaviest sarcasm possible>
Have I mentioned that that’s one thing I’ve loved about mask-wearing?
@Nequam:
…though I suppose it could be a good meal (for that I rather like the old-but-should-make-a-comeback term “bellytimber”).
To be consumed at elevensies?
Getting rid of incel, Mgtow and etc sites does nothing. Neo feminists push men to be like this. The manosphere doesn’t recruit. Neo feminists recruit for the manosphere.
I know, I know. I just find the irony of being so heartened by someone else’s violent death to be so, so bitter.
I mean, if the Carrion King Trump and his Princes of Pestilence Death Santis and Grim Abbot got pushed off a cliff, I’d be relieved for sure, but I’d still feel guilty about it.
Oh, look, a troll.
I dunno. 2/10, maybe? I feel like using “neo feminist” deserves something, and there’s the unintentional humor of “The manosphere doesn’t recruit,” but aside from that it’s a really weak effort.
In the real world, the manosphere and neo feminism is seen as a mental illness. Both sides need to be on psychotropic meds
@Insurgency:
Citation needed.
People here, at least, are adamant in their refusal to let manosphere people use mental illness as an excuse for being an asshole. But then, I’m not clear on what you mean by “the real world” anyway.
1/10. Try harder.
@ Rabbit Rabbit
How are incels and MGTOWs being assholes when they lack the social skills or looks to be assholes? Most if not all of them suffer from Major depression.
NewsFlash. You guys talk shit about them, and they talk shit about you guys. It’s life. People talk shit about things or people they don’t like.
Being depressed and being asshole are two separate thing, you can be one, the other, or both.
Similarly, social skills and/or looks have nothing to do with being an asshole. Some assholes are social, other are not.
Lastly, I would point theses people want people like me dead. I don’t want them dead. False equivalency here. That being said, I know that abstract notion like not everything being the same might be complicated to you given your post ; I know how hard it can be to be that sheltered from life, and how hard the contact with reality can be.