On the night of Sunday, October 31, 2021, a man was arrested for an assault on a commuter train wherein he stabbed a passenger and set fire to the train in Tokyo, Japan. No relation has been confirmed between the attacker and his victims. He later told the police he did not care who his targets were. He felt like ending his life, but at the same time, he was afraid of doing so for himself. He thought he would receive the death penalty and be forced to die as a result of conducting mass killing.

Somehow, the attacker surrendered to the police, seemingly without causing the full amount of devastation he had originally planned. Against his aspiration to conduct mass murder, the attack eventually ended with no fatality.

The items he used as weapons were easily available to anyone at retail stores. The cost of acquiring them can be covered with no more than a couple of hundred dollars at most. Even so, his attack left widespread and lasting fear among the public. Especially considering the location of the attack, a commuter train, anybody felt proximity to the threat.

The unrest the attacker ignited might be even disproportionately enormous given simplicity in preparation, primitiveness in method, and incompleteness in the attack. One might feel it was more vulnerabilities in society than his immature tactics that favored the attacker in magnifying horror. Even so, an eye-catching case like this, although it does not include elements of assertion, can have an appealing effect to inspire others.