51-year-old woman arrested for killing parents in Tokyo

so sad.

Maybe her mum and dad should have done the same when she was a baby. Couldn't she call social services instead of killing them?

It will get worse as there will be a lot of baby people in this same situation. The garbage people.

Life with her parents must have be really hard for her. At 51, unemployed and still unmarried I assumed. But that was such a short-sighted action.

One or both of them could have had dementia or been bed-ridden. In an emergency perhaps social services would have put them in a home, but in most cases the waiting list is long. They are scaling down the home helper program as well, my MIL, stage 4-5 Alzheimer's, just got 'demoted' two ranks to Youkaigo 1. Youkaigo my behind.....she needs 24-hour a day supervision.

She has no logical thought processes left, has a memory of 3-5 minutes which causes her to repeat actions ad infinitum, like taking pills every half hour or washing her hair 6 times in the shower. She gets up for the day at 3:30 am and stays up till 8 pm with no nap or break. Tries to call taxis in the middle of the night, will leave the house if someone is not watching. Because of lack of logic, if she's cold she'll light something on fire on the stove (chopsticks, paper) instead of turning up the heat. What help do we get in this situation?

A helper for 1 1/2 hours three times a week. 4.5 hours out of 119 hours she's awake weekly. She's in the hospital now, to get her diabetes stabilized (she eats hidden sweets on the sly that the has other people by for her so I don't know) but were she to come home we'd have no choice but to hire someone to either watch her in the wee hours or to look after her in the daytime, or I'll never get out the front door ever again.....the help levels vs. the severity of dementia/illness is almost laughable. If you have an elderly person at home who is not genki enough to go to day care, working is out of the question.

Not to say that there is any reason to kill someone, I am not saying that at all, just putting a little perspective to the situation as we're in the middle of dealing with all these services etc.

Rather than spending too much money on construction, employee more people in home care or at hospitals for the elderly. You can always recoup some of the money back in income taxes and associated economic activity from the money spent by these employees.

While I in no way condone what this woman did, I can certainly understand her frustration, especially in light of Himajin's MIL. With no way to go out and earn a needed income, and needing to watch over somebody 24/7, something is bound to snap.

There's got to be a better way.

Perhaps they need to create a kind of elderly welfare tax, similar to how welfare was created in the states during the depression. And then import hospice workers from other countries. With the aging population in this country, they gotta do something.

And then import hospice workers from other countries.

Why imported labor is cheaper is it? Come on suggest something that is workable and good for all. It is time to make the commen people understand that they have to take up these jobs themselves because the Js have to take care of their own elderly. How about increasing the tax for the luxury items and allocating that towards welfare! Yes, it is my wicked suggestion to stop the overspending habits of some crazy Jpeople.

A helper (if they go over their time and you pay them cash out of pocket) is 1500 an hour, they get 850 the office gets the rest (they have the cars and vans etc upkeep). I don't think you could possibly get help cheaper than 850 an hour...from anywhere. I've always thought that the office could do with a little less and the helpers themselves should get 1,000 an hour.

850 yen an hour? No wonder there's a shortage of helpers. Flipping hamburgers pays more, and involves much less in terms of actual hard work and responsibility.

Yes. When we read all the literature about the helpers costing 1500 an hour we thought they were getting it, but evidently not. MIL got after them one day (it's rare she's satisfied at anything anyone does) and was making comments along the lines of 'is this all I get for 1500 an hour'(oh dear....) and they told her what their portion of the hourly fee is.

Right you are Cleo, it really doesn't pay a living wage. A lot of housewives become helpers because the hours are good, but there's a lot to put up with. MIL is healthy physically, taking care of those who can't dress themselves or are bedridden and using diapers must be much much harder.

Amazing what this woman said; '...she was tired of looking after them.' She is unemployed. I don't think that she won't be any good to work if she can't even look after her parents. Doesn't 'Social Services' assist such people? It is sad story, and now parents are in peace and their daughter have also her own quiet spot behind the bars. Will she hang?

Talked with a retired police investigator about this. He says, its far from being an isolated case, and that literally thousands of Japanese families face a very similar situation. Affordable care for the elderly is not in place. Would someone in the Diet actually start doing something for the people for a change? Problems such as this one is just raising its head, and along with suicide is going to only get worse. Its on the verge of an epidemic. Wake up!

That's exactly how it works here in Japan. Parents kill their children because they can't take care of them, or they are too noisy. Children kill their parents. And usually they kill themselves once they get tired. Huh, what a crazy way of ending life's hardships. What will happen to this country in the next 10 years?

Don't the Buddhist temples teach "compassion" anymore ?

May! May! May! we become manifold to serve people suffering in such a disappointment........Survey is essential to rescue such people and support them.

She is unemployed. I don't think that she won't be any good to work if she can't even look after her parents.

There is a good chance she is unemployed because she's taking care of her parents. And because she is unemployed, they can't afford the 17,000 yen per month for kaigo hoken to get help.