INSIDE JAPAN from our view

Thursday, October 20, 2005 at 04:00 JST 2005 Kyodo News OSAKA — A 40-year-old woman was found dead in a condominium in Hirakata, Osaka Prefecture, on Wednesday morning. Police said her 12-year-old son has admitted beating her. The vice principal and a teacher at the boy's school went to the condo after the school received a call from the boy's father, who lives in Tokyo. The father told the school that the boy had called him to say his mother was not moving, the police said. His parents, who were divorced, had consulted with the school about domestic violence committed by the boy in June, a school official said.

The news like this would have become top news if it had happened just 10 years ago. But today, it is a common story in daily life of this country. Many people were shocked when a 14-year-old boy living near Osaka committed a series of killings just eight years ago. Now, however, this kind of events happens almost everyday so that we are quite accustomed to facing horrible news.

Of course it is one of hottest topics in this country that “what is happening to kids these days??”. And so far, it seems no one can answer this question. Actually it is very difficult to point out the differences between lives of children 20 years ago, when I was a kid, and those of kids these days. Parents, school, local community, economy or other factors have not changed so much for a couple of decades.

But one thing is certain. TV game has spread to children more widely than 20 years ago. And some of them are about killing someone. That is always thought to be bad influences to kids. Indeed, it is unimaginable for me to think but some kids tend to mix the  real world and a game world. But how can you be persuaded that TV games or Internet sometime make kids killing others easily. If so, virtually every country must have the same problems as Japan has. But truth is not.

Japanese adults are now losing their confidences not only economy but also raising children properly.