The violence and indiscriminate nature of the attack had grim echoes of similar sprees this year.

In January a 16-year-old boy went berserk in a shopping street and attacked five people with kitchen knives. In March a man in his twenties stabbed people at a railway station, killing one of them.

Japan is gradually coming to terms with what many believe may be a crisis among the younger generation.

Japanese in their twenties use blogs and internet message boards to describe a growing pessimism.

They do not want to follow their parents into the drudgery of the “salaryman” life, but have only limited prospects. It is a generation with troublingly high suicide rates.

"Tired of LIfe" [source]

A man rammed a lorry into shoppers in Tokyo on Sunday before jumping out of his cab with a large survival knife and launching a stabbing frenzy which left at least seven people dead.

Twelve others were injured in the attack in the Akihabara district, a popular electronics shopping centre, before the knife-man was arrested.

A police spokesman said the arrested man, named as 25-year-old Tomohiro Kato, told police he had planned the attack.

"I came to Akihabara to kill people," police quoted Kato as telling them. "I am tired of the world. It was OK for me to kill anyone. I came here alone."

The violence began when a rented, two-ton lorry was crashed into pedestrians on an intersection close to Akihabara train station.

The driver then jumped out of his cab, stabbing those already injured, and began flailing at horrified and screaming onlookers, grunting and roaring in his frenzy. "He was screaming as he was stabbing people at random," a witness said.

Backpacks, umbrellas and items of clothing were strewn across the roads, many abandoned by people fleeing Kato's assault.

Kato was struck several times with a baton by a police officer – to little effect – and was eventually subdued when the officer drew his handgun.

The rampage fell on the seventh anniversary of the most notorious knife attack in recent Japanese history, when Mamoru Takuma entered the grounds of Ikeda Elementary School in Osaka and stabbed to death seven boys and one girl between the ages of 6 and 8. A further 13 students and two teachers were also injured in the attack.

Takuma had a history of mental illness and refused to apologise to the families of the victims. Instead, he told the court, "I should have used gasoline so I could have killed more than I did."

He was executed in September 2004, but several killers since Takuma's attack have described him as being "charismatic" and a role model.

The killings are the latest in a series of attacks that have stoked fears of rising crime in Japan.

In March, one person was stabbed to death and at least seven others were hurt by a man who went on a slashing spree – with two knives – outside a shopping mall in eastern Japan.

In one of the worst attacks, a man with a history of mental illness burst into an elementary school in Japan in 2001 and killed eight children. The killer was executed in 2004.

Young Japanese in Crisis [Source]

The Akihabara district attracts its share of troubled types - typically, socially inept young men who view the world through the prism of manga comics and computer games. But while thousands go there to find acceptance and a kind of camaraderie, Tomohiro Kato arrived there yesterday for very different reasons.

The aim of people like Kato "is to make as big an impact as possible," said Nobuo Komiya, a professor of criminology at Rissho University in Tokyo.

"They see famous places like Akihabara as a stage, and themselves as the protagonist. It's their way of breaking out of their isolation and getting society's attention. The worst thing is that, in their eyes, they are doing nothing wrong."

Komiya cites the ever-growing income gap in Japan as one of the factors in creating an underclass of young people who go to extremes to break out of their isolation. "The gap between rich and poor is growing at the same time as Japan's information society is becoming more sophisticated," he says.

Even government ministers admit that poverty is now at unacceptable levels; that neo-liberal economic reforms have created a low-paid, part-time workforce, the antithesis of the job-for-life security that the Japanese took for granted until the arrival of the "lost decade" of recession and corporate restructuring.

While social conservatives are quick to blame the promotion of individualism in Japan's postwar, US-authored education system, few American children would recognise the relentless pressure on their Japanese counterparts to pass exams, and the ease with which the system discards those who fail.

While yesterday's killing spree is an extreme example, Japan has few safety nets for those who feel they are about to reach snapping point.

Counselling services lag far behind those in the west, partly due to a strong cultural resistance to discussing personal problems and the stigma attached to mental illness.

And Japan's prowess in information technology has only made it easier. Only last month, a government panel called on parents to limit their children's mobile phone use amid a dramatic rise in anonymous bullying on internet school message boards.

"The internet means people start believing they can function, find what they are looking for in life without ever having to really interact with another human being," Komiya said.

While mercifully few people turn to murder, many more seek escape in ending their own lives. More than 30,000 Japanese people kill themselves every year.

Already this year about 300 people, mainly in their 20s and 30s, have taken their own lives by inhaling the deadly gas produced by a concoction of household detergents. Last year the government set aside more than £100m for suicide prevention.

While Japan looks kindly on studious pupils and workaholic employees, it can be unforgiving for those who underachieve.