Dozens die as man ignites blaze at Japanese animation studio
Police provide few clues about attack motive.
BLADE NEWS SERVICES
Thu, 18 Jul 2019 19:44:37 GMT
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TOKYO — A man screaming “You die!” burst into an animation studio in Kyoto, doused it with a flammable liquid, and set it on fire Thursday, killing 33 people in what appears to be Japan’s worst mass killing in decades.
Thirty-six others were injured in a blaze that sent people scrambling up the stairs toward the roof in a desperate — and futile — attempt to escape.
The suspect, identified only a 41-year-old man who did not work for the studio, was injured and taken to a hospital.
Police gave no details about a motive, but a witness told Japanese TV that the attacker complained that something of his had been stolen, possibly by the company.
Most of the victims were employees of Kyoto Animation, which does work on movies and TV productions but is best known for its mega-hit stories featuring high school girls. The tales are so popular that fans make pilgrimages to some of the places depicted.
The blaze started in the three-story building in Japan’s ancient capital after the attacker sprayed an unidentified liquid accelerant, police and fire officials said.
“There was an explosion, then I heard people shouting, some asking for help,” a witness told TBS TV.
The building has a spiral staircase that may have allowed flames and smoke to rise quickly to the top floor, NHK noted. Fire expert Yuji Hasemi at Waseda University told NHK that paper drawings and other documents in the studio also may have contributed to the fire’s rapid spread.
Firefighters found 33 bodies, 20 of them on the third floor and some on the stairs to the roof, where they had apparently collapsed, Kyoto fire official Kazuhiro Hayashi said. Two were found dead on the first floor, 11 others on the second floor, he said.
A witness who saw the attacker being approached by police told Japanese media that the man admitted spreading gasoline and setting the fire with a lighter. She told NHK public television that the man had burns on his arms and legs and complained that something had been stolen from him.
She told Kyodo News that his hair got singed and his legs were exposed because his jeans were burned below the knees.
“He sounded [as though] he had a grudge against the society, and he was talking angrily to the policemen, too, though he was struggling with pain,” she told Kyodo News. “He also sounded [as though] he had a grudge against Kyoto Animation.”
NHK footage also showed sharp knives police had collected from the scene, though it was not clear if they belonged to the attacker.
Survivors said he was screaming “You die!” as he dumped the liquid, according to Japanese media. They said some of the survivors got splashed with the liquid.
Kyoto Animation, better known as KyoAni, was founded in 1981 as an animation and comic book production studio, and its hits include Lucky Star of 2008, K-On! in 2011 and Haruhi Suzumiya in 2009.
The company does not have a major presence outside Japan, though it was hired to do secondary animation work on a 1998 Pokemon feature that appeared in U.S. theaters and a Winnie the Pooh video.
“My heart is in extreme pain. Why on Earth did such violence have to be used?” company president Hideaki Hatta said.
Mr. Hatta said the company had received anonymous death threats by email in the past, but he did not link them to Thursday’s attack.
Anime fans expressed anger, prayed, and mourned the victims on social media. A crowd-funding site was set up to help the company rebuild.
Fire officials said more than 70 people were in the building at the time.
The attack shocked a nation considered one of the safest in the world and prompted a global outpouring of grief among the many fans of anime — a school of animation that has become synonymous with Japan.
Although Japan has a very low rate of violent crime, there are eruptions of rare but extremely violent attacks.
The fire occurred just weeks after a man went on a stabbing rampage in a Tokyo suburb, attacking 17 schoolgirls, killing one of them and an adult.
Tokyo and its surroundings have suffered some of the worst violence.
In 1995, members of a doomsday cult, Aum Shinrikyo, carried out a nerve-gas attack on the city’s subway system, killing 13 people and injuring thousands with sarin.
In 2016, a mass stabbing at a center for people with disabilities outside Tokyo became the worst mass killing in Japan since World War II.
A fire in 2001 in Tokyo’s congested Kabukicho entertainment district killed 44 people in the country’s worst known case of arson in modern times. Police never announced an arrest in the setting of the blaze.