1. This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Learn More.

General News Japan knife attack: 19 reportedly dead

Discussion in 'Current Events, World News, & LGBT News' started by kibou97, Jul 25, 2016.

  1. kibou97

    Full Member

    Joined:
    Jan 9, 2016
    Messages:
    782
    Likes Received:
    15
    Location:
    Kentucky
    Gender:
    Male
    Gender Pronoun:
    He
    Sexual Orientation:
    Gay
    Out Status:
    Some people
    It's particularly odd seeing this violent of an inccident in Japan. I wonder why he did this even if he was a former employee, I guess something in snapped when he lost his job there or maybe he's had psychological issues for a while now and this happened to be the breaking point.
     
  2. HuskyPup

    Regular Member

    Joined:
    Jun 7, 2013
    Messages:
    18
    Likes Received:
    2
    Location:
    An Igloo in Baltimore, Maryland
    Gender:
    Male
    Gender Pronoun:
    He
    Sexual Orientation:
    Gay
    Out Status:
    Out to everyone
    Damn, all these mass attacks, all over the so-called 'modern' world...not to mention raging wars across the middle-east, seems like some very turbulent times. Gets depressing, to see so much violence in the world: One day, perhaps they will find a way to cure hatred, though I'm doubtful. But one can hope.
     
  3. Skaros

    Full Member

    Joined:
    Dec 9, 2013
    Messages:
    1,254
    Likes Received:
    2
    Location:
    Chicago, IL
    Gender:
    Male
    Gender Pronoun:
    He
    Sexual Orientation:
    Gay
    Out Status:
    All but family
    Well, global violence rates are actually dropping. The only difference between now and, say, 2 decades ago is that we have more access to media (and the media is more vocal).

    In regards to the attack, it's sad to hear this happen. :frowning2: Hope for the best for the people affected by it.
     
  4. Browncoat

    Full Member

    Joined:
    Jul 2, 2011
    Messages:
    4,053
    Likes Received:
    9
    Location:
    Zefram Cochrane's hometown.
    Gender:
    Male
    Gender Pronoun:
    They
    Sexual Orientation:
    Bisexual
    Out Status:
    Out to everyone
    Yeah, the history of mankind is filled to the brim with violence. It's terrible, yes, and we need to endeavor to do better as a species -- but to claim the world is suddenly going to hell is a discourtesy to the reality of our history. Frankly I'm getting fed up with constantly hearing the false claim.



    May the victims rest in peace.
     
    #4 Browncoat, Jul 25, 2016
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2016
  5. HuskyPup

    Regular Member

    Joined:
    Jun 7, 2013
    Messages:
    18
    Likes Received:
    2
    Location:
    An Igloo in Baltimore, Maryland
    Gender:
    Male
    Gender Pronoun:
    He
    Sexual Orientation:
    Gay
    Out Status:
    Out to everyone
    I was also thinking that: Global violence is siad to be shrinking by the numbers, but in this new era of rapid fire information, we hear about them more.

    It seems almost a dangerous thing, because a frightened population is easier to control, and I see this in our politics, today.

    If crime rates are falling, it's funny to see Trump want to restore 'law and order', despite what the numbers say. But I think what we're seeing are incidents involving more victims at once, and rates that are much higher in certain areas (Chicago, Saint Louis, Baltimore). It makes for splashy TV images, and shocking numbers, even if localized.

    What worries me is fear being used as a mechanism of control, a mechanism to whittle away our liberties.
     
    #5 HuskyPup, Jul 25, 2016
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2016
  6. Browncoat

    Full Member

    Joined:
    Jul 2, 2011
    Messages:
    4,053
    Likes Received:
    9
    Location:
    Zefram Cochrane's hometown.
    Gender:
    Male
    Gender Pronoun:
    They
    Sexual Orientation:
    Bisexual
    Out Status:
    Out to everyone
    Well, the violence is still horrific and we still need to be outraged, so that we can keep the trend going to becoming a more peaceful planet.

    My issue is simply that this ever-continuing notion that the world is suddenly "going to hell" is completely false, and useless to boot. People have been saying that for as long as history has been recorded and nothing has ever come of it. We need to acknowledge that our species has always been a violent one, and stop blaming "the new, corrupt and immoral generation" (an excuse used to promote inaction) in order to move forward for good.
     
