As is often the case with breaking news stories, the on-site, real-time television coverage of the shooting at the Renaissance Sports Club on the evening of Dec. 14 in Sasebo City, Nagasaki Prefecture, was a flurry of vague incidentals and conflicting accounts.

The basic truth was stark enough to make an impression: A person dressed in camouflage-style clothing entered the club and started firing a gun, injuring several people, two of them seriously, and then fled into the night. Anything more specific was speculation.

But speculation was all that TV had, since the police were barely on the case at the time. The gunman was wearing a motorcycle helmet, or maybe it was a ski mask. He was tall or he was heavyset, or both — one witness described him as "well built." Some said he entered the building and started blasting away indiscriminately, while others thought he acted purposefully.