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Police in Ibaraki, Osaka Prefecture, said Sunday they have arrested a 46-year-old unemployed man on suspicion of killing his 81-year-old father.
Police said the suspect, Koji Suzukawa, who lived with his parents, has admitted to strangling his father Kiyoshi to death with a towel on Saturday afternoon, Sankei Shimbun reported. He then cut his own neck with a razor in the bathroom. His 77-year-old mother found them when she returned to their apartment at around 5 p.m. and called 119.
The two men were rushed to hospital where the father was pronounced dead. His son was in a stable condition Sunday and told police he wanted to end the suffering of his father who had become bedridden in early February and that looking after him was stressful. He also said he wanted to die, too.
© Japan Today
23 Comments
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Yubaru
Too sad, this man should have been in a facility that could care for him, but because of the costs involved the family has to carry the burden.
People reading along here had better get used to stories like this, they are going to keep increasing as society is ill-prepared for dealing with the problems associated with the every growing elderly among us!
Yubaru
My wife and I took care of her parents, my in-laws, for literally years, while they were sick and in decline before they both died within 14 months of each other.
They both passed away in the hospital under the care of some very professional health care workers and doctors.
It was no fun having to come home and tell my father-in-law, who was extremely ill at the time, that his wife of over 40 years had passed away. My wife was at the hospital taking care of arrangements there and I was the one who had to prepare the house for the arrival of Mom for the traditional wake prior to the funeral.
Those years, while trying to raise 3 kids, ES, JHS and HS, travelling between school's and two different hospitals, or arranging our schedules to be at home to care for them damn near tore our family apart.
Looking back at it, I can not, for the life of me, imagine having to do what we did.
TrevorPeace
Having worked for many years as a volunteer with vulnerable people (old or terminally ill) I think any comments about this particular situation are a bit out of line. When a person becomes bedridden, due to age or any other type of infirmity, they have typically gone through years of declining health and the inability to care for themselves. In Sendai, my best friend's father went from active and vibrant to debilitated by a series of strokes over a period of three years. He ended up bedridden at home because he didn't want to die in the hospital (Japanese hospitals are not that great for people facing end of life situations - been there, witnessed it). And with home-visit care on a daily basis, and his aging wife and son and daughter doing everything they could to make him comfortable, he still died. We all do.
That little comment relative to this story does not mean, in the slightest, that I condone the behavior of the son. There are too many societal influences, too many stresses, too many unknown mental conditions of the son, for any of us to make a judgment.
Yes, it's sad. Yes, it's tragic. But, and I don't say this lightly, it IS Japan.
GW
Jcapan,
Certainly Hikkikomori types are going to be seriously stressed as parents age etc, but also many people are forced, semi-forced to QUIT their jobs to take care of mom & dad, many women, also men, first they might try quitting & working closer to their parents, that usually means a REAL step down in job & pay, just piling on the stressors …..
No matter how you slice it, it is a truly AWFUL situation in Japan right now & will get much much worse over time, future is grime, & it includes my own, mother in law & my wife both have issues & the former is 600km away & my brother in law & wife are way beyond useless, they have trouble changing light bulbs...…..
papigiulio
We don't know the full details of this story to make a judgement but I think we can all agree that this is just a sad story and families with bedridden members or chronic diseases deserve all the help that they can get. But good luck with that in Japan.
AgentX
Exactly! Society here is creating one hell of a bleak future for many that don't fit through the cookie-cutter. But they keep voting for that...
GW
Yubaru
I have been saying the same for ages, people killing their parents has become more common now for around 20yrs with the frequency increasing due to the skyrocketing number of seniors.
CLEARLY one of the govts strategies is to do next to nothing in order to "save" $$, meanwhile more & more family members become desperate, consider & some end up doing horrible things...…..
Like I have said many times do YOU wanna grow old in Japan, frankly its a scary thought, NOT what you want going into late in life....
jcapan
Similar situation here. My wife is a wonderful, giving person. Don't get me started on her siblings or aging/infirm parents. They would bleed her absolutely dry if she/we let them. Worse yet, the in laws are right here in my ward! 600km sounds pretty good to me.
GW
One thing that REALLY bothers me about living here is there are SO MANY ways things could be done differently to make things EASIER, but few people/companies are willing to give things a re-think, re-evaluation, try some new ideas!
Dis,
Oh I hear ya on the pension/health payments & there being totally wasted, I have & continue to pay a fortune into both & get/expect to get next to nothing if we need it.
Disillusioned
You are only half right. The main reason so many people are becoming full time carers for their ailing parents is because of a failed pension and health insurance system. These people have been paying premiums all their lives into both of these schemes (scams) and receive very little for it. The money in these scams has been reinvested and squandered by successive governments for decades. Furthermore, yes, the amount of elderly has been increasing, but the amount of aged care facilities and home care companies has been declining over the same period. Private aged care companies are the most likely business in Japan to go bust in the first three months. This is because the government does not subsidise aged care for serious illness and/or incapacitation despite charging very high premiums for health insurance, which most elderly have been paying for half a century or more. Add to this the below poverty pension payments and it's easy to understand the frustration of these people who become full time carers. I have known many Japanese people who spent years just waiting for their ailing parents to die so they could get their life back.
This is an interesting statement. So, in your opinion, how long would one have to spend caring for an ailing parent for murder to be an acceptable solution?
darknuts
He should have tried to kill himself first.
sensei258
@ yubaru - I would agree with your statement if it had been more than a month since they started caring for him
sensei258
@disillusion- I have no idea how you made that logic leap from my comment I'm not responsible for your misinterpretations why the hell would I think it's okay to kill anybody
Bruce Lee
Where did I say that my experience was the same, or where did I even compare it to anyone's? I merely said I had experience.
Bruce Lee
He said
Fendy
BelrickToday I have absolutely no experience of caring for the terminally ill. What that means, I have no idea!
Will Goode
Good one @darknuts, maybe that should be dark irony, someone said yesterday same story just paste in different names, but that was the seventy year old newspaper deliverers, is the population too big or the number of houses too small why do you have frustrated resentful middle a men living at home with their parents ?
Yubaru
But then who would have taken care of his father?
I hope that when the day comes, I am strong enough to do it myself, so my children dont have do do it for me!
jcapan
True but b/c we only read one story (seemingly per day of late) and never any follow-up or pieces that attempt to draw connections, we're left to speculate. My own? That most of those doing the killing are unemployed men living at home with aging parents. I wonder how many of these men have been unemployed for much of their lives or are former/present hikikomori. And as their parents age, they're suddenly being forced into responsibilities they've evaded for most of their lives, feeling extremely anxious and threatened by the prospect of their caregivers being incapacitated or gone. Perhaps prison looks attractive to someone who's been essentially institutionalized in their bedroom all their life.
Belrick
sensei258, you were a nursing assistant. Therefore you didn't have the same experience of caring for the terminally ill. Some, but not as a full blown carer, so there's no way your experience can be compared to those who are!
sensei258
He just became bedridden a month ago, and you already killed him to end his suffering? jumping the gun a bit aren't we. More likely you didn't like the interruption to your lazy lifestyle.
sensei258
@ trevor - like I said to another poster I might be inclined to agree with you if this had happened over a long. But it just became bedridden a month ago, and by the way I spent years as a certified nursing assistant so you're not the only one with experience
sensei258
"I think any comments about this situation are out of line" Ergo your own comment is out of line