quote:

At Kyoto Animation, Women Were Central. When It Burned, They Paid the Price.

By Eimi Yamamitsu, Motoko Rich and Makiko Inoue

July 19, 2019

KYOTO, Japan — He can’t get the women out of his mind.

A day after an apparent arson killed 33 people at an animation studio in the Japanese city of Kyoto, a neighbor, the 81-year-old Ken Okumura, remembered seeing several women jump from the building’s second floor. They were so badly burned that blood was coming from their noses, and all of their clothes but their underwear were gone.

“Just horrible,” Mr. Okumura said on Friday, as the smell of burning still hung in the humid air.

Much was still unknown about the Thursday fire, which appeared to be Japan’s worst mass killing in decades. The police identified Shinji Aoba, 41, as a suspect in the case, based on statements they said he made when he was apprehended. They said Mr. Aoba was being treated for severe burns and had not been arrested.

Japanese news reports, citing unnamed police sources, said the suspect had told the police that he started the fire because he believed the studio, Kyoto Animation, “stole a novel” from him.

NHK, the public broadcaster, reported that Mr. Aoba had served time in prison for robbery and that he was being treated for an unspecified mental illness. The report, which cited an unidentified source, said he lived in the city of Saitama, near Tokyo.

As of Friday, none of the names of the 33 people killed in the fire had been released. What was known was that almost two-thirds of them — 20 — were women.

That appears to reflect a trend in Japan’s animation industry, as well as the hiring practices at Kyoto Animation. There are about twice as many women as men among working animators in their 20s, according to Daisuke Okeda, a lawyer and adviser to the Japan Animation Creators Association.

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.

More than half of the workers in the burned building were women, based on figures released by the Kyoto fire officials about the dead as well as the dozens of injured.

On Friday, a man distraught about his 21-year-old granddaughter, who worked at Kyoto Animation, told NHK that he could not find her name on lists of people taken to local hospitals.

“She was my pride,” the man, Kazuo Okada, 69, said of his granddaughter, Megumu Ohno. “Her name started appearing on the screens of anime movies. I was so happy to see that. I was proud of her. I want to see her face soon.”

Kyoto Animation was co-founded by Yoko Hatta and her husband, Hideaki Hatta, in 1981, and went on to produce high-quality, meticulously detailed works. They included “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya,” a science fiction series based at a high school, and “Lucky Star,” whose intelligent female protagonist is distracted from her studies by anime and video games.

Kyoto Animation also played a role in the careers of two star women directors of television anime, said Patrick W. Galbraith, a lecturer at Senshu University who has written extensively about the art form. “That’s significant,” he said.

Naoko Yamada directed the series “K-On!” for Kyoto Animation, and Hiroko Utsumi directed “Free!” a series about a boys’ swimming team. “Free!” stood out in the anime world, often known for being preoccupied with the female form, because it focused on the male body instead.

Ms. Utsumi has since moved to another anime studio, Mappa. According to Nikkan Sports, a daily newspaper, Ms. Yamada was not hurt in the fire.

Kyoto Animation is also unusual among anime studios in that it pays its workers salaries, rather than freelance fees. Japan’s animation industry has been accused of exploiting workers, who work long hours for low wages.

Ironically, KyoAni’s system may have exposed its workers to greater risk by concentrating so many of them in one studio. “It’s a rare system in the industry,” Mr. Okeda said.

The arsonist is believed to have purchased about 10 gallons of petroleum at a gas station near the studio, about half an hour before starting the fire. According to police reports, the man brought it to the studio in two cans, on a hand cart, then poured it out on the building’s first floor and ignited it with a lighter.

“We saw yesterday that anyone can cause mass killings and tremendous damage with cheap and easy tools anyone can obtain in daily life,” said Daiju Wada, a lecturer on security at Seiwa University in Chiba, Japan, and a security consultant. “It’s difficult not to sell gasoline to people.”

Hatsumi Yamashita, 74, who teaches dance at a nearby community center where firefighters treated some of the injured in a garage, remembered seeing one woman sitting on a staircase, wearing what Ms. Yamashita first thought was a jet-black outfit. “But when she laid down on the floor, I saw she was so burned that she was almost naked,” she said.

“I could never forget this young woman,” Ms. Yamashita said.

