JUVENILE CRIME

On August 4 the Yomiuri Shimbun carried an article titled “Number of juveniles arrested for murder doubles to 53.” According to this piece, arrests of juveniles on murder charges during the first six months of this year jumped sharply from the 27 of the same period in 1999; among the arrested were 14 high school students, a significant leap from last year’s 5. As was noted in our last issue, juvenile crime has become a serious issue for Japanese society.

Two incidents in particular shook the nation: One 17-year-old boy who murdered a woman he had never met said that he did so out of a desire to “experience killing someone” and another boy the same age hijacked an intercity bus, slashing one of the passengers to death. These two shocking crimes alone would be enough to create the impression that cruel murders by young people were on the rise. The fact that both suspects were 17-year-old boys, moreover, sparked energetic debate on the nature of the problems afflicting that age group.

More and more Japanese are coming to believe that the Juvenile Law, by exempting underage criminals from harsh punishment for their actions, is tempting people under 20 into violent behavior. Under the present law, juveniles who have committed a serious crime are sent to juvenile halls for rehabilitation; upon parole, they are placed under the supervision of official and volunteer probation officers so as to return to normal society in accordance with the Offenders Rehabilitation Law. But some claim that there has been a rise in recidivism among juveniles on probation. These factors have contributed to calls in the National Diet by legislators urging that the Juvenile Law be amended to provide for harsher punishments.

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But people are mistaken if they believe that murders committed by juveniles are rising rapidly, a fact that becomes clear when current statistics are compared with those in other industrialized countries or Japan’s own past figures. Under-20 murders during the first half of 2000 may be double the figure for January-June 1999, but we must allow for the fact that the 1999 figure happened to be unusually low. When we look at the overall picture, we find that the number of serious juvenile crimes actually appears to be following a downward trend.

Why, then, are these crimes so shocking to society today? Where do people get this impression that the murder rate is skyrocketing? These recent events do not, in fact, mark the first time that crimes committed by 17-year-olds have bloomed into a major social problem. This is something that happened once four decades ago. In 1960 Asanuma Inejirô, chairman of the Japan Socialist Party, was stabbed to death, and the following year an attack on the home of Chûô Kôron Sha President Shimanaka Hôji resulted in the death of his maid and serious injury to his wife. Teenaged right-wing extremists were responsible for both of these crimes, and the term “17-year-old terror” entered the language. This was a time when Japan as a whole was leaning leftward, and the appearance of these rightist youths was a startling one. Many warned of the dangers of biased education programming these young people into narrow ways of thinking. But there was little questioning of the motives that pushed these kids to commit their crimes; it seemed reasonable to ascribe them to fervently held political beliefs.

Young people today have little to no interest in politics. At the very least, the number of youths who are highly oriented toward politics has plunged drastically. And the juveniles who have made their way into the national spotlight in their place are those responsible for cruel crimes. Once again, a levelheaded comparison of statistics shows that the number of these crimes has tended to drop over the years. But it is a fact that the recent incidents have shaken society more deeply than is merited by their numbers alone. These juvenile crimes are not terrorist actions, nor are they directly connected to political concerns of any sort. They are beyond the comprehension of adults. The cruelty of these incidents, the enormity of the damage they entail, and the vagueness of the motives underlying them are proving bewildering to adult members of society.

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A by-the-book debate is now being carried out as to whether these crimes can be chalked up to problems in families, in education, or in society as a whole. The tone of this debate has recently shifted, and people are shying away from seeking to pin all the blame on the family or schools alone. This is because the family and the school system alike have been powerless to resist the influence of social changes. Indeed, over the last 40 years Japanese society has changed fundamentally as the country’s economy has grown. Analysts now recognize that this shift has affected the lives of young people and the crimes they commit.

Psychoanalysts are called in to delve into the motive behind a crime and gauge the mental state of the perpetrator. Lately statements by these psychiatrists have been notable for their view that changes in society have pushed juvenile offenders into their criminal actions. Each time a vicious crime comes to light the media focuses on the diagnosis of the doctor assigned to examine the youth. This in turn is drawing increasing criticism that psychoanalysts make insufficient efforts, taking their examinations only far enough to pinpoint causes for cases; that too much emphasis is placed on protecting the human rights of juvenile offenders; and that these approaches will not help protect society from the recurrence of such incidents in the future.

Here we present two articles dealing with these issues. Wada Hideki sees great importance in the loss of nonlinguistic communication ability. Yôrô Takeshi, meanwhile, paints a picture of a society where excessive “intellectualization” has stripped children of the luxury of waiting to grow up. These pieces should help shed light on the ways in and extent to which Japanese society and families have changed over the past 40 years. They will also suggest directions for investigation into the factors behind juvenile crimes in Japan. (Kondô Motohiro, Professor, Nihon University)

© 2000 Japan Echo Inc.