An estimated hundreds of thousands of Japanese students, from grade school to college, are suffering from a behavioral disorder known as hikikomori, meaning they are unable to leave their homes or cope with daily life, according to experts and sociologists who have studied the phenomenon.
Thousands of teenagers, mostly girls in large cities throughout Japan, have entered into what authorities describe as voluntary prostitution, marketing themselves to adults through Internet sites accessed by cell phone, mostly to earn money for designer handbags and brand-name clothing.
Schoolmates and relatives attended a service last month for Satomi Mitarai, 12, who was slain by an 11-year-old classmate at their school in early June.
(Kyodo Via AP)
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As society searches for answers, the Japanese tradition of discreet affection is coming under fire. A nationwide public service campaign on subways, trains and television is urging parents to hug their children.
"We are confronting a serious problem of how to reach out to our children and teach them the difference between right and wrong," said Kohichi Tsurusaki, superintendent of the Sasebo Municipal Board of Education.
In a country where parents and children traditionally shy away from expressing their feelings, the power of the virtual world has perhaps had amplified effect, experts said. Children, one government expert said, have become too used to dead characters coming back to life with the touch of a button on a game console. The young killer in Sasebo, for instance, did not appear to grasp fully the fact that she had ended her friend's life, telling the family court that she wanted to apologize to her friend in person for the deed, according to sources familiar with the case.
"Many Japanese children live in small block apartments with no pets and are not exposed to real death," said Takeshi Seto, a specialist in youth crime at Japan's Justice Ministry. "They may not understand the concept as much as they should."
Without doubt, some youth crimes -- such as a 12-year old who sexually mutilated and then pushed a 4-year old to his death off the roof of a parking lot in Nagasaki last year -- involve disturbed children with histories of psychotic behavior.
But many students in Sasebo have commiserated not just with the victim here -- but with her killer. According to school officials, the 11-year-old had been under parental pressure to get better grades and was forced to quit the school basketball team to study harder. Insults from her friend may have seemed slight, but students appeared able to understand the girl's rage.
"I wasn't so surprised," one junior high school girl wrote in an Internet chat for students hosted by NHK TV network. "I have experienced the feeling that I hated someone to an extent that I wanted to kill the person . . . a couple of times."
During another Internet chat organized by a local television station in the nearby city of Nagasaki, a student going by the handle "Arrow of Pain" wrote: "I understand so painfully how the offender felt. I have experienced being lonely, and being disliked . . . and of course forced to do things by my parents."
Sasebo, a city of 240,000 located about 200 miles southwest of Tokyo, was already reeling from the killing in June 2003 of a teenage boy by bullies at a local high school. The community is trying to heal in part by fortifying parent groups, encouraging parent-child conferences, and offering broader counseling to children and teenagers.
Part of the process was a recent memorial for Satomi Mitarai, whose father, Kyoji Mitarai, was the Sasebo bureau chief for the Mainichi newspaper and had lost his wife to cancer. Before his daughter's schoolmates placed large yellow sunflowers on a white altar topped with a large portrait of the slain girl at the local community center, Mitarai, fighting back tears, beseeched students to learn a lesson from his daughter's death.
"Please do not forget that right beside you are people who love you the most," he pleaded. "Please do not forget that there are people who would be very sad if you disappeared, even if not by death. Please treasure your lives."
Special correspondents Akiko Yamamoto and Sachiko Sakamaki contributed to this report.
