Japan’s legal age of adulthood dropping by two years, but do teens understand what that means?

But the real question is, will they be held accountable and tried as an adult if they committed murder at the age of 18?

do teens understand what that means?

Unless its relevant to any upcoming entrance examinations the answer is likely 'no'

Girls...27 percent opposed to it.

Boys...15 percent opposed.

Why on earth would any HS students be opposed to this?!

It would've been interesting to hear specific comments from those opposed, and the reasons why they thought so.

"No, I strongly believe I shouldn't be given more freedom and responsibility sooner".

I can't help but to wonder about the government's motivation to invest the time and energy to make this legal change. But going down the list of rights and restrictions, it seems pretty clear. As the legal / litigation system has long shown, this has little to do with extending, promoting, or protecting individual human rights.

As maintaining the restrictions against alcohol, tobacco, and gambling show, this change shows no acknowledgement of an increasing acknowledgement of maturity or moral autonomy. Indeed, increasing the age at which a female can choose to marry by two years indicates an assumption of a decrease in the capacity to make mature decisions.

This law is just another bureaucratic scheme to increase the market for credit card companies, mobile phone companies, landlords and real estate companies, moving companies, banks, optional medical services. Does anyone seriously think a typical 18 year old has the experience to resist the sales techniques and marketing practices of those business interests?

And who knows about the future? Possible military responsibilities for what is now ranked as the 5th most powerful military in the world? A lot like America in that since 1942, a young man has the right to be drafted into the military and die for their country at 18, three years younger than the right to have a sip of beer in most states.

The government is just doing what it does best, following the money. This time by expanding the market for exploitable, expendable labor.

Hopefully anyone committing a crime will be treated as an adult.

Reckless u old dog! lol

So, they’ll be adults, but cannot drink or smoke. Does this mean they will be tried as adults and go to an adults’ prison?

However, it’s not a blanket change, as even after the changeover some of the rights and privileges currently denied to minors will remain unavailable to people under the age of 20.

Makes me wonder, why even bother then. How many people kept this change employed..

Oh yeah, I forgot - you can keep it simple and do it the easy way, the difficult way and then there is the Japanese way.

Being a cynic, I would suggest this is just a way of increasing the voter numbers.

With an aging population and low birth-rate, lowering the legal age would then increase the voter pool.

Does this law affect voting rights? You can rent your own apartment but not be allowed to drink in it or vote against LDP dinosaurs?

Zenji and Derek ... I think you are right to cynical about the right to vote. Come voting time, unlike most modern countries, most recently Hong Kong or France, you will not see politically active youth in Japan handing out leaflets at the train stations or intersections. Just think what those students' shushokukatsudo sensei would say about their job prospects if word of such activity came out. Instead, you will only find housewives or retirees doing political legwork at the local level. Unlike young people, they are not directly dependent on the corporate nation-state for their present or future success, and they have the experience, wisdom, and worry to try and make the future of Japan sustainable and more fair for all.

As of June 2016, the Japanese right to vote was reduced from 20 to 18.

Since the student riots of the Vietnam war era, the 'sturm und drang' of Japanese youth, like a bonsai tree, have been carefully crafted and pruned to follow the corporate nation-state's definition of 'peace and harmony', no matter how superficial or artificial. The stress of maturation has not been successfully replaced by the stress of conformity to authoritarianism. It has simply been kicked down the road, resulting in a loss of psychological resilience among adults — increasingly dysfunctional marriages, reluctance to even start a family (just look at the lame proposals of financial incentives waved to shore up up the falling population), and mental health issues (and recent drastic drops of income) directly leading to suicide.

Public 'education', beyond primary school, has never been a Harry Potter process of personal growth and maturity. Whether we are talking about education for the working class in Victorian England, or public education in the present day U.S., Japan pretty much follows the same model — lip service to personal growth, and the bulk of resources devoted to a standardized competition for brute memory, with a dash of 'nihonjinron' patriotism in the form of Japanese exceptionalism.

The 'juken senso' exam-wars are aimed at streaming the working class into the 'right' position in society. For high school graduates ... agriculture, fishing, assembly line workers, or working for small companies with few benefits. For those who have the means and ability to go beyond ... meticulously ranked undergrad schools, and possibly a graduate degree, for the 'larger is better is safer', salaried workers aspiring to either a more prestigious companies in the financial sector, or 'safe' work in the civil service or medical industry.

Despite the predictable complaints from corporate spokesmen that colleges are failing to produce creative problem solvers ... that is not what the company really wants. What the culture of the corporate nation-state wants is technically literate compliance to authority — hence one reason Japan has so few Ph.D.'s. Such certification is often seen as a threat to authority and not a financial asset to the corporate structure. Above all else, the Japanese education system is streamlined to excel at compliance to authority.

But this is not limited to Japan. World-wide, and historically, this is what 'the borg bureaucracies' have always wanted. Tolstoy was among many who wrote about this. A few creative problem solvers and social activists in Japan continue to rise and mature, but they do so despite the educational, business, and political institutions ... not because of them.

When the mass of 'good' youth follow their carefully planned route, those few in authority are those who have either inherited authority, or those who have successfully learned to navigate and game the system to their own advantage, even as they are engineering it ... particularly that small percentage of 'dark triad' personality types. The pathological psychopaths, machiavellian opportunists, and morphologically defined psychopaths among us. As 'dark triads' tend to be born, not made, age ... good parenting, education, and counseling seem to have little impact on the movers and shakers of society. Adjusting the legal age limits for rights and responsibilities applies mostly to more common neuro-typical youth. Bullies come in all ages.

In rethinking my previous comment, raising the female age of consent for marriage may be a good policy. Regardless of maturity, she will at least have the accompanying rights to take care of herself should the marriage fail.