Term Paper on Crimes in Japan
In June 1997 a 14-year-old third-year junior high school boy was under
arrest on doubts of killing two straightforward school children in Kobe and
attacking others. In January 1998 a 13-year-old first-year learner at a
junior high school in the city of Kuroiso in Tochigi Prefecture, actually
angry at having been lectured during a break amid classes, took out his
"butterfly" clutch knife and wounded a female teacher to casualty. An
additional appalling event ensued hardly two months later, in March, at a
children's high school in the city of Higashi-Matsuyama in Saitama
Prefecture. Once more a 13-year-old first-year junior high school student
lashed out with a knife, this occasion it appears that in answer to
harassment by a number of his male classmates, one of who died (1).
In addition to these extensively revealed murders, a mass of additional
crimes committed by junior high school students (generally aged 12 to 15),
particularly offenses involving the use of knives, has taken place in quick
sequence all over Japan. (The major events in the first three months of this
year by itself are connected in the complementary table.) One exceptional
feature of a lot of these crimes is that they were supposedly committed by
"regular" children with no past of criminal behavior who abruptly "appalled"
or "went crazy," leading to serious actions of aggression.
Juvenile crime in Japan is described by the comparatively young age of
nearly all of those concerned. Of all juveniles (definite in Japan as people
below the age of 20) charged with breaching the Penal Code, 16-year-olds
report for the major single age group, trailed by 15-year-olds and
14-year-olds. Jointly, these three groups make up two-thirds of all juvenile
violators in Japan.
One more noticeable characteristic of juvenile crime in Japan, and one that
is connected to the tremendous youth of a lot of juvenile criminals, is its
close association to education and school life. Japan's nationwide system of
obligatory education wraps the nine years of schooling ending in graduation
from junior high school, and 97% of junior high school graduates go on to
focus senior high school as well. The huge preponderance of the nation's
juvenile violators--85%--is registered in schools. Senior high school
students prevail, including 45.5% of this group, but junior high students,
at 27.5%, moreover report for an astonishingly elevated portion (2).
Last year's grisly proceedings in Kobe had an especially appalling impact on
those concerned in education. The particulars make known that it was an
offense of tremendous meanness: A third-year junior high student killed an
11-year-old sixth-grader with whom he was familiar and decapitated the body,
putting the detached head at the front gate of his own school, with a memo
swollen within the mouth signed with the pseudonym "Seito Sakakibara."
Furthermore, he mailed a declaration admitting his crime to a local
newspaper, in which he compared the victim to a "rotten vegetable" and
avowed that he planned to take his revenge on "obligatory education, which
shaped me as a translucent continuation, and the society that shaped it
(5)."
In the aftermath of the occurrence, the Ministry of Education right away
asked for that the Central Council for Education, an advisory body to the
minister of education, assume a vital query on suitable customs to offer
"ethical education opening at infancy." From the time since then,
recommendation has also been required from other deliberative learned groups
on how finest to react to the state of affairs. One consequence of all this
has been to arouse conversation of pertinent penal events and the
safekeeping and therapy of juvenile violators. Purposely, vital interest has
been determined on the mission of improving sections of Japan's Juvenile
Law, which applies to juvenile violators. Whatever loom one takes, the more
and more grave nature of offenses by the young can be sighted as symbolic
confirmation of the reality that the education system and social systems
that have been in place in Japan for half a century since World War II have
concluded to be significant. Japanese society has once again inserted a
major period of changeover.
Particulars and Accounts of Juvenile Crime:
It seems suitable, first of all, to look backside over the past of juvenile
crime in Japan. Let us judge the information for the postwar era, as
obtainable in the 1997 edition of the Ministry of Justice's annual report on
crime (4). In line with the study of the data obtainable in the account,
three main influences of juvenile crime have taken place in Japan. The
primary signal pointed in 1951 (when records point to 166,433 juveniles were
charged with infringements of illegal decrees), in the period right away
subsequent to the World War II when Japanese civilization was in substantial
disturbance, with economic chaos and disturbances of family life
contributing to the collapse of social order. The peak of the second wave
(when 238,830 juvenile violators were charged) corresponded with the staging
of the Tokyo Olympic Games in 1964 during an era of high economic growth, an
intense period of rapidly progressing industrialization and urbanization
when the aging of Japan's postwar baby boom caused a marked increase in the
percent age of the nation's population occupied by minors. The third wave
peaked in 1983 (with 317,438 juveniles charged), in the midst of a period of
relative economic prosperity, when societal values were diversifying
following the diminishment of the traditional functions of family and
community.
In 1983 juveniles arrested for crimes accounted for 1.7% of the juvenile
population; this percentage represented an all-time high, as did the number
of such arrests. Thereafter the falling birthrate came into play, and there
was an overall decrease. In 1996, however, the number of juveniles arrested
for criminal acts rose to 196,448, or 1.3% of the juvenile population; both
figures represented increases over those for the previous year. It remains
to be seen whether or not this change of direction will culminate in a
fourth wave of juvenile crime, but some potentially contributing factors
appear to be in place. With the collapse of its economic "bubble," Japan has
been adrift both economically and politically for some time now, its
horizons overcast with a sense of powerlessness. It would come as no
surprise if this atmosphere did give way to a fourth juvenile crime wave;
the National Police Agency refers to the present situation as "the approach
of the fourth phase of ascendancy (6)."
The numerical data on juvenile crimes of recent years reveal several
distinctive features. One of these, as the National Police Agency has
observed, is a marked increase in acts of violence and brutality. According
to police officials, 2,263 juveniles were arrested in 1997 for crimes of
brutality (murder, robbery, arson, or rape), an increase of 767, or 51.3%,
over the figure for the previous year. There has been a particularly large
rise in the incidence of robberies by juveniles, many of them apparently
compulsive acts committed by gangs of youths. A new term currently in wide
usage has been coined to describe some of these acts oyajigari, which could
be translated as "geezer hunting." This refers to vicious acts of robbery
directed against middle-aged men, often inebriated and on their way home
from work, committed by groups of youths. The perpetrators of these crimes
generally turn out to be "ordinary" senior and junior high school students
with no history of disciplinary problems.
In addition to the increase in crimes of brutality, there has also been a
rise in the incidence of juveniles inflicting bodily injuries and
threatening violence. Here again, a large number of these cases apparently
involve otherwise "normal" senior and junior high school students. Police
officials are reacting with alarm to what they see as a trend toward a new
era of "crimes of the moment," in which students with essentially no history
of problems suddenly turn to acts of brutality and violence. Indeed, the
proportions of all crimes of brutality and crimes of violence committed by
juveniles have risen to 34.1% and 44.5%, respectively. These figures
approach the highest such percentages ever recorded (3).
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