Japan shaken by beheading, other violent crime

[RamboLiberal]

Source: MSNBC/AP

A mother beheaded by her son. A baby who suffocated after being stuffed by his parents in the baggage compartment of a motorbike while they went gambling. A murderous shooting spree during a hostage standoff.

An outbreak of violent crime this week has triggered soul-searching and outrage in Japan, a country that has long prided itself on its safe streets and tight communal bonds.

The "appalling destruction" of traditional values — as one lawmaker put it — climaxed Friday, when a former gangster killed a policeman and wounded his son and daughter during a shooting rampage at his home, where he had held his ex-wife hostage for 24 hours. It was the first time an on-duty policeman was shot to death since 2001.

The standoff capped a week of mayhem and mistreatment.



Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18742305 /

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. You know, those bizarre crimes began happening a couple of years

after Japan caved into U.S. pressure to adopt "international" (i.e. heartless) business standards, firing people, denying loans to small businesses, and outsourcing more manufacturing to cheaper countries. For the first time since WWII, they had noticeable unemployment.

And then the crimes started happening.

[Kagemusha]

2. You mean even the Yakuza are laying people off?

Given that one of the guys mentioned here is an "ex-gangster".

Not meant as snark - I have no idea how the fortunes of the Japanese underworld are going.

[ohio2007]

3. Spin is spin. nt

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. Not the yakuza in particular, but the society in general has lost its

sense of security.

When I first went there in 1977, I was amazed at the overall economic equality. There were very few super-rich and very few super-poor. The street people were all late-stage alcoholics who had hit bottom (which also used to be true in the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s).

Now there are tent cities of homeless, small businesses are being replaced by chains, young people have trouble finding permanent jobs---and the crime rate is going up.

[Kagemusha]

5. I thought that process started sooner than a couple of years ago though.

Now, I'm sure it's accelerated further... and that's not helping... I just take notice when the people involved in particularly violent crimes are career criminals as opposed to, say, the 17 year old who beheaded his mother, was it? That, I can understand people considering it a truly shocking and horrible crime.

The calls for increased gun control make me wonder what exactly they can do that they haven't done already... it's not exactly lax as it is, right? But any way you... ahem. From any angle, it's been a tough week over there.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. Well, I didn't go to Japan between January 1991 and May 2000

and I was shocked at the changes that had occurred by 2000.

[Squatch]

7. Doesn't Japan have a ban on guns?

How's that working for them?

[treestar]

8. Doesn't the victim apologize?

That's how they handle torts, at least according to the tort reformers - and that has benefitted their society endelessly.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. As usual, the conservatives have it wrong

The perpetrator is supposed to apologize and provide compensation without being sued.

For example, if you are at fault in a car crash and total someone else's car, you are expected to buy them a new car without being asked. My Japanese teaching assistant was shocked when I was involved in a car crash where my car was totalled and I had to wait until my attorney could go after the other driver's insurance company to pay the current book value of my car, which was less than the remaining payments on it.

After a disaster or corporate blunder, the top brass at the company are expected to apologize personally to the victims and then resign, on the theory that the problem would not have occurred if the top people had been supervising the lower-ranking people properly.

That's how it is supposed to work in theory. Does it always? Probably not, but that's the social expectation.