Police on Thursday took into custody a 14-year-old boy after he allegedly beat his parents and 8-year-old sister with a wooden bat as they slept at their home in Oshu, Iwate Prefecture.
According to police, the boy beat his 31-year-old father and 37-year-old mother and his sister about their heads in their rooms on the second floor of their house at about 3:40 a.m., TV Asahi reported. The three sustained serious head injuries but are in a stable condition, police said.
The boy called 119 and told the operator he had attacked members of his family, police said. He was quoted as saying he intended to kill them, but has so far given no motive, TV Asahi reported.
The boy's grandmother and one other sister also live in the house but they were unharmed, police said.
© Japan Today
41 Comments
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tokyokawasaki
Safety Japan....
When will the image (in movies, films and by those who have never lived here) that Japan is such a wonderful, peaceful and respectful nation change to:
Japan is a Nation of pent up emotion, stress and highly strung individuals, led by a government and system that lacks empathy, yet likes to say gambare.....
Maria
I know it's an irrelevance, but are these ages correct? That would make his father 17 when the boy was born, and his mother 23.
brknarm
alladin: The percentages are low and that's why 'these kinds of acts' make JP news, but you're right JP isn't what she used to be.
elbuda: dude, it appears the family's been together for at least 14 yrs...why judge the father and mother's character? your posts are almost always hatred and bitterness towards someone/something...chill bro.
Thunderbird2
God, a psycho teen. Love to know why he wanted to do such a thing to his family. I hope his parents and little sister pull through.
Lew Archie
It's great how some people just randomly speculate about the parents possibly abusing the kid. Yeah, we should always have a bunch of excuses at hand for a teenager who wraps a baseball bat around the heads of sleeping victims.
JA_Cruise
geez, gotta lock your room door in your own house now...
ThonTaddeo
Mirai, I think you're still getting things backwards. The father was 17, and the mother 23, when their son was born, so you could perhaps subtract one from each of those ages to see when the boy was conceived.
In this case, I can only imagine that she trapped him into fatherhood -- she was an adult and he was still a minor. I shudder to think of the blame that would be heaped on the father if he, at age 22, had impregnated a 16-year-old girl and then the two of them raised this son.
ItsMe
This really isn't all that new. Remember the Kobe kid? Now apparently "reformed" and living here in society under a new name. There have always been fringe freaks, its just that the incident is so shocking that it sticks in our minds --- but really it is nothing that is statistically significant enough to lose sleep over...
tmarie
Why is everyone assuming its the dad that is the issue? A 23 year old woman sleeping with a 17 year old boy should be indicatin that mom isn't quite right.
And yep, this is only going to continue unless Japan starts to deal with youth crime. Lower the age to 16 a d starting trying them like adults.
smithinjapan
Wow... young father. As for looking for the boy's motive, there probably isn't one, same as most of the senseless crime here. Maybe dad wouldn't pass him the remote? argued about a cell phone bill? Either way, hope the boy never sees life outside a reformatory until he comes of age.
TokyoHipHop
tokyokawasaki your right, when I used to tell my friends that Japan isn't all anime happy go lucky paradise and tell them the darkside of things they become so surprised like nothing ever happens in Japan, which the government tries to cover up some things.
Rik314
A lot of people ready to jump on the fact that they were very young parents or speculating about the family relationships. So they were young to have a child (17/23) but they are still together and had another. Maybe they actually love each other or are taking some responsibility to raise their kids. As for his sister, young kids in Japan still sleep in the same room as the parents (maybe she has to due to where they live), so she just might have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Motive? He probably has issues. Having young parents (even if they are loving and stable) can be an embarrassment in Japan (why - have a look at your own reactions) and he may have copped it at school. He is also 14 and as any of you who has had teenaged kids know, that is the start of a rough age for some, regardless of the situation. Point is, what he did was terrible, but don't be too ready to start flinging around the blame.
WilliB
A young psycho. It is a safe bet that this is not the last we hear from this fellow.
