MAMORU TAKUMA (EXECUTED ON 14 SEPTEMBER 2004)

Eight years ago on this day, Japanese mass murderer, Mamoru Takuma was executed by hanging in Osaka, Japan for the Osaka School Massacre on 8 June 2001. I will post two articles from Wikipedia before commenting on this sadistic killer.

Mamoru Takuma (宅間 守Takuma Mamoru, November 23, 1963 – September 14, 2004) was a Japanese janitor who committed mass murder of 8 people and wounded 15 others in the 2001 Osaka school massacre. He had been convicted and imprisoned for rape before the massacre.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Background information

Birth name: Mamoru Takuma (宅間 守?)

Occupation: Janitor

Born: November 23, 1963

Hyōgo Prefecture

Died: September 14, 2004

(aged 40)

Osaka Prefecture

Cause of death: Execution by hanging

Penalty: Sentenced to death

Killings

Date: June 8, 2001

10:15 a.m.

Location(s): Ikeda, Osaka, Japan

Target(s): Ikeda Elementary School

Killed: 8

Injured: 15

Weapon(s): Kitchen knife

Early life

Mamoru Takuma was born in Itami, Japan. From an early age Takuma had exhibited symptoms of the Macdonald triad. At the age of 12 Takuma had wrapped a kitten in newspaper and set fire to it killing the kitten. He continued killing cats throughout his teenage years, throwing them into furnaces. During Takuma's sophomore year of high school he had reportedly attacked a teacher and ran away from home for months. Takuma dropped out of high school and gotten into a psychical confrontation with his father. His father seeked psychiatric help for his son after he had beaten him; but the hospital refused, his father later disowned him. He entered the Japan Air Self Defense Force but was soon discharged due to having sexual intercourse with a minor. In 1984, Takuma and his mother left his family house and purchased an apartment leaving his eldest brother and father by themselves. They lived together for a year and a half, until his father came back for his wife.

Criminal history

In November 1984, he was arrested for raping a woman and sentenced to three years in prison. Takuma had also been arrested for driving his car in reverse on the Hanshin Expressway and had been released after found mentally unfit. He had been arrested at least eleven times and had married four times before the massacre. After his release from jail, he moved to Ikeda and found work as a bus and garbage truck driver. He was described by coworkers as a quiet and unremarkable man, but a bit of a loner who did not like dealing with customers and preferred working alone. 

After assaulting a passenger over the smell of her perfume in 1998, he was fired and got a new job as maintenance man at Itami Elementary School, 6 kilometers away from Ikeda. In October of the same year, he was arrested on suspicion of assaulting his former wife.

On March 3, 1999, he dissolved some of his own tranquilizer, temazepam, into the tea served in the teachers' room, sending 4 people to the hospital. He was arrested and sent to a psychiatric hospital, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He had jumped from the roof of the psychiatric hospital in an attempt to commit suicide but had failed. but after one month's treatment was judged to be "capable of taking care of himself."

After his release from the psychiatric hospital he still continued displaying odd behavior, stating that he was a survivor of the Japan Airlines Flight 123 crash.In November 1999, he was arrested on suspicion of entering into a private home, but the charges were dropped. He managed to get a job as a taxi driver in September 2000, but was fired on October 16 after he assaulted a hotel bellhop in Osaka and broke his nose. He was also kicked out of several apartments for, among other things, throwing his garbage out from the balcony. On May 23, 2001, he voluntarily admitted himself into a psychiatric hospital for depression, but left the next day without treatment.

The 2001 Osaka School Massacre

The Osaka School Massacre took place on June 8, 2001, at Ikeda Elementary School, an elite primary school affiliated with Osaka Kyoiku University in Osaka Prefecture, Japan.

At 10:15 that morning, 37-year-old former janitor Mamoru Takuma entered the school armed with a kitchen knife and began stabbing numerous school children and teachers. He killed eight children, mostly between the ages of seven and eight, and seriously wounded thirteen other children and two teachers.

