A woman killed when a pensioner deliberately set himself on fire aboard a moving bullet train in Japan was on her way to a shrine to give thanks for her “peaceful life,” it emerged yesterday.
Yoshiko Kuwahara died after 71-year-old Haruo Hayashizaki doused himself in fuel and sparked the blaze on the busy 300kph train.
Twenty-six people were hurt in the incident.
“Today I’m visiting Ise shrine to give thanks for my calm, peaceful life,” 52-year-old Kuwahara wrote on her Facebook page on Tuesday morning as she boarded the Nozomi bullet train at Yokohama.
Ise shrine is one of the most sacred spots in Japan’s native Shintoism, and a major tourist draw.
The train, packed with more than 800 passengers, was traveling from Tokyo to Osaka when witnesses reported a blast in the front of the first carriage.
Reports said the driver rushed back into the smoke-filled carriage and tried to douse Hayashizaki’s burning body.
Footage from inside the train shot immediately after it stopped showed smut-stained passengers blinking and coughing as they crawled through thick smoke to the exits, some clutching small children.
Police yesterday raided the dead man’s Tokyo home in the hunt for clues about his motive.
The Sponichi tabloid reported Hayashizaki, who lived alone, had complained to neighbors that he “would not be able to live properly because his pension was small.”
However, the reason for choosing such a public suicide remained a mystery.
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