This is so sad, but sadly, no surprise. Men perpetrate violence, murder and mayhem to a great degree, the world over. Violence in men knows no religion, race, culture or educational attainment--it has no boundaries save gender.
This comment will no doubt be countered vigorously. People will find it even more offensive than Aoba's conflagration. Cries of 'not all men!' abound after every rape and/or mass killing. But it doesn't change the central fact: men are prone to violence, and women are their favorite targets of that violence. Until we as a species face this fact and determine how to help men deal with their anger in a more skillful manner, the violence will continue unchecked and unabated, which is saddest of all.
May the women, and all the victims of this latest atrocity, rest in peace.
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@Regina Valdez This just is not true. In the US in 2015, there were 638,000 violent acts (homicide, manslaughter, assault, rape, robbery). Assigning one crime to one man yields a ratio of 0.004, or 4 out of every 1000 men being responsible for a violent act. So not every man, not by the wildest stretch of the imagination or manipulation of the data. And women are not their ‘favorite’ targets of violence. Men are far more often the victims of violent crime by a factor of 3 or more depending on which crimes you analyze.
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@Missy
Agreed. We should also have a beauty tax, because people would be kind of happy to pay it. The beauty tax would be a bit hard to assess though, while violence has a cost that could be penciled out. Good luck with that.
Japanese people are wonderful, but it's a demanding culture to be a part of. It mostly seems like the culture is the exact opposite of the USA's, but the two are similar in that a lot of inconvenient facts are totally blocked out.
3
@DAM Lol, women are taxed for "beauty" every day, clothes are more expensive, "we" are required to wear makeup at work. Nice try, but taxing crime will make the guys who don't care, start caring...
9
My heart goes out to all those who died or were injured, as well as their families, irrespective of their gender.
16
The world has a SERIOUS male problem.
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@Misplaced Modifier we don't know as yet that the perpetrator disliked women. It does say that he has mental health issues. He should have been confined and not on his own.
11
The unavoidable question: What shapes people who feel petty grievances warrant horrific retribution?
10
This tragedy affects a large span of people, women of course, the entirety of Kyoto and Japan as a whole but also the animation community and content creators of the world feel the loss of so much talent. Due to the motives being unclear, I can only imagine this was a tragedy brought from hate and disdain toward the company.
6
This was heart wrenching. The fact that someone deliberately set fire in order to kill all of those people is just horrible, and what makes it worse is that the person was most likely targeting the women there. I like that the Kyoto Animation studio hired was known for and did hire women because I think in today's world women still have a hard time finding jobs, whereas for men it is easier to find one. Women had such a hard time fighting for their rights, and now they are having a hard time finding jobs and equal pay in the workplace. It is heartbreaking to see that some people out there do not want that opportunity for women and end up killing people because of it. Now I do not know for sure that the reason the person started the fire was to target women, and I know that men were killed because of the fire as well, but I do think that was his or her motive. I just hope that people, mainly men, stop seeing women in the workplace as a bad thing and encourage places like the Kyoto Animation studio to keep hiring women instead of burning the place to the ground.
7
Not everything is an assault on women. If a woman breaks into my house and I shoot her, I'm not shooting a woman. I'm shooting an intruder who happens to be female. Spare us the victimhood.
7
So very sad for these young women and men who had pursued an artistic career and were probably following their dreams into this field.
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I think the gist of this story is interesting -- that the studio employed a lot of women and thus most of the victims were women -- but I'm afraid the comments below have taken it too far. If the guy felt cheated by the company, he's taken his wrath out on the company and not even thinking about the gender of the victims. Absent other evidence, I don't think the male-female dynamic figures into this horrendous crime. It just saddens me that so many innocent people who brought happiness and delight to so many others died in such agony.
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@steve
It's much easier to imagine killing women in a male-dominated society where both tradition and employment practices oppress women than it is to imagine killing men, any men.
2
It's always been hard to understand the preference anywhere for sons and the struggles for daughters that result. The warrior cultures of today and yesterday are son cultures; usually the most misogynist and nutty.
