Tokyo Stabbings: Killer Posted Plans Online

The 25-year-old man arrested yesterday for stabbing seven people to death on a Tokyo street warned that he was about to kill indiscriminately in messages to an online notice board that ended just minutes before he went on the rampage.

In the first post on a thread entitled "I will kill people in Akihabara", Tomohiro Kato, wrote at 5.21am yesterday (21.21 BST Saturday): "I will crash my car, and if it is destroyed, I'll use a knife. Goodbye, everyone."

In all he sent 30 short messages via his mobile phone, including references to a nagging headache and his inability to make friends. At 6:31 he wrote: "It's time. I'm leaving."

More posts appeared as he drove the 60 miles from his home in Susono, Shizuoka prefecture to Akihabara, a district of Tokyo - known as the center of Japan's geek subculture - in the rented truck he would later use to mow down pedestrians before embarking on his stabbing spree.

Kato's brief reign of terror began at lunchtime, as he slammed his truck into a group of shoppers, before getting out of the vehicle and slashing onlookers with a long dagger. By last night, seven people - six men and one woman - had died and 10 others were being treated in hospital.

On his arrival in Akihabara, Kato wrote: "It's heaven for pedestrians, isn't it?" - an apparent reference to the district's main street, which is closed to traffic on Sundays.

At 12:10, just 20 minutes before the carnage unfolded, he sent his final post: "It's time."

Today it emerged that Kato had visited the area several times and knew it would be packed with shoppers and tourists drawn to its discount electronics stores.

Police are trying to determine what prompted Kato to launch his killing spree, the worst attack of its kind in Japan for seven years. Yesterday they quoted him as saying he was "sick and tired of life" and acted out of a simple desire to kill as many people as possible.

Neighbors in hometown said they remembered Kato as a diligent pupil and keen tennis player, who was respected by his classmates.

Other snippets of information about his background pointed to a more disturbing side to his personality.

In his middle school graduation yearbook, he describes his personality as "crooked" and his favorite word as "destiny". The entry, written entirely in English, is accompanied by a sketch of a character from the role-playing video game Tales of Destiny.

Like many of the people who witnessed his attack, he was obsessed with manga comics and video games.

Japanese TV quoted colleagues at Kanto Auto Works as saying Kato's behavior had never given them cause for concern until he disappeared last Friday.

The government, meanwhile, said it was considering tightening the law on knife ownership in the wake of the attack, the latest in a string of stabbings carried out on busy streets.

"We need to consider the possibility of discussing tightening the control of guns and knives," the chief cabinet secretary, Nobutaka Machimura, told reporters.