An admirer of the "Joker", the archenemy of the superhero Batman.
This is what confessed to be the author of the attack on Sunday in a Tokyo train that left 18 injured, Japanese media report, while the Japanese government condemned Monday his act "atrocious".
The 24-year-old man was quickly arrested for attempted murder in the wake of his knife attack on the train on which he also started a fire, in the middle of Halloween, a very popular festival in Japan.
"To be sentenced to death"
Eighteen people were hospitalized, according to a new report from the police and firefighters.
A man in his seventies, stabbed in the chest, is in serious condition.
The attacker "told the police that he wanted to kill someone to be sentenced to death," according to a spokesperson for the police interviewed by AFP on Monday.
Government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno on Monday denounced an "excruciating and brutal" act.
A video of a witness posted on Twitter showed the assailant sitting alone on the train just after his attack, nervously defiantly smoking a cigarette, waiting for police to come and stop him.
He "failed at work and in friendship and wanted to die"
He was dressed in a purple frock coat and a green shirt with a patterned tie, which was reminiscent of the appearance of the "
Joker
" in the Batman universe, worn many times in the movies.
According to the Sankei newspaper, the suspect had "failed at work and in friendship and wanted to die," Sankei further reported.
The
Joker
is one of popular culture's most famous fictional psychopaths.
Released in 2019, the American film of the same name directed by Todd Phillips imagined the socio-psychological process of an outcast suffering from mental disorders leading him to gradually transform into this monstrous character.
The film had received critical acclaim, while also sparking controversy for making the
Joker
almost endearing, an anti-hero revolted against the violence of the system.
Attacks that remain rare in Japan
Assaults are very rare in Japan, where gun laws are otherwise extremely strict.
However in August, two more attacks took place on Tokyo public transport, unrelated to each other.
In early August, as the Olympic Games were held in the Japanese capital, ten people were injured in a knife attack on another commuter train, and on August 24 two people suffered sulfuric acid burns in a metro station in the capital.
In both cases, the suspects, Japanese, were arrested soon after.
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