A MAN has gone on a stabbing rampage in Tokyo's premier electronics and video game district, killing four people and knifing 14 others, a police spokesman said.
The attack at lunchtime in the Akihabara district, known as Electric Town and wildly popular with Japan's cyber-wise youth, paralysed the area and drew at least 17 ambulances.
Police said they arrested Tomohiro Kato, 25, on the spot.
Mr Kato told NHK that he was "tired of life".
Jiro Akagi, a police spokesman, confirmed Mr Kato's arrest and identity, but declined to give further details.
Local news reports initially said Mr Kato was a self-proclaimed gangster, but NHK later said the suspect was not a gang member.
Before going on the rampage, the attacker swerved his two-tonne truck into a crowd, killing three people and injuring 14 more, a police spokesman told AFP.
Kyodo News, quoting police sources, later said the death toll had risen to four. It is not yet clear how the fourth person died.
"He ran over three people," a middle-aged man told NHK.
Another man in his 40s said: "It is shocking. I came here often. This is unbelievable."
Reports said the attacker grunted and roared as he slashed and stabbed at his victims on a street crowded with shoppers.
Toshiyuki Miyake, a spokesman for the Tokyo Fire Department, said earlier that five of the victims had gone into cardiac arrest.
Akihabara, traditionally home to retailers of electronics and gadgets, has become synonymous with Japan's expansive "nerd" culture of video games, comic books and outlandish fashion.
In recent years it has mushroomed into a haven for Japanese subculture, pulling in tourists from home and abroad interested in comic books and video games.
Akihabara's attractions include everything from a museum of Japanese animation to cafes where waitresses dress as maids and video-game characters, while it is also a major commuter hub.
Once rare, stabbing attacks have become more frequent in Japan in recent years as violent crime has increased.
Today's attack fell on the anniversary of one of modern Japan's most ghastly crimes - a stabbing frenzy that left eight children dead at an elementary school in 2001.
It is seven years to the day since Mamoru Takuma went on a rampage with a butcher's knife at the Ikeda elementary school in the western city of Osaka.
At Takuma's sentencing, the judge called the killings "one of the most heinous cases in Japan's criminal history".
Takuma was executed in 2004 at the age of 40.
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