A visually impaired man died after falling from a train platform at JR Asagaya Station in Suginami Ward, Tokyo, on Sunday, police have said.
Mitsunobu Yoshimoto, a 51-year-old masseur from Kodaira, Tokyo, is believed to have accidentally fallen from the platform onto the tracks and was killed after being caught between a train and the platform, according to the Suginami Police Station.
There are no platform barriers installed at the station to prevent people from falling onto the tracks, and the police are investigating the incident as an accident.
The accident occurred at about 2:45 p.m. on Sunday, according to a senior officer at the police station. There were no witness accounts of the incident, but a security camera showed Yoshimoto walking on a narrow section of the platform near the stairs, on the outside of the braille blocks, before losing his footing and falling off the platform.
Yoshimoto tried to climb back up onto the platform on his own, and people nearby rushed to help him, but it was too late. His white cane was found on the platform.
Yoshimoto, originally from Wakayama Prefecture, has been blind in his right eye since childhood, and his vision in his left eye was impaired. He was almost blind, according to his wife.
After graduating from a vocational school, he began working as a masseur in Tokyo and opened his own massotherapy salon near JR Meguro Station in April last year. He commuted to work from his home using the Seibu Railway Co. Shinjuku Line and JR Yamanote Line, as platform barriers had already been installed at the stations for those lines.
Yoshimoto has also worked as a volunteer to help single mothers for about the past five years, in addition to his job as a masseur. Once a month, he would visit Asagaya and volunteer his time. Yoshimoto had injured his elbow in a collision with a train car about two years ago, and since then, made sure to only get in train cars that stop near the stairs so he did not have to walk on the platform very much, according to the organizers of his volunteer activities.
There have been many incidents in which visually impaired people have fallen off platforms. A total of 668 such accidents were reported in the nine years ending in fiscal 2018, according to the Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry.
East Japan Railway Co. plans to install platform barriers at 330 stations on major lines in the Tokyo metropolitan area by the end of fiscal 2032. The barriers have been put in place at 62 stations so far, and the installation at Asagaya Station is planned for fiscal 2021 or later.
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