Debts may have been the motive for the suicide of a 71-year-old man who set himself on fire aboard a bullet train last week, because he had been repaying loans for nearly a decade until last year, his sister said.
"I think the reason for his suicide was his debts. Perhaps that sent him over the edge," Haruo Hayashizaki's older sister in Iwate Prefecture said Saturday.
On Tuesday, in the worst incident to ever take place on a bullet train, Hayashizaki poured gasoline over his body and burned himself to death, filling the train's cars with smoke that left one female passenger dead and injured 26 others. Police are investigating the suicide as arson.