I’m just another foreigner living in Japan. I live in South Tokyo just outside of the huge ex-pat community. I hope that what you find here in these pages will be useful, informative, entertaining, or some combination of the three. And, if you have anything you’d like to share, feel free. I, for one, enjoy learning new things and hope to learn something from everyone who has something they want to share here. So come on in, browse, and share.
When I saw this news article, I knew it was headed straight for this blog. I mean, WTF?
This isn’t serial killer shit; This is family life for some people here in Japan. Don’t believe it? Look up an article regarding the 16-year girl who killed her father with an axe because he had an affair. Or check out the kid in Aizuwakamatsu who walked into a local police station holding his mother’s decapitated head. Or, how about the lady who smashed her sleeping husband over the head with a wine bottle and then dismembered his body only to put the pieces in plastic bags and scatter them throughout Shibuya and Shinjuku. I used to think movies like Ju-On were horror flicks, but I’m starting to think that they might actually be family films.
I mean, really… WHAT THE FUCK?!
3 stabbed to death in Tokyo residence; boy’s arms cut off
Monday, February 11, 2008 at 19:10 EST
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The dead people are a man in his 50s and a woman in her 40s, who are believed to be a married couple, and a woman in her 80s, police said. The boy, believed to be the son of the couple, was quoted as telling the police before he lost consciousness, “My father did it to me.” A bloodstained ax was found in the house, and the police believe it to be the murder weapon, they said.
© 2008 Kyodo News. All rights reserved.
Filed under: Commentary, News-Japan
In a just world, that prik would get his arms cut-off before being bi-sected with a dull butter knife.
What is it with Japanese people and doing violence to themselves and their families? Last week were the twentysomething twin girls, a woman and her two babies, and that tragic woman who lost her baby supposedly to a thief, all threw themselves from a height.
Yeah, I mean there have to be some tangible factors involved, just like there are some involved in why people in the US go nuts and snuff out several unrelated people with guns before doing themselves in.
You know, in life, sometimes the only people you can count on are your family members. Why is it that this happens so often here?
And, most of us only see the sensationalized stories. Murders within the family household take place, during some periods, on an almost-daily basis.
Sad.
The dynamics of the family unit (too close for comfort) have a little bit, if not A LOT to do with it
I don’t doubt that at all. I mean there are some mothers who sleep in the same bed with their children until the kids are like 8 or 9 and treat them pretty much like babies all the time. Then, they cut the cord and shove ‘em into lives filled with juku, piano lessons, English lessons,… crap that takes away from their time to be just kids.
That sounds like the Shining.
Actually, I want to know how the guy killed himself with an axe.
Yeah, it’s weird how many Japanese people would rather kill their entire family than move into their own apartment.
Well, with key money and the various deposits one has to pay, it’s no wonder…
Yeah, that’s true, actually.
It’s all starting to make sense!
I chalk it up to one simple word: repression.
Japanese people live so much of their lives in the shadow and fear of what other people will think of them. Its a group society, so the only thing that matters, even more than your own opinion, is what the group thinks of you. There is so much pressure and stress to conform (and to perform) in Japan that when people go off – they really go off! I too was initially surprised by the number of crimes here that have that real-life-psycho-thriller twist. I think its a form of stress-release gone through the roof.
Shawn
12-year ex-pat
Thanks for the comment, Shawn.
I’m sure repression has a lot to do with it, but what are the sources of the repression? Probably fear of failure or public shame is one. Notes found after murder-suicides often contain statements like, “I have shamed myself and my family.” I guess the perpetrator of such a crime feels that the “burden of shame” that his/her family has to bear is too much and thus ‘relieves’ them of that burden. I’m sure there are other reasons, and I hate to simplify things too much, so I’ll stop there.