Questions raised over Japan’s failure to stop knife attack
TOKYO — A day after the worst mass killing in its postwar history, Japan was grappling Wednesday with why law enforcement and mental health officials were unable to stop a troubled man they had been aware of for months.
Satoshi Uematsu, a 26-yearold former employee of a residence for people with disabilities, confessed to stabbing 19 people to death early Tuesday.
Although authorities appear to have responded promptly to earlier instances of ominous behavior by Uematsu, legal specialists, advocates for disabled people and members of the news media are questioning whether those authorities did enough to monitor and treat an apparently troubled man who had advertised his willingness to kill.
“Given that he warned he would commit a crime,” the newspaper Mainichi Shimbun said in an editorial, “there needs to be a thorough examination.”
In February, Uematsu was briefly committed to a mental hospital after he delivered a rambling letter to a politician in which he threatened to kill handicapped people.
“I can obliterate 470 disabled people,” he wrote in the letter, which was obtained by several Japanese news outlets on Tuesday.
The killings, Uematsu was quoted as saying, would be “for the sake of Japan and the world” and would “prevent World War III.”
Four days after he dropped off that letter, Uematsu was placed under involuntary psychiatric supervision by order of officials in the city of Sagamihara, where he lived and where the residence for disabled people, Tsukui Yamayuri-en, is located.
In addition to writing the letter, he had told co-workers at the facility, home to about 150 people with mental and physical disabilities, that he thought severely handicapped people should be euthanized, the center’s management said.
Uematsu spent two weeks in the hospital before two doctors determined that his psychotic symptoms had abated and that it was safe to release him, authorities said.
He was released into the custody of his parents and was supposed to return to the hospital for outpatient treatment, but it appears there was little followup.
“There’s nothing in the law that specifies what the city is supposed to do after release,” said Eiji Yagi, director of the welfare department in Sagamihara. The city officials said they did not know whether he had abided by the conditions of his release.
“There’s supposed to be a support plan involving welfare institutions and the community,” said Shota Okumiya, a lawyer who has defended criminal suspects with mental illness. But often, he said, “there’s no budget for it.”
In April, Yamayuri-en installed 16 surveillance cameras after police suggested the facility strengthen its security. On the night of the attack, in which an additional 26 residents were injured, most of them seriously, eight staff members and a security guard were on duty.
Police say Uematsu was able to restrain several of his sleeping victims with plastic cable ties before he began methodically slitting their throats.