hanzai

hanzai 【犯罪】crime

japan's got some weird crime.

hmm...maybe weird doesn't cover it...

fucked up? 

yeah, that works.

they have segments on the morning news about stupid criminals or outrageous car chases abroad (mostly the US) but you could EASILY do the same on US news shows about the messed up crimes here. you could call it "fxxked up! crime in japan"

here are some cases that have made the news in the past year that were especially disturbing (and unfortunately close to home).

"she's my wife"

kurashiki, okayama (one of hiroshima's neighboring prefectures) -- an 11-year old girl goes missing. she never came home from school and her parents contacted their local police, who then put out an alert on TV, asking for information. this is actually relatively quick for missing person cases -- for whatever reason, most of the time you start seeing news like this 2-3 days after said person goes missing. it's a relief to see that there are still sane (and fast acting) parents out there. after the alert on TV, the news switches to a live press conference with the okayama police chief regarding the details of the case.

the girl called her mother after school, asking to be picked up. however, her mother was taking her little sister to the doctor's and couldn't come get her that day, leaving her to walk home. not a very long distance, mind you, about 15-20 minutes.

but she never comes home.

however, the plot is about to thicken. 

it seems that girl had complained to her mother about being followed home from school by a silver car several months ago. the same car was seen parked in the girl's neighborhood everyday for months, with a man sitting behind the wheel. her mother, distressed, took down the license plate number and consulted the police, who advised her to drive her daughter to and from school.

it would appear the stalker had made his move. 

3 days after the girl goes missing, there's a break in the case. they found the silver car that has been stalking the girl. the stalker had put a different license plate over the original one (the one that the girl's mother had written down) to throw the police off. once they identified the car, the police break into the man's house, only to find the missing girl in pajamas watching anime on a futon on the floor while the stalker watched from the bed. 

the girl was unharmed, puzzled about the police barging in, but unharmed (this is exceptionally rare for these kidnapping cases). 

the stalker (late 40s) merely looked at the police and said, "this is my wife."

he had recently renovated his house to include a windowless, sound-proof room painted black. he also introduced himself as an illustrator and bragged to the police about his works of art -- all illustrations of young girls that plastered the walls of another room in the house. he apparently wanted to raise her into the ideal wife.

yeah.

fucked up.

he was of course arrested. the girl is likely in therapy.

haigamine

kure, hiroshima -- a 16-year old girl is found dead in haigamine (a forest in kure). the next day, a girl (also 16) turns herself into the police for killing her -- but it wasn't just her. 

there were 7 minors involved in the beating, and subsequent murder of the girl, arrested the next day. why? she owed them money. like $20. some of the kids didn't even know the girl.

the main criminal (16 y.o. girl) invited her to hang out, and she and 6 minors (plus a 21-year old driver) piled into a van with her where they kicked and punched her, burned her with cigarettes, and then strangled her to death before dumping her body in the mountains. they stole her ATM card and