Biography
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The basics
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| Gender |
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| Birth | 5 March 1917 | |
| Death | 21 May 1938 (aged 21 years) |
The details
Biography
The Tsuyama massacre (津山事件, Tsuyama jiken) was a spree killing that occurred on 21 May 1938 in the rural village of Kamo close to Tsuyama city in Okayama, Japan.
Mutsuo Toi (都井 睦雄, Toi Mutsuo), a 21-year-old man, killed 30 people, including his grandmother, with a Browning shotgun, Katana, and axe, and seriously injured three others before killing himself with the shotgun. Until the 1982 killing by Woo Bum-kon, this incident was regarded as the second-worst massacre by an individual in modern history, behind the 1927 killing of 44 people by Andrew Kehoe.
Massacre
Mutsuo Toi cut the electricity line to the village of Kamo on the evening of 20 May, which left the community in darkness. At around 1:30 a.m. on 21 May, he killed his 76-year-old grandmother by decapitating her with an axe. Then he strapped two torches to his head and prowled through the village entering the homes of his neighbours. He killed 29 neighbours (27 of whom died at the scene of the incident, while two others were fatally wounded, dying of their injuries later) and seriously injured three others in about an hour and half using a Browning shotgun, a Japanese sword and an axe. This was almost half of the residents of the small community. At dawn he committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest.
Mutsuo Toi
Mutsuo Toi (都井 睦雄, Toi Mutsuo, March 5, 1917 – May 21, 1938) was born in Okayama Prefecture to well-off parents. His parents died of tuberculosis when he was a baby, so he and his sister were brought up by their grandmother. He was originally outgoing, but at the age of 17 he became socially withdrawn after his sister married in 1934.
He was interested in the story of Sada Abe, the prostitute who, in May 1936, strangled her lover then severed his penis. He had started writing a novel, Yūtokaiōmaru (雄図海王丸).
He took part in "Yobai" (夜這い) or "night-crawling", a rural custom which involved creeping into young women's bedrooms during the night to seek sexual intercourse.
From his suicide notes it appears that after May 1937 when he was diagnosed as suffering from tuberculosis, the young women in the village rejected his sexual advances.
Suicide notes
Toi left several long notes which revealed that he was concerned about the social impact of his tuberculosis, which in the 1930s was an incurable fatal illness. He felt that his female neighbours became cold towards him once they knew of his illness, and that he was despised as hypersexual, and he also stated in the notes that neighbours insulted and treated him badly after he was found to have tuberculosis.
For revenge, he decided to enter their homes and kill them. He waited for the time when the women returned to their houses. The authorities were concerned, and his gun license was revoked. He however prepared swords and guns secretly.
He regretted that he would not be able to shoot some people he wanted to, as that would have involved killing people he regarded as innocent. He also wrote that he killed his grandmother because he could not bear leaving her alive to face the shame and social stigma that would be associated with a "murderer's grandmother".
Legacy
A 1983 Japanese movie, Village of Doom, was based on the massacre.
The attack is one of the worst rampage killings by a single perpetrator in modern history.