  7. Butterfly2016

    Full Member

    Joined:
    May 4, 2016
    Messages:
    287
    Likes Received:
    0
    Location:
    Florida
    Agreed. I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees it.
     
  8. kibou97

    Full Member

    Joined:
    Jan 9, 2016
    Messages:
    782
    Likes Received:
    15
    Location:
    Kentucky
    Gender:
    Male
    Gender Pronoun:
    He
    Sexual Orientation:
    Gay
    Out Status:
    Some people
  9. HuskyPup

    Regular Member

    Joined:
    Jun 7, 2013
    Messages:
    18
    Likes Received:
    2
    Location:
    An Igloo in Baltimore, Maryland
    Gender:
    Male
    Gender Pronoun:
    He
    Sexual Orientation:
    Gay
    Out Status:
    Out to everyone
    Thanks, I really appreciate that, and hope people across America do likewise.

    Now would be a good time to read Thomas Mann, and look back at western history, and where fear and scapegoating got us...I wish we were a more contemplative, educated society, aware of history, and its long arc.
     
  10. YuriBunny

    Full Member

    Joined:
    Jan 10, 2014
    Messages:
    44
    Likes Received:
    7
    Location:
    I'm an introvert; I live in my head.
    Gender:
    Female
    Gender Pronoun:
    She
    Sexual Orientation:
    Lesbian
    Out Status:
    Out to everyone
  11. Libertino

    Regular Member

    Joined:
    Jan 31, 2016
    Messages:
    1,195
    Likes Received:
    2
    Location:
    This Side of the Enlightenment
    Gender:
    Male
    Gender Pronoun:
    He
    Sexual Orientation:
    Other
    Out Status:
    Some people
    Global violence may be decreasing, crime rates may be decreasing, but I would venture to say that there has been an increase in mass killings.

    Oh, and ban assault knives now!
     
  12. Daydreamer1

    Full Member

    Joined:
    Aug 17, 2011
    Messages:
    5,680
    Likes Received:
    21
    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    Gender:
    Male (trans*)
    Gender Pronoun:
    He
    Sexual Orientation:
    Other
    Out Status:
    Out to everyone
  13. Argentwing

    Full Member

    Joined:
    Dec 13, 2012
    Messages:
    6,696
    Likes Received:
    3
    Location:
    New England
    Gender:
    Male
    Gender Pronoun:
    He
    Sexual Orientation:
    Bisexual
    Out Status:
    Out to everyone
    This has to be the case. We may be "more peaceful" as a society, but these sorts of wild bombings and rampages every other day in developed countries could hardly escape the world's notice.

    But as a result of hearing more complete news about existing violence, one can hope that it will continue to decrease to the point where even mass murders become vanishingly rare.

    And about "assault knives" I know it was a joke, but dang. 19 is an insane figure for any melee weapon let alone a small one. Must have been hell for the people involved. :'(
     
    #13 Argentwing, Jul 25, 2016
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2016
  14. AmyBee

    Full Member

    Joined:
    Jun 16, 2016
    Messages:
    511
    Likes Received:
    0
    Location:
    Japan
    We saw this on the news here today. It's very sad. Here's something you might not know. Japan generally isn't all that great when it comes to dealing with mental illness. Probably no country is, but there's more of a stigma to being "different" here. And there's kind of a trade off for living in an orderly society. Things like robbing convenience stores and whatnot are relatively rare but then you have these bizarre crimes like this where the motives are so...

    Well, I'm at a loss on how to put it. The translations on the papers here are usually things like "I was stressed out." I think that's boilerplate, really. Apparently, this guy was fired from there, but obviously he has severe issues. I just don't think people read the signs very well here, or if they do, they're kind of like, "Sho ga nai," or "I don't want to cause trouble by raising this topic." It's very bad form to cause problems for people and sometimes that standard leads to horrors.

