KASHIWA, Chiba Pref. (Kyodo) When Satoshi Kamata heard about a 25-year-old temporary worker going on a stabbing spree in Tokyo's Akihabara district last June, he was transported back to the late 1960s.
"I thought that Norio Nagayama had emerged again after 40 years," Kamata, a 70-year-old freelance journalist, said in reference to the 19-year-old who shot four people to death in 1968 and went on to write a number of influential books behind bars. He was executed in August 1997.
Forty years have passed since Nagayama was arrested on April 7, 1969, but there is still a wealth of documents throwing light on his prison life, including hundreds of letters he received from prominent as well as unknown people, including Kamata.