When shootings that end in mass murder are mentioned, many people think of school year attacks like the Columbine school murders, the Aurora movie theater murders, which in fact, quite remarkably, are all two in the same state, Colorado, or similar attacks. . Most in the United States.
But one of the deadliest massacres of the 20th century actually took place in a Japanese village in 1938 when 21-year-old Mutsuo Toi killed 30 people in the village where he was born and raised.
What drove this young man to commit such a terrible crime?
Mutsuo You
Close to his sister
Mutsuo Toi was born on March 5, 1917, and grew up in Okayama Prefecture, Japan, where his parents were highly respected and well-to-do. His childhood must have been good and it was a great shock to him when they both died of tuberculosis when he was just a child. His grandmother then took over the education of him and his older sister, but the siblings were very close and there is no doubt that the loss of their parents brought them even closer.
Mutsuo was known as a smart, funny and resourceful boy, and his life went well until he was 17 years old. That same year, 1934, his sister got married and moved away from her brother and her grandmother to start a home with her husband.
The sister’s departure seems to have taken a toll on Mutsuo, who mostly turned his back on his friends and began to isolate himself.
Mutsuo was fascinated by Sada Abe, a prostitute who brutally killed her lover in May 1936. In fact, he was fascinated by anything related to women and sex, which was his favorite subject.
Here you can see an article about Sade Abe’s story: Murdered after giving in to his lust for power – The killer gained fame and fortune in his native land
Young boys looking for sex
Since his teenage years, he had been very busy with something called Yobai, which involved young people, mostly teenagers, sneaking into young women’s rooms at night looking for sex partners. Strange as it may seem, Yobai was a widespread custom in Japan at that time and was not considered a private matter. Rather, the Yobai was seen as part of the teenage development process, strange as that may be today.
Although he isolated himself socially after his sister left, there was no indication that Mutsuo was anything else. But that was not the case, far from it. He spent his hours in solitude planning a terrible act.
On the evening of May 20, 1938, 21-year-old Mutsuo cut the power lines in his hometown of Kamo, and the small village was completely blacked out.
And so began his killing spree.
Yobai was an ancient custom
Cutting off the head of the grandmother
Mutsuo had shotguns, which he had modified to make them even more powerful weapons, and at midnight he brought up the guns, a samurai sword, an axe, several large knives, and 200 bullets.
He attached two flashlights to a blindfold, then entered his sleeping 76-year-old grandmother’s house and cut off her head with the axe.
She was the first victim of the Mutsuo attack which began at 1:30 a.m. on May 21, 1938.
Then he wandered the dark village and entered each inhabitant’s homes where he shot, stabbed or hacked household members to death.
Over the next 90 minutes, another 27 people died. Five were injured and two others were later found dead of their injuries. Mutsuo Toi killed a total of 30 people, but the 31st victim was himself. At dawn, he climbed a nearby mountain and committed suicide.
No one participated
But what was the reason Mutsuo made the decision to kill his neighbors, people he had grown up with and known all his life?
Turns out it was no coincidence, Mutsuo had been planning the murders for weeks, if not months. And besides, he had told a lot of people about his desire to kill the villagers but no one had noticed and most thought it was stupidity or a failed sense of humor. ‘a young man. Someone thought it was fair to inform the police, but nothing was done about it. Mutsuo was thought to be just a crackpot, but it was considered safer to revoke his firearms license. Mutsuo was undeterred by this and bought guns and ammunition on the black market.
Mutsuo left a long letter that clearly explains his mental state and what drove him to commit these horrible atrocities.
From the burial of the villagers.
Anticipated a woman’s life
A few weeks before the attack, Mutsuo had been diagnosed with tuberculosis. At that time, tuberculosis was a death sentence because there was no cure. No young woman was interested in a romantic relationship with a man with tuberculosis, which, according to the letter, went very badly for Mutsuo, who foresaw the absence of a woman until the end. In the letter, he also complains that people’s treatment of him changed after he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, that no one showed him respect anymore, and that he was repeatedly insulted. Not less by women.
This seems to have caused Mutsuo’s hatred towards the villagers to grow steadily.
In the letter, however, he states that he did not hate his grandmother, on the contrary, he loved her very much, but could not imagine leaving her alive with the stigma of being the grandmother of a murderer. She would be better off dead.
The massacre had a horrific effect, but Mutsuo killed nearly half of the village population and his youngest victim was only five years old.
To this day, it remains one of the deadliest one-man attacks in Japanese history.
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