Violence by Japanese teens shocks country

By SIMON RAWLINS in Tokyo

Every morning before breakfast, Mrs Okazaki shuffles along her tatami-matted living-room, kneels beside a makeshift shrine and prays to her dead son, Satoshi.

Along with burning candles and incense, the shrine contains Satoshi's most treasured items: his football boots, comic books, video games and photographs, and an offering of Satoshi's favourite meal - a Big Mac and milkshake.

His parents take me to a forest, a short walk from their quiet suburban street. They show me a large oak tree that marks the spot where their 14-year-old son was kicked and beaten to death by another boy as he walked home from school.

It was a particularly savage attack. A knuckle-duster was used to smash Satoshi's skull. His father lays some fresh flowers by the tree, says a prayer and slides his hand into his wife's as they walk away.

"We want people to know our pain and to see the brutality of Satoshi's killer," they tell me later as they hand over gruesome photographs of their son's body taken shortly after he died.

Japanese people all over the country are reeling from a spate of similarly atrocious murders and random violence by teenagers from the hitherto crime-free suburbs.

Like Satoshi's alleged attacker, most offenders are middle-class schoolboys from quiet neighbourhoods who strike without motive or warning.

The media is filled with reports of these unlikely killers - two weeks ago, in an unprovoked attack, four schoolboys from Nagano beat a fellow pupil to within an inch of his life; last month a teenage student from Utsunomiya strangled his grandmother to death with a rope; and in July, a 16-year-old planted a home-made bomb on the Tokyo underground.

When quizzed by police, the young bomb-maker said: "I like chemistry ... I wondered what it would be like to trigger a big explosion in Tokyo." The device exploded 10 minutes after the station gates had closed, only just avoiding a tragedy.

For most of the 20th century, Japan enjoyed a reputation as one of the safest countries in the world. The West looked on with envy at a country that seemed untouched by the kind of urban strife that plagued other nations. But unlike Western crimes, these incidents are characterised by their lack of any kind of financial, sexual or vengeful motivation.

This is killing for the thrill of it; think Natural Born Killers, or more pertinently, 2000's Battle Royale, Kinji Fakasaku's film about ninth-grade schoolchildren taken to an island to murder each other until only the last remains.

The authorities are baffled and have labelled these random acts of terror "kireru", meaning "to snap". "These are not problem kids rebelling, but ordinary boys and girls suffering breakdowns," warns Nobuto Hosaka, an opposition MP. "Nobody can predict when they will explode."

The number of juvenile killers in Japan doubled between 1996 and 2000. Teenagers notched up a shuddering 50 murders in 2000. But official figures tell only part of the story. Young offenders are committing evermore fantastic comic-book crimes that leave a trail of traumatised victims and add to the growing sense of hysteria.

In 2000, a schoolboy from Saga, southwest Japan, hijacked a bus with a 12-inch knife and held 10 passengers hostage before stabbing three people, killing one. Last July, a young man threw a container full of hydrochloric acid in the face of a passerby on a street in Tokyo.

Detective Jin Kato of the Tokyo Police Department knows more about juvenile crime than most. Kato, a gravel-voiced tough guy, spent over 20 years tracking down and convicting members of the Japanese mafia. Today he catches teen killers, and has written a book about his experiences investigating juvenile crime.

"Juveniles are more impulsive and brutal today than before," he says. "It's our biggest worry: random violent crime, committed by young offenders with no criminal past. They are invisible, we've no way of knowing who will attack or where. I've seen an increase in the number of attacks on commuters and the homeless by ordinary kids."

After months of investigating teen killers, Kato thinks he knows what type of youngster snaps.

"A kireru kid is someone who can't communicate his feelings," he explains. "He lives in a virtual world of videos and computer games and thinks he can simply wipe out or turn off anything he doesn't like."

So what has happened in Japanese society that is turning some young people into killers?

Some experts point to the breakdown of community and family life, and a lack of discipline in the home.

Fifty years ago, Japan was a nation of farmers, where extended families lived under the same roof and together helped raise well-adjusted children.

Today, Japan is a nation of commuters - one in three people lives in the greater Tokyo region - and increasingly both parents find themselves working gruelling hours, which means less time for the children. The lingering recession and job insecurity haven't helped either. A recent Government survey found that working Japanese fathers spend less time with their children than their counterparts in other countries.

Another survey carried out by Tokyo's Hakuhodo Institute of Life and Living reveals some worrying signs of neglect and isolation. One in three children between the ages of 10 and 13 said they looked upon video games as friends and spent most of their free time alone in their rooms.

Child psychiatrists talk about a love-starved generation that is overdosing on violent games, the internet and television.

- INDEPENDENT