<p>Yea, I wasn’t raised in such culture. But that’s besides the point anyway.</p>
<p>based on what the article says, you really can’t conclude one way or another. It’s easy to think it’s all about self-defense. On the other hand, there are reasons to suspect otherwise that warrant further investigation:</p>
<ol>
<li>that the student owns a sumarai sword and that he seemed confident to use it could possibly means he had some training in martial arts and the use of that deadly weapon.</li>
<li>the student went out of his apartment through the backdoor, headed toward the garage and the noise to investigate. in other words, he took the initiative to confront the intruder. consider this on top of point #1, you now have a question on how much “fear” he really had. remember some of you just assumed he did it out of fear for his life. personally, if it were me and if i were really scared, i would have got out of my aparmtent through the front door or stayed in my room/apartment, locked the door (remember the noise was from the garage at the back, NOT inside the apartment), called the police, and just had my sword with me just in case the intruder went on to force his way into my apartment or my room. that seems to be a more natural response. the guy that was interviewed said the same thing. the intruder was not inside the place and you don’t have a family to protect.</li>
<li>since his place got robbed the day before, it’s possible he got fed up and had a chip on his shoulder.</li>
<li>the student said “the intruder lunged at him”. everyone would say the same thing because it means “self-defense”. we don’t know if that’s what really happend. if there were some separation between the two when they first saw each other, it seemed incredibly stupid for the intruder to head staight toward someone with a huge sword. the intruder carried no weapon (reasonable assumption because if he did, the news would likely have mentioned it) so it’s reasonble to question if the intruder was really that confrontational.</li>
</ol>