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JAPAN: Rising Juvenile Violence Linked to Internet Games
By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Oct 12 (IPS) - A recent spate of horrifying murders, committed by youngsters who killed their friends or parents, has shaken Japan's pride in its supposedly disciplined and harmonious society and prompted calls to examine underlying causes.
''Juvenile crime and rising violence among youth represents social breakdown that has got stronger during the past few years. Japanese children need more support in a society that now has no time for them,'' says Keiko Okuchi, principal of Tokyo Schule, one of Japan's first alternative schools that cater to school-drop outs.
A government survey, released this month, revealed a 33 percent rise ( 30,022 actual incidents) in children, some as young as 6-years-old, behaving violently. A record 336 cases of student-on-teacher violence was reported in 2004 against the 253 cases reported in the previous year.
Common acts of violence included students throwing chairs at their teachers or grabbing them by their shirts which are far removed from the traditional notion that students must display extreme respect and deference towards teachers and elders.
Police also said they took into custody 219 people younger than 14 years-of-age for alleged crimes including murder, robbery and arson, in 2004.
In August, a 16-year-old was sent to prosecutors on suspicion of having killed his parents in June. He told police he had stabbed his parents to death because they had beaten him repeatedly and made him work. The boy was arrested at a hot spring resort where he had checked in alone after the murder.
In February, another 15-year-old was arrested on suspicion of stabbing his older brother who, he said, had bullied him for years.
Okuchi said that the recent wave in monstrous crimes by children reflected the frustration and stress of growing up in Japanese society with little recourse to guidance beyond the Internet.
''Our experience shows more children are asking for help to deal with
problems they face at home and school. They have nobody who listens to their point of view and help them deal with their problems,'' said Okuchi who also runs 'Child Line', a telephone counselling service that is patronised by children from even primary schools.
In a bid to create a more accepting environment for children, activists are invoking the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child Treaty signed by Japan in 1994.
''Despite signing the international document, Japan has done nothing much to keep its promise of respecting the rights of the children,'' says Kiyoko Masui, who runs the Child Assault Prevention (CAP) group, a grass-root organization that teaches children their rights.
Classes conducted by CAP use short dramas and other visuals to explain to children their human rights and allows them to speak out against practices that they consider are against their development -but these have not been incorporated in school curricula.
''The basic problem is that authorities refuse to change their stance that is based on a top-down attitude. Adults think they know what is best for children and take decisions on their behalf without consulting the children,'' she says.
The new Juvenile Law, passed in April 2005 lowered the age limit for prosecution to 14 years from the previous 16 though this continues to be a subject of debate with rights activists saying that tightening the law is not the answer to juvenile crime.
Debate on the subject of rising juvenile crime and how it may be tackled includes the role of media, including violent Internet content, which, many specialists believe, plays a key role.
Prof. Takashi Sakamoto, leading expert on educational reform using information and communication technology, has been spearheading a new move to develop Internet games that foster positive attitudes and stop the dark side of on-line games that have been proven to foster violence in children.
The popularity of on-line games is a particular cause for worry since surveys have shown Japanese schoolchildren spending 3 hours a day, on average, playing games at their computers.
Sakamoto's research has shown that continuously playing games that have violent content, such as those that feature shooting and killing indiscriminately, may result in adverse effects on the minds of children.
At the same time, games that have a story and feature 'benevolent' allied forces helping each other as they fight a common enemy, do not necessarily encourage violent activity among children.
In September, a 17-year-old boy was formally charged for killing a teacher and wounding two others in February at the Chuo Primary school. Lawyers said their client did not intend to kill and had stabbed the teachers because he had problems with interpersonal relations.
The issue of not being able to discern between virtual killing and reality and poor communication skills among youth have been linked to Internet games leading to moves by local governments to ban certain videos as harmful.
Sakamoto believes that such moves are not the answer. ''To develop a safe environment for children, the necessary step is to ask games software companies to continue making games that will educate the player and avoid content that can make them violent.''
Such an approach is important in an age when young people have ready access to the virtual world on their cellphones including to 'anime' or brief animated films, notorious for their violent and suggestive content.
The Internet Association reports hundreds of parents and children calling in to seek advise on violence and theft depicted in on-line games. (END/2005)
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