nihonphile comments

We don't have enough info to pass any judgement here. Perhaps the son made threatening gestures to him, or to his wife, and he retaliated in self-defence.

If it was to stop his son committing a similar act to the murder in Kawasaki last week, then he should have asked the police to intervene.

Let's wait till we know more before making any assumptions....

I was speaking to a Japanese friend yesterday, who mentioned that one of the two "cousins" the murderer lived with after his parents split up had been a pupil at Caritas. It is not beyond the realm of imagination that as a peculiar child, he might have been teased by this girl and/or her classmates (who were a year younger than him, I believe). He may have been harbouring a grudge against them all these years.

This murder, like every other that involves children, has shocked me to the core. My heart is breaking for the families of the two who were murdered, and for the poor children who were injured both physically and, no doubt, mentally.

Samit BasuToday  09:47 am JST

I can see both of vehicles involved in this accident are kei cars.

Japan needs to abolish kei car, or at least apply same crash safety standards as regular passenger vehicles, like Koreans do.

Ever wonder why Korean kei cars cruise American and European highways while Japanese kei cars are nowhere to be found?

Samit - You are talking foolishly!!! The children killed and injured had nothing to do with the vehicles being kei cars - they were just in the wrong place when the collision happened! There might have been more carnage if the cars had been larger! Kei cars are essential to get around a lot of Japanese back roads - they make absolute sense in this country.

I had a miscarriage at 20 weeks. My much wanted baby was just 500g. She was a normal size for the gestation period. If this baby was only 350g, it was less than 20 weeks. As Savethegaijin said above, this was a very premmie baby, and there is no way it would have survived more than a few minutes after birth, even with the best of care. We were told not to resuscitate our daughter by the hospital - they said her quality of life would have been appalling.... So this may have been an abortion, or a miscarriage. Either way, I am sure the poor mother is traumatised. We should not be passing judgement about murderers, etc. Japan is still not the easiest place to have a baby when you're under-age or unmarried. We have no idea what may have gone before.