The Colonel posted:

DrSunshine posted:

quote:

On Friday, a man distraught about his 21-year-old granddaughter, who worked at Kyoto Animation, told NHK that he could not find her name on lists of people taken to local hospitals.

“She was my pride,” the man, Kazuo Okada, 69, said of his granddaughter, Megumu Ohno. “Her name started appearing on the screens of anime movies. I was so happy to see that. I was proud of her. I want to see her face soon.”

The Colonel posted:

https://twitter.com/highimpactsex/status/1152148171054866432 https://twitter.com/highimpactsex/status/1152149937003606017 https://twitter.com/highimpactsex/status/1152158990719168512

Rivethead posted:

This post led me to google "ethnic minority groups in Japan". I had no idea there were so many.

Namtab posted:

The site is labyrinthine and i do not have the exact link tho

Rivethead posted:

This post led me to google "ethnic minority groups in Japan". I had no idea there were so many.

MonsterEnvy posted:

Apparently the building somehow passed a Fire Safety inspection last year. And also the roof entrance which was largely untouched by the fire was probbably locked. The hell.

RatHat posted:

The arsonist blocked stairways and fire exits, it wasn't really an issue of fire safety.

Cuntellectual posted:

While fire safety inspections aren't meant for people actively trying to kill people, I'd thought from the pictures I'd seen that there weren't any fire escapes or the like, not that they were blocked?

RatHat posted:

The arsonist blocked stairways and fire exits, it wasn't really an issue of fire safety.

Spoggerific posted:

I've heard this time and time again on the English internet, but I haven't seen anyone post a source for it, nor have I seen it mentioned once on Japanese TV or in Japanese news. As far as I'm aware, the suspect went into the building, splashed a bucket of gasoline near the spiral staircase, possibly pouring some more from jerrycans directly on people, and then lit it up. The buildup of gasoline vapors caused an explosion, injuring the suspect and setting him on fire. He ran out of the building, with an employee chasing him. He only made it a few hundred meters away before collapsing, on account of being on fire.

The suspect did carry some knives with him, but they went unused. He was seen in the area around the studio a few times in the days preceding the arson, but as far as I'm aware he didn't do any kind of preparation like blocking stuff off.

Here's an image of the floorplan taken from Japanese TV that aired the evening of the incident. The only entrance to the building is in the bottom left of the first floor, so there aren't really any fire exits for him to block off anyway. The only staircases are the spiral staircase in the center and the regular staircase at the top; I highly doubt he managed to somehow ninja sneak his way into the building to block them off.


According to the Japanese articles I've read, the fire department has stated that the door to the roof was unlocked. What likely happened is that the initial explosion spread soot and smoke so quickly that no one could see anything at all, and after one person succumbed to smoke inhalation trying to open an unfamiliar door in pitch black, the rest of the people who tried to run to the roof probably couldn't get past their body and all passed away too. I don't know exactly how the fire code works, but Japanese buildings tend to treat regular old windows as fire exits. A lot of buildings will have emergency escape ladders stored in boxes near windows, and you're supposed to keep those areas completely clear, but I think we all know that doesn't always happen. As other posters have mentioned, though, fire codes are meant to protect from regular accidental fires, not an arson where a literal bucket full of accelerant is splashed all over the place.

The Colonel posted:

ninjewtsu posted:

a friend of mine is really mad about japanese fire code. does anyone know if the roof access door swung outward or inward?

Fangz posted:

Why is the roof access relevant to the fire code at all, you aren't supposed to climb on to the roof when there's a fire. A fire code isn't a terrorist attack preparedness test.

chumbler posted:

I assume it should still probably not be locked in an emergency or be difficult to open. It's not a great place to go, but if other exits are blocked (which can occur for reasons other than a murderer) it should still be an option. Anywhere is better than inside a burning building.

a kitten posted:

Every name that comes out about this is going to be connected in some way to some of my favorite pieces of media and I'm not sure I can adequately deal. My heart just breaks for all the people affected.

Phobophilia posted:

Basically, there's only so much procedures and regulations can do when a malicious actor wants to target an act of violence against you. Because they will try to probe for weaknesses and subvert security systems. No one can really deal with that, least of all a group of overworked animators trying their best to make deadlines. Try as you might to make sense of it, lay blame on an overall group, it really was one random act of violence against those who neither deserved nor saw it coming.