Ayler
took away his DS I expect
mikihouse
the news said that the boy panicked when blood started oozing from their heads and bodies...not what he expected from his video games and called an ambulance.
nath
Scary family? Even beating up his little 8 year old sister? Cruel!
ojiiu812badboy
This man could be a step-dad. The family is in stable condition, hopefully the neurological tests to follow are negative for all, but especially the young child. Such a horrible crime. it's hard to speculate on the motive. I can only wish that it wasn't something petty, either way a 14 year old with that kind of rage must have shown some odd behaviors prior to this. Hopefully they'll do a follow up story with more details.
pontananagoma
Insanity , violent outburst & severe depression are symptoms of psychological disorder in people .hereditary .??? In Japan , thee are a lot of cases like this.. Psychological factors maybe from society's too much dicipline in school , some teachers who are also psychotic . Parents who are spoiled brats too. He must go to mental institution not reform institution .
Himajin
Sheesh....any time a negative news story comes out, the 'see ? this country is NOT SAFE' crowd comes out of the woodwork.
Shaun Johnson
Well put tokyokawasaki!
Disillusioned
Wow! It's been a hot summer!
Moderator
You are mistaken. The mother is 37 and the father is 31.
Iso Poika
Oh come on, he also beat his 8-year-old sister, who "sustained serious head injuries". There is no excuse for that.
There is so far no evidence to suggest his parents did anything wrong; all we do know is that there is something very wrong with this kid.
Not that I think the age of the parents is all that relevant, but does anyone know whether the 31-year-old is the kid's biological father.
the-grouch
Wow... I was watching the Japanese news and according to Nitere, the boy can be charged with attempted murder. His future is now in the hands of the system.
He will probably be recruited in the future by yakuza to go after old debts once he comes out of prison.
Eduardo Gonzalez
In preparations for the "All-out East Asian armed conflict" this December 21st
mrmalice
no one is born evil. Some might have it more easy to resort to violence than others. There definitely has to be more to this than just 'he watched too much violent anime' ? I read a lot of reactions about the repressed emotions in Japan as a whole again, i'm still afraid it's not the only place in the world where the government would lack empathy. Definitely scary sign of the times. Or is it? Stuff like this wouldnt have been all over the news because the news wasn't all over the world in earlier years. I wonder
CrazyJoe
I'm only interested in the motive.
Lowly
He could be psychopathic, or maybe he was abused.
Moderator
All readers please stay on topic.
wtfjapan
getup! getup! I want to play baseball now!
incognito12
@WilliB : Agreed.
There is a very Halloween-esque feel to this story...very eerily Michael Myers-ish.
ohayo206
Sad to say but mental health disorders will probably be on the rise among today's youths and not enough counselling support to go around. Just medicate and throw away the key.
serendipitous
127,000,000 people in Japan. I'd say the crime rate in Japan is still pretty low! If there was one such incident every day in Japan, it would take 347,945 years for 127,000,000 people to have died so let's put it in perspective! But with the population of Japan supposed to go down by 25% by 2050 or so, it will be interesting to see whether the crime rate goes up or down over the next 40 years....
Bob Sneider
once again, the repressed cruelty in Japanese culture slips out from behind the facade of tranquility
alladin
This is just another proof to everyone that Japan is no longer as safe as it use to be. With all of these spoiled children all over Japan who dos not know how to be respectful, these kinds of things will continue to occur more and more in the near future. Parents in Japan should start to spend more time on their kids rather than doing things only for themselves. If parents in Japan were to spend more time with their kids and teach them how to be respectful and honest, these kinds of acts would probably be minimized t a very low percentage.
Aída Posadas
So sad... I wonder what the boy thinks his little 8-year-old sister did to upset him so much... (although some little siblings are really annoying... I'm not justifying him.)
Serrano
I hope the parents and the sister recover. They're going to have to keep the boy locked up for a good while. Poor taxpayers.
Mirai Hayashi
Swell kid...btw..Mother is 31 and has a 15 yo son? That means she was 16yo when she gave birth, and the father was 22...Wonder if this boy was being abused...just saying....
Mirai Hayashi
Elbuda Mexicano
There has to be more to this story, sure it is horrible what this kid did to his family, but like Maria points out, the dad, knocked up his mom, when he was only 17?? and she was already the ripe old age of 23?? Real young for Japan, but not in the country side, and IWATE is as country side as it can get in Japan, so they do marry younger, so imagine some 17 year old kid, gets the hots, and now his older girlfriend is pregnant?? My guess, this father really screwed around, was violent to his wife and kids, and KARMA came back with a BASEBALL bat right in the middle of the night. IMHO