they'd better hope the cops find them first

[chronovore]

It's pretty common to hear tales on the news about how Japanese society is eroding, and how the youth of today are morally bankrupt compared to ten or twenty years ago. There was a story about a high school couple who got into a cab, forced the cab driver at knifepoint to drive to a secluded location, then killed him and took 5000 yen. Just a couple days ago an asshat with a knife decided he wanted "to kill 7 or 8 people" and went on a rampage in a train station and shopping mall. Despite this, it's been easy to convince myself that the problem is not as widespread as sensationalistic media would have us believe.

Yesterday my nephew was playing in a nearby park, only two blocks away from home. It's a wide field with a clear view from one side to the other; it sits directly behind the central police station for the city. He was playing with two friends who are our neighbors; just three boys, six- to seven-years-old, playing unattended by adults in a busy park filled with lots of locals.

At 3 p.m. my nephew went to get his bike, to leave early and get to a dentist appointment at our neighborhood doctor. His bike was next to a bunch of bushes. As he approached his bike, several people leapt out of the bush and grabbed him, put a towel in his mouth so he couldn't scream, and then proceeded to beat him. The kicked his stomach, and hit him with a baseball bat. When they were done, they told him that if he told anyone about the beating, they'd kill him.

He went home. He didn't say anything to his mom immediately, but ended up crying during his visit to the dentist. He told his mom what happened. His mom took him to the ER for x-rays and examination (nothing broken, no sexual violation, bruises should clear up in 5 days), and then to the police to report what had happened. My nephew was able to give a pretty good accounting of their appearance: 4 or 5 junior high school aged boys, with dyed blonde hair, and yellow and red piercings in their ears.

Apparently it takes 4 or 5 jr. high school boys to beat up one 7 year old. They'd better pray to god the police find them before anyone in my family does.

Comments

[sdemory.livejournal.com]

Don't know if it's Japanese culture that's eroding, as that sort of thing happens here as well. It does take a certain sort of broken kid to think that rolling a child half his age is somehow cool.

Glad that your nephew's got you guys for support. That'd be horribly scary stuff at any age.

[chronovore.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the insight. I had no idea this kind of stuff happened in the USA; then again, in the USA, I'd not let my kids play alone in a nearby park to begin with. Until now, that's been a safe thing to do in Japan.

[sdemory.livejournal.com]

That's one of the things with which I'm growing more familiar. I grew up on military bases (and, more to the point, officers' quarters on military bases,) so I was insulated in a way that's quaint to those people I know who lived civilian childhoods. To me, the thought of not being able to play alone in a nearby park is ridiculous. My friends and I would walk three blocks from quarters to play and our folks thought nothing of it. If there were fights, there'd either be someone's parent who would start the chain of spankings until the kids got home or, if things got really dicey, the MPs would swoop down, break them up, pull the kids in and call their fathers to pick them up.

But, then, base life in the 1970s and 1980s was really, really small-townish in its way.