    So to me, living here, it's sad for a LOT of reasons. I've watched kids with problems basically get hammered down rather than helped. It's not that there isn't help. There is. But it's so hard to get the ball rolling sometimes. It's hard to get involved. My own partner went through a depressive episode last year and she went to a therapist who was absolute crap. He was mean to her for being depressed. Prescribed drugs but mostly just made her feel like she was wrong somehow. She got angry and found another place with a more updated approach but really the wasted time and bad feelings still make my blood boil.

    Anyway, some of these kids who ache for help instead get punished for being a burden. A girl chopped another girl's head off a year or two ago. She was known for violent outbursts, had attacked her own father with a baseball bat, had poisoned a teacher at her school. Their solution? Give her an apartment of her own and send her to school overseas. She was studying to live abroad when her friend came to visit. Now she's in some hospital somewhere and when she's released as an adult (she was like 16 when this happened), they'll provide her with a new name and a new address but the whole thing could have been avoided right from the start.

    It's just like... I don't know. I get so sad sometimes about all this stuff. Those people should NOT be dead. They just should NOT be.
     
    #14 AmyBee, Jul 25, 2016
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2016
  15. Skaros

    Full Member

    Joined:
    Dec 9, 2013
    Messages:
    1,254
    Likes Received:
    2
    Location:
    Chicago, IL
    Gender:
    Male
    Gender Pronoun:
    He
    Sexual Orientation:
    Gay
    Out Status:
    All but family
    Keep in mind the people killed were both: disabled and sleeping. They were vulnerable regardless of the killing method. 2 dozen able-body conscience people would be able to take down a knife wielder.

    You'll now be seeing the media taking this incident out context to justify anti-gun rhetoric. They are comparing an isolated incident like this to a mass shooting on a crowd of people for political reasons. That is just disgusting.

    In cases where a mass stabbing has occurred on a crowd of able-bodied people, you see far less fatalities (sometimes even none).
     
  16. Kira

    Full Member

    Joined:
    Sep 9, 2014
    Messages:
    1,623
    Likes Received:
    16
    Location:
    Georgia
    Gender:
    Female
    Gender Pronoun:
    She
    Sexual Orientation:
    Lesbian
    Out Status:
    Some people
    Seems like there's a mass murder spree every week now...
     
  17. kibou97

    Full Member

    Joined:
    Jan 9, 2016
    Messages:
    782
    Likes Received:
    15
    Location:
    Kentucky
    Gender:
    Male
    Gender Pronoun:
    He
    Sexual Orientation:
    Gay
    Out Status:
    Some people
    I heard about that incident as well from a few years back. Japan seems like a great country and I do want to spend lots of time in the country and eventually become a translato. I knew to an extent that Japan doesn't deal with mental health issues, it's one of the biggest problems I have from an outsider's perspective who has looked a bit inside. Still though, I didn't realize the extent of their issues when it comes to mental health.
     
  18. CJliving

    Full Member

    Joined:
    Nov 10, 2014
    Messages:
    1,036
    Likes Received:
    1
    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Gender:
    Male (trans*)
    Gender Pronoun:
    He
    Sexual Orientation:
    Gay
    Out Status:
    All but family
    It's very true. The thing Japanese kids are taught from a very young age (like 6-7) is "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down". If you are different, you're disrupting the community. So for everyone's sake, you're supposed to fit in. And it does create a very calm, peaceful society! But there are people, obviously, who can't fit in. LGBTQIA, disabled, non-neuraltypical, anyone who doesn't look Japanese; a lot of them can't help but stand out and then when bad things happen to them it's both the agressors fault, and their's.

    In this case, Uematsu was involunteerly hosiptalized in February because he submitted a letter to parliment calling for the euthanization of disabled people. He didn't even spend a month in the hospital before being released. Apparently, the report that said he was fired is unconfirmed, although it wouldn't be surprising either way (jobs are very stressful here, employees are expected to work ridiculous, unpaid overtime everyday and people generally don't change companies ever, so it's not rare for being fired or let go being accompanied by a breakdown, but firing people is very uncommon, mostly 'undesirable' employees are just stuck in an empty room with nothing to do and ignored). After the attack he went to the police and turned himself in, reportedly saying that, "it's better if disabled people disappear", although police have not formally established motive (seriously?).