9
Jumping from the windows on fire. Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. That tragedy brought a hard look at our fire codes to provide safety precautions and exits for further generations. If anything, this heart breaking tragedy could stimulate Japan to address the prevention of the previously thought unthinkable.
9
The man in the article says that we can’t “not sell gasoline to people.” I dream of a day when gasoline is banned from being sold and used. It’s a horrible liquid that is leading humanity towards environmental catastrophe
19
When I first heard about this, my thought was that he was a Japanese version of an "incel" and took out his rage out against a company known to employ lots of women, especially young women, in a particularly heinous way. After reading this article that was evidently written only for Japanese readers who must be totally undemanding in terms of requiring news accounts to provide actual answers to the "who, what, when, where, why" or as much information as possible, there is nothing in the article that made me change my mind that the reason for the attack the alleged perpetrator gave to police was a lie.
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@Jan N
It's a different culture. Yes, there is a lot of lying, but when questioned by a cop you give an honest report. The justice game is played differently in Japan.
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@Jan N There is no evidence suggesting that the perpetrator was the Japanese equivalent of an "incel." It has been revealed that the suspect has a history criminality and is purported to be mentally ill.
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@Michael Jennings I think once you've killed 20 people in an arson attack, the way the game is played ceases to be relevant.
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Why was a guy carrying a 10 gallon can of gasoline allowed into a commercial building and given time to splash it around inside?
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@Richard Schumacher, apparently there was no security at the building as we would have here, probably since crime of any kind is so low in Japan.
Even in the US, many workplaces have little in the way of security - and certain types of establishments, such as retail stores, are open to the public by necessity.
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@doy1
From what I've read they usually do have to use a keycard to gain entry into the building. However, today they were having visitors from another company so it seemed like the keycard locks were disabled.
6
No external fire-escapes??
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The "saving face" culture keeps the mentally ill from being acknowledged. I lived in Japan 10 years and my first wife had Schizophrenia. This was back in the 80's when it was harder to get treatment and I was too young to know what to do. Her illness ended up taking her life. Serious psychological illnesses are often ignored in Japan because they are an embarrassment. Only when they cause tragedy are they briefly considered a problem. These incidents will increase as unhealthy lifestyles and toxic food chemicals become more widespread. Even in the 80's I found it hard to understand how the Japanese could tolerate all the stresses of all that crowding and horrible work/life balance they endured. Now, 25+ years of recession adds severe economic hardship most Japanese live with. Not counting Donald and the GOP, I can understand why the Japanese liked the concept of American freedom so much.
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Really good to hear this Americans’ perspective on Japan.... A Texans at that!
Now, this tragedy is really sad (not to take away from POTUS Trump’s tweet of the word sad).
2
Yes I totally agree. I lived there for 20 yrs and people work like a slave and don’t even think of work/ life balance.
Ironically most people who never lived there would be clueless about what you and I have witnessed.
4
No sprinklers. No fire extinguishers. No fire escapes. No fire protection at all, it seems. Because under normal operating conditions fire like that could have never happened, and with its low crime rates Japan never anticipated an evil idiot like this guy who would douse the first floor with gasoline. I bet their fire security codes will dramatically change after this. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-fire-sprinklers/spiral-stairs-no-sprinklers-may-have-contributed-to-deadly-japan-fire-idUSKCN1UE0T4
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Why is this story covered as though the arsonist is specifically targeting women? The title and most of the body of the article spends such an inordinate amount of ink commenting on the staffing proportions and hiring practices of the studio that you'd think it was somehow relevant to the arson. It seems to unnecessarily cloud the the reporting with superfluous and distracting details. If you are trying to say it was a targeted attack, you should clarify. I'm still confused on my third read over.
