The fatal stabbing Tuesday of a bookshop clerk in Hachioji, Tokyo, brings to mind the senseless killing of seven people in Akihabara on June 8. The man who crashed a rented truck into a crowd of pedestrians in the world's largest electronics shopping district and started stabbing people was quoted by police as saying: "I came to Akihabara to kill people. I am tired of life and the world. Anyone was OK." The man arrested in connection with the Hachioji killing was quoted by police as saying; "I had problems with my family over work and I decided to kill someone indiscriminately on the spur of the moment. Anyone was OK."

It is disturbing that indiscriminate killings are continuing. It must be said that people who utter "Anyone was OK" are self-centered to an extreme degree and unable to connect with others to the point of forgetting the preciousness of life.

The suspect in the Hachioji incident was on leave from work after sustaining an injury to a right finger in mid-May at a metal processing plant. On Tuesday, he went to a bookstore in the Keio Line's Hachijoi train station building. He is suspected of stabbing two people in the chest with a kitchen knife — the 22-year-old part-time woman clerk of the book store, a senior at Chuo University, and a 21-year-old customer, also a university co-ed. The clerk died and the customer was injured. The man told police that he had bought the knife in a ¥100 shop.