    The violence of this is surprising, the mentality isn't. Uematsu is 26, he's been told all his life to be like everyone else, and chances are he isn't. Chances are he has some behavioural disorder that has been ignored his entire life, because it would disrupt the status quo to address it. Piled on top of that is the economy; there's no money, the government is currently too poor to pay pensions and the future isn't really that promising, people entering the workforce are afraid they'll be working until they're dead and still won't be able to afford their bills. The facility that he attacked is a government run care-house for people with physical and mental disablilities. And his victims were disrupting the status quo, they couldn't contribute to society, so it's their fault.

    For the comments about gun/knife control, they actually do have all that in Japan and it's quite strict. But from what I've read, he had common household pointy-stabby objects and knives. I'm sure, that if he'd been able to get a gun, there'd be a lot more dead right now. So thank fuck for that at least.

    @burai97 and anyone else thinking about coming here! Don't let this stop you! Things are changing, people are beginning to open up! Globalization is really shining a spotlight on acceptance and the more students and young adults are exposed to it, the more open they get! I work with a teacher, she's the same age as me (27) and we recently had a discussion where she told me that she was the typical Japanese student. She thought there was something wrong in the head with gay people (this was just after the Pulse shooting) because that's what she was told. Then she lived in Vancouver and met real life gays! And they were nice and normal and she liked them, and started questioning everything. This conversation started because she wanted my advice on how to help a student she suspects has depression! As much as it can be frustrating sometimes, I think it can be worth it!
     
  19. AmyBee

    Full Member

    Joined:
    Jun 16, 2016
    Messages:
    511
    Likes Received:
    0
    Location:
    Japan
    Thanks for the info! I read more about it and wow, still unpacking the tragedy. It's like the first thing we're hit with in the morning, isn't it? I don't know if you watch the morning news shows but we do because we love the one with the woman who takes the sheep dog to different places and then sings a song about them and, of course, everything is leaning heavily on showing this guy.

    But anyway, no matter what, let me just second the thing about anyone who plans to come here not letting stuff like this or any of the other kind of negative things you hear put you off. All countries have their negatives. While there are things I've learned since I've lived here that I had no idea about before I came (I was all Ghibli/fashion/art/music) the thing is moving here was the BEST decision I've ever made in my life. My happiness quotient has been much higher overall here than it was back home.

    Media and the Internet in particular focus on the "weird" aspects with all that "Only in Japan" or "Meanwhile, in Japan..." kind of click-bait stuff but the thing is people here in general, at least the people I've had dealings with, are super kind and generous. They're stressed and busting their asses in the daily grind but there have been so many times where I've been like frowning at a train schedule not because I can't understand it but because I can't see for shit and I'm not wearing my glasses and someone who is in hurry to get somewhere will still stop and make way too much time finding my train platform for me and all but holding my hand and walking me there to make sure I'M okay!

    So sorry if this is kind of getting off topic, but one reason this news shocks so much is it is far from the norm. Mental health care does largely suck here but things like this are extremely rare compared to other countries. So people here are completely blown away by it. They do not shrug and say, "Another day, another mass killing." It's taken WAY personally. People are shaken.

    Overall, I feel VERY safe here. People might stare sometimes (I'm almost as rare as a unicorn where we live, so I must be pretty interesting) but not once have I felt myself in danger because of who I am or how I present.

    So if you DO have an interest in visiting or living in Japan, let me ENCOURAGE you. You have to do it! I'm pretty sure you'll be glad you did!
     
    #19 AmyBee, Jul 26, 2016
    Last edited: Jul 26, 2016
  20. purplewolf6

    Regular Member

    Joined:
    Mar 24, 2016
    Messages:
    200
    Likes Received:
    0
    Location:
    MD
    Gender:
    Male
    Sexual Orientation:
    Bisexual
    Out Status:
    Family only
    A Stephen Pinker book explains global violence going down in detail. If I'm not mistaken, most conflicts are within countries and conquests happen at the lowest rate they've ever been. Correct me if I'm wrong?

    ---------- Post added 27th Jul 2016 at 04:18 PM ----------

    Ban all knifes. Even plastic ones. All cutlery, ban it.