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@Steve I think the article is trying to put the crime in a larger global context. All over the world, there has been a rise of right-wing political movements that emphasize nativism and anti-feminism. These movements have begun to gain major traction at the polls during this decade, but the ideas behind them are nothing new. (Timothy McVeigh, Mohammed Atta, the Taliban, and many others have espoused and acted on similar views.) Since this animation studio employed many women and produced anime with central women characters, there is some indication that this attack may have been in part motivated by anger towards women. Look at any far right Internet forum - many of the posts are loaded with misogyny. While the attacker in Kyoto claimed he did it because the studio stole a novel from him, it seems to me that the real motivation (consciously or unconsciously) was to take some kind of vengeance against women.
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@Steve Indeed, as the stated reason is they stole a book he wrote. Whether true or not is unclear.
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@Steve "superfluous and distracting details"...about the victim's lives is not superfluous nor distracting to me. Maybe try and have a little compassion for the victims of mass murder rather than pick apart the article next time. Ah, but of course anyone who would rather point out that there are "superfluous and distracting details" in an article about the deaths of 33 human beings really had no compassion to begin with.
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In America, it's always an angry guy with a gun that kills this many. In Japan with its strict gun laws, there are still angry guys and in this case, one with a past of criminal and mental issues.
Guys need to evolve. Knock it off with all the killing when you don't get what you want. It's been happening since the dawn of time and the rest of the world has moved on to solving conflicts in more civilized ways. We don't live in caves anymore, guys.
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@Entera
Excuse me? Violent crime rates in Japan are insanely lower, and attacks are much less deadly.
In America we have deadly mass shootings every few days. Japan has one major attack every few DECADES.
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@Entera Yeah, but note that the first reaction is how to stop selling gasoline. Violence in general is low, especially in Japan. Maybe all the men in your country can stand down and see if a woman's army can keep your country.
And if something humans do has been happening since the dawn of time, perhaps it's in our nature.
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@Dan
I cannot agree more.
- A Japanese living in the US.
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May the lost lives be rest in peace. I hope the old man can find back his lost granddaughter working at the studio. The one who set fire should use his life to pay for his sin!
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“Ironically, KyoAni’s system may have exposed its workers to greater risk by concentrating so many of them in one studio.”
What a terrible thing to write. As if KyoAni is somehow responsible for this tragedy. Who thinks about a crazed arsonist when building out an office?
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@Theo I interpret this instead to point out how cruelly ironic it is that, through what I read as sheer bad luck, a major company doing the right thing in an industry where doing the right thing is known to be so rare turns out to be the site of something so horrific; I don't read that sentence to infer some sort of liability on the part of KyoAni, just the cruelties of fate. It's so sad and so infuriating all at once.
4
Don't Japanese cities require meaningful fire safety codes for their office buildings and warehouses?
There should by multiple fire exits & either fire chutes or stairs from the upper floors. None are seen from the photos.
Was the building equipped with ceiling fire sprinklers that would automatically douse the flames? If not, why not?
Was the building equipped with in wall fire hoses or fire extinguishers? If not , why not?
Why weren't far more fire retardant materials required to be used for the interior carpeting and cubicle walls and seats?
A grim outcome. If this facility had any fire safety equipment typically required by good city codes, this tragedy could have been averted, or significantly reduced.
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@Joe Miksis The guy started the fire on the ground floor, and I seem to recall that fires travel upwards. He also used gasoline as an accelerant, ten gallons I recall, and when he spread that all over the first floor and lit it up all at once, well...
Anyways, fire codes in Japan are different, and the buildings are constructed in a different fashion as well, and many of them are older buildings that may have the necessary fire safety equipment, but are just much more flammable. Further, fire retardant materials tend to be toxic to human beings; Japanese society as a whole doesn't look kindly on things like that.
Also, this is Japan, not the United States; the local governments will have to figure this out on their own. I also seem to recall that American structures aren't necessarily that great when it comes to being prepared for fires either.
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@Joe Miksis
According to a news article that I read, they did have fire extinguishes and passed inspection by the local fire department. However, they did not have sprinklers installed on the ceiling since the space was classified as "office," which I do not understand.
Since explosion flame spread instantly and most of the victims died of CO intoxication, not fire itself, I am not sure how many lives would have been saved by the sprinklers....
