Death in Second Grade.(Mamoru Takuma murders eight Japanese school children)(Brief Article)

There are no metal detectors in Japan's elementary schools. No security guards at the gates. In towns like Ikeda, 20 kilometers outside of Osaka, schools are open, trusting places where community members are welcome. School massacres, the Japanese believe, happen only in America.

A drifter named Mamoru Takuma has wrecked that illusion. Takuma, 37, a psychiatric outpatient with a history of aggression, walked onto the grounds of Ikeda Elementary School last Friday morning around 10:15, just as the first and second graders were taking a break between lessons. Takuma had a six-inch kitchen knife in his hand. He entered a second-grade classroom and, as a shocked teacher looked on, stabbed three boys at the blackboard. One school girl later told reporters that Takuma was growling and trembling as he descended on the youngsters. Then the attacker turned, storming down the corridor into two other second-grade classrooms where he continued his rampage.

Bleeding children fell on their desks; others staggered out to the street, one screaming: "Murderer, murderer!" One boy reached a store and passed out from his wounds as a startled clerk frantically called police. Inside the school, a young girl reached the school's public- address system and cried for help. When teachers at last subdued Takuma, 10 minutes after the attack began, eight children ages 6, 7 and 8 (seven girls and one boy) were dead. Fifteen other people, including two teachers, were wounded. It was the worst mass killing in Japan since 1995, when the Aum Shinrikyo cult released sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subway, killing 12 people.

Police say Takuma was a vagabond with a history of mental problems. Over the past few years he had held at least 10 jobs, the last as a cab driver. After his arrest, Takuma told police that he had taken 10 times his normal dose of prescription tranquilizers before the attack. "I'm sick of life," he said. "I've attempted to kill myself many times but failed. I want to be hanged." Later in the police interview, he fell asleep. Takuma had already had a date with authorities on the day of the massacre. At 2 p.m. he was due at the Osaka District public prosecutor's office to explain why he beat up an Osaka hotel employee in October.

Takuma reportedly quit high school in November 1981 to join Japan's Self-Defense Force. He resigned from the service a year and a half later, saying that he hated to work for others. He meandered from job to job--driving a truck, working for a real-estate agency. "We never wanted him to make it big or be rich," Takuma's ...