Sunday's brutal indiscriminate slaying of seven people in Tokyo's Akihabara district is both a tragedy and a horrific crime. It took a 25-year-old man about five minutes to commit the crimes as shoppers were enjoying Sunday afternoon in a temporary vehicle-free zone in the world's largest electronics shopping district and a center of otaku subculture, which includes comic books, animation and game software.

The crime brings to mind what had happened exactly seven years earlier: On June 8, 2001, a knife-wielding man killed eight students and injured 15 students and teachers at a primary school in Ikeda, Osaka Prefecture. One wonders whether the timing of Sunday's killings was merely a coincidence.

In the Akihabara case, the man crashed a rented truck into a crowd of pedestrians, then got out and started stabbing people. Seven people, six men aged 19 to 74 and a 21-year-old woman, were killed — three from the impact of the truck and four from stabbing wounds. Ten others were injured, five of them seriously.