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@Ethan Henderson
That office building was constructed in 2015 I believe.
1
That building, in addition to bars over the first floor windows, does not appear to have any fire or emergency exits at all. I suppose the central stairway (evidenced by the rooftop exit) doors were locked preventing workers from getting to the roof?
Shades of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company.
We never learn.
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@Barbyr, the story yesterday indicated that the door at the top of the stairs was not locked.
1
@Barbyr I lived in Japan years ago, and the bars on the windows were to keep the annual typhoon blown storm detritus from crashing into your house. Even then, they had the same building codes for safety features as those evolving in America. Hard to believe this well known company could get away with violating codes.
6
Gender is highlighted here because supporting young women animators has always been a core mission of the KyoAni studio. The studio was founded by a woman and her husband, and in the early days employed housewives as the primary workers. It was a studio with a predominately female voice.
(Source: https://blog.sakugabooru.com/2018/08/25/the-evolution-of-kyoto-animation-a-unique-anime-studio-and-its-consistent-vision/).
33 people killed in the fire. Twenty of them were young women, all in their early twenties, and incredibly talented. They were in a relatively safe and supportive environment for their animation career, from a studio with a history of mentoring women. Who knows what else they could have accomplished given time?
Decades down the road they may have become writers or directors for animation series or movies, or started their own studios, and perpetuated the concept of good pay, good treatment of workers, and created more media targeted for young women (which in the past has been sorely lacking for anime). More than anything, I am deeply saddened by this lost potential.
And for what? Because of the selfish, mired hatred of one man? His motive is so weak and impersonal it makes me cry. Absolutely senseless. All of the people lost in the fire will be deeply missed. I wish peace and recovery for the survivors and families.
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In case you missed it: "Male animators still lead the industry, and they outnumber women among animators over 35, Mr. Okeda said. But Kyoto Animation — known as KyoAni to its fans — is known for employing more women, particularly younger women."
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"Mostly women". Why is that in the headline, rather than the simple fact that 33 people were murdered in a particularly horrifying way?
It's not even demonstrably true. Anyone with a little knowledge of statistics will know that 20 out of 33 is not significantly different from half (16 1/2).
What does the NYT consider important: the fact of large-scale murder, or the accident that slightly more women than men were victims? Must every event be made into this story of sexual and racial (why haven't they pointed out that all the victims were Japanese, a minority group in the US?) victimology?
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@Jonathan Katz Because Japan is finally making inroads with hiring women in what is traditionally a male dominated field. Whether or not this fueled the murderer's rage, it's still an exception to the norm and one I support as a professional cartoonist myself.
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@Jonathan Katz When more than 50%, "most" is correct.
13
The tragedy has nothing to do with the female employees what is wrong with this site
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@Tyreeses How do you know? You believe the murderer's story over a target that is a bit unusual in Japan? You may be right, but "may" is very different than "are."
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@David
ANY target in Japan is unusual! Really annoying to see westerners push stupid agendas that are completely irrelevant into everything.
2
I lived in a large Japanese city, Nagoya, for three years and I didn't hear a siren or see a firetruck once the entire time. When I lived in Philadelphia sirens were a daily component of the city's background noise. Japan's rate of deaths by fire (0.52 per 100,000) is only slightly better than the United States's, but considering their lack of safety measures, well discussed in CB's reply to Richard Winchester's comment below, the Japanese are far more careful with fires than we are. This fire, though horrible, is a rare event.
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@Bridgman It wasn't an "event", like an accident. It was murder.
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@Jonathan Katz Of course it's murder, but murder is an event and most fires are not caused by arsonists deliberately out to murder people. I wasn't trying to minimize the atrocious nature of this cowardly act. I lived in Kyoto for a couple of months. It's too beautiful a city to imagine cruel mass homicide occurring there.
3
This is a horrifying tragedy. But, it speaks to the immense amount of anger and self-absorption in the world today. All societies everywhere must take man steps back from the brink of the abyss at which we all stand.
The world is in turmoil, fueled by slights, real or imagined, with some people unable to process a calm and rational approach to problems.
Specifically here in the United States, we see it on a daily basis with the venom spewing from the undignified occupier of the Oval Office. His spoken contempt for very nearly everybody and everything is unacceptable. His hate-filled words will lead to even more dangerous people doing even more dangerous things.
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@Carmela Sanford Blaming Trump for murder in Japan?
5
Blaming Trump for a fire in Japan?
2
@Jonathan Katz You are illustrating the commenter's point by taking umbrage. She did not blame Trump for the fire. She is making a point about the cultivation of rage that can erupt into this kind of behavior in mentally unstable people. The person who started this fire felt it was justified by a perceived slight, according to this article.
18
Horrifying. Why hasn’t this man been arrested? He served time for a previous crime, he has committed another crime, who knows what he will do next. The public should be protected from this hyper violent creature.
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@Lynn in DC
As an MD who has dealt with severe burns starting with napalm victims in Vietnam, this man isn’t going anywhere.
Caring for burn patients requires many personnel and procedures. Medical has priority over police action. We care for the injured without caring who is the protagonist or the victim.
That will get sorted out. We are not judge, jury, and executioner--we will give this gentleman our full attention first.
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@Lynn in DC
He is in police custody. The public is not in danger. He just hasn't been formally arrested yet.
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@Lynn in DC
He clearly needs help, but dehumanizing him - even in light of this tragedy - is wholly ineffective and inappropriate.
4
It’s surprising that fire sprinklers didn’t subdue the fire. Surely the building and work areas are protected.
2
@Richard Winchester
It was a gasoline fire (40 Liters), sprinklers or a fire extinguisher wouldn't do anything. The moment it is ignited it blows up, that's why the suspect suffered his burns. The building design is also horrible and mostly everything inside was wood furnished. Fire safety standards are bad in japan because they design buildings with the mindset that they will rebuild the building in 25 years. I believe there was only one fire escape door but the thick smoke from the fire would prevent people from seeing in the building and one deep breath of the smoke would cauterize your lungs. The suspect also was carrying weapons and blocked the exits and set the stairs on fire first. He apparently planned it out and knew the floor plans.
13
@cb
Not sure your sources but the Japanese press is not reporting he had any weapons, nor that exits were blocked, and he did not set the stairs aflame first.
8
According to Japanese press reports, the building was legally exempt from installing a sprinkler system.
6
A horrendous tragedy. My sympathy to the families who have to suffer this nightmare.
As a sidenote to the NYT - has a directive gone down that any headline that can have a gender angle should take it?
I found the headline weirdly inappropriate, along with the focus on the numbers of women either killed or in anime in Japan.
Really, its ok to mourn when men are killed - just as with women. Honestly, it won't make the paper any less 'woke'.
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@manta666 It's a big deal because this particular studio is different than most animation studios by hiring women and paying them salaries, along with giving them a completely supplied office building to work in instead of demanding that they do everything from home.
Kyoto Animation was working to change the animation industry through their hiring and employment practices; the industry is male-dominated and tends to lean heavily on freelance-style employment practices. Further, Japan as a whole is heavily male-oriented, which makes the studio and the attack on the studio significant in more ways than one.
25
@manta666, this is a fact of the story - why shouldn't it be mentioned?
It's also a fact that this studio was unusual in hiring mostly women - and this may well have been part of the perpetrator's motive.
If this took place in an environment that's traditionally predominantly female, but most of the victims were male, I'm sure that would be mentioned as well.
15
I'm having trouble identifying the weight that gender plays in this article. That being said, what a tragedy for all of these victims and their families. Hopefully investigators can learn more about this horrible killer and what leads people like him to commit these acts.
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@Josh
Indeed, when the majority of injured or killed are men, nothing is mentioned. Unless gender was a motivating factor--and apparently it is not--its inclusion here strikes me as strangely ideological.
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@James R Dupak
Man bites dog. It's mentioned because it's unusual. There are several articles about the arson, this one happens to discuss this angle.
The reason gender isn't normally mentioned is because it's normally what you think. Sandy Hook teachers were women. Women are more likely to work with small children. Texas chemical plant were men. Men are likely to work in plants that don't involve assembly.
While I might agree that media is currently drawn to this practice, so are people quick to assume that everything is related to it.
Most animation studios wouldn't have had so many people in one place and you'd be surprised at how many victims were women, based on animation career trends in Japan. That's the point of the piece.
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@James R Dupak @Josh You both make valid points - the headline implies that murdering women is significantly worse than murdering men. Murder is murder - a heinous act.
3
It’s a terribly cruel act that has deprived Japan of young people’s gifts to humanity. The impact of killing the innocent is just incalculable. The sorrow caused by this single man’s rage will reverberate through their community and their families. How terribly sad.
58
Has the entire world gone crazy? Don't answer that question.
36
So sad. Whether for revenge or as a desperate act to gain some notoriety, innocent people were killed. If this were in the US, I imagine this would be another mass shooting.
19
We have our national cultural gun abuse sickness that kills/seriously wounds 100k+ a yr. an aberration re our peer countries.
Japan has rare cases of this horror story.
Either one is a tragedy.
Condolences to the many victims and families.
29
I'm trying to understand the significance of the fact that most of the victims in the horrible arson attack were women. This is not a 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire situation where most of the victims were women who worked under deplorable conditions and who died because the doors to the stairwells and exits were locked to prevent them from taking breaks. The fact that anybody died in the Kyoto Animation fire is tragic. Their gender is irrelevant.
42
In almost all articles discussing the death or injury of people, if there is anything unusual about the distribution of people who were killed or injured, it gets mentioned. So I think it’s completely fair and normal that that get mentioned here as well.
84
Well, actually no, the fact that most of the victims/employees were women is relevant, because the article also mentions the accusation that the employer paid lower wages than similar companies. If there were more competitive wages, there probably would have been more male employees. Just a thought
6
@Jay Orchard no it isn’t irrelevant, it’s part of the story. It’s a detail. It’s also interesting if you’re interested in Japanese society and pay attention to how women are treated in Japan. as the article states, it’s rare that so many women were hired .
32
A sad and senseless act.
My sympathy to all affected.
May those who perished rest in peace.
41
My deepest sympathies go to the families and friends of those lost and injured in the Kyoto fire. What madness drives a person to commit such a hate filled crime and harm innocent people is beyond my comprehension.
I have family living in Kyoto and have visited there. I can't imagine the toll this tragedy is taking on Kyoto.
33 lives and many more injured. Just writing that seems terribly surreal.
32
My teen son, who watches a lot of anime says this was a great loss, that some of the best were in the building. My condolences.
77
In another NY Times story on this arson, I saw many mentions/speculations of "hikikomori" in the comments (which are now closed, so I'm posting this here).
Second evening of news here in Japan since the incident, exactly zero mentions of hikikomori.
On the contrary, this evening's broadcast said the man had served time for a convenience store robbery some time ago, and since then, was living in an apartment in Saitama where he was the reason for numerous noise complaints.
One neighbor in the apartment once confronted him in person about noise and the arsonist accosted him verbally and physically.
In short, according to all the news I've seen thus far, the arsonist was anything *but* hikikomori.
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@Bill in Yokohama
I didn't know what the word "hikikomori" meant and so I had to do my research. As time passes, it will be interesting to see if the suspect in this devastating fire has this condition, or at the very least is hovering at the edge of it. My thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims of this fire.
7
@Bill in Yokohama Does making noise and reacting violently to confrontation mean the person is not a shut-in? I don't follow your logic.
10
@OldBoatMan
Hikikomori are recluses who avoid nearly all contact with others, including family, rarely leaving their bedrooms much less their homes.
Given just the little we already know of the suspect, I'm confident that he is not/will not be considered hikikomori.
Suffering from any number of mental illnesses? - obviously. Hikikomori? No.
23