“I will commit a massacre that will go down in history,” Kyodo quoted one of the postings on an Internet bulletin board as saying. Legal steps were also taken against another five people, Kyodo added.

Twenty-five-year-old factory worker Tomohiro Kato was arrested on June 8 on suspicion of driving a rental truck into a crowd of shoppers and then knifing passers-by in Tokyo’s Akihabara district, known for its discount electronics shops and “otaku” culture of video games, comics and outlandish fashion.

Police have tightened Web site surveillance and are getting tips from the public after reports that Kato had posted dozens of warning messages on a mobile phone Web site before the attack, raising questions about whether it could have been prevented.

“Police have no choice but to take action,” Kyodo quoted National Public Safety Commission Chairman Shinya Izumi as saying. “Otherwise, they will fail to protect what should be protected.”

On Monday, police arrested a 19-year-old man for posting threats to kill visitors to Tokyo Disney Resort on a mobile phone site, Kyodo said. Police could not immediately be reached for comment on the reports.

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