The Osaka School Massacre was the second largest mass murder, along with the Matsumoto incident, in recent Japanese history, exceeded both of the crimes only by the fatalities caused in the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. This incident, however, was set apart by the young age of the victims, by its occurrence at a school, and by the murderer's history of mental illness. Because of these factors, the Osaka School Massacre raised questions in Japan about the country's social policies regarding the treatment of mental illness, the rights of criminals and victims, and the accessibility and security of Japanese schools.

After the attack, Yoshio Yamane, the principal administrator of the school, announced that it would receive a security guard, an at-the-time unheard-of feature in Japanese schools. Additionally, J-Pop artist Hikaru Utada rearranged her song Distance in honor of Rena Yamashita, one of the murdered schoolgirls (because of an essay contest she had won, talking about how she respected and wanted to become like Hikaru), retitling it Final Distance. Exactly seven years later, a similar stabbing massacre called the Akihabara massacre took place, though not in a school but in the streets of Tokyo.

On June 8, 2001, the day of his court hearing for the bellboy assault case, he went on a murderous rampage in the Ikeda Elementary School. Wrestled down by staff within minutes, he was described as being in an extremely confused state when arrested, at first repeating "I went to the elementary school", and then saying "I went to the train station and stabbed 100 people with my knife. I did not go to the elementary school."

He also stated:

「 何 も か も 嫌 に な っ た 。 何 回 も 自 殺 を 図 っ た が 死 に き れ な い 。 捕 ま え て 死 刑 に し て ほ し か っ た 。 」

Nani mo kamo iya ni natta. Nankai mo jisatsu wo hakatta ga shi ni kirenai. Tsukamaete shikei ni shite hoshikatta.

"I've become disgusted with everything. I've tried to kill myself several times, but couldn't. Give me a death sentence."

Takuma also hated "elite" children, who attended the school he attacked.

Trial and death

He seemed to be regarded as insane at first, he claimed that he took a 10× overdose of his psychiatric drugs on the day, but medical analysis found no trace of them in his body.The court had ordered a psychiatric evaluation on Takuma. The psychiatrists determined that he was not Schizophrenic and was mentally fit to stand trial, and the crimes are the act of a psychopathic individual. The psychiatrist that diagnosed Takuma with Schizophrenia before the murders stated that he was not comfortable with his diagnosis. It was later determined by court psychiatrists that he suffered from personality disorders, and was eventually diagnosed with paranoid personality disorder, borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder. It was at this time that Takuma had admitted numerous times to feigning mental illness to be sent to a psychiatric hospital instead of a prison in his previous arrests.

On August 28, 2003, Takuma was found guilty of multiple counts of murder and sentenced to death. He was ejected from the court before the sentence because he kept verbally insulting the victims and the victims' parents. Takuma remained unrepentant, refusing to apologize to the families of the victims, and only asked for the sentence to be fulfilled as fast as possible. His statement was, "I should have used gasoline, so I could have killed more than I did." Takuma insisted his execution to take place as soon as possible. On the last day of trial, Takuma still expressed no guilt or remorse. He continued to insult the family victims until the judge removed him. The sentence was carried out unusually quickly by Japanese standards (condemned prisoners in Japan usually spend many years on death row), and Takuma was executed by hanging only a year later on September 14, 2004.

Influence

He has had an influence on Japanese murderers.

For example, Kaoru Kobayashi, who had sexually assaulted and murdered seven-year-old girl Kaede Ariyama, considered Takuma as a charismatic murderer and sought speedy execution.

Kobayashi said: 

“I want to be sentenced to death as quickly as possible, and leave a legacy among the public as the next Tsutomu Miyazaki or Mamoru Takuma.”

COMMENTS: For a heinous crime like Mamoru Takuma’s, even abolitionists will remain silent for sure. Not only was his crime to heinous but it was also guilty beyond any doubt. For a mass murderer like him, the death penalty was not a deterrent here but Takuma deserved to die still. Death may seem like an easy way out for him as he needed a suicide assist; his execution was swift and sure. I am relief that he will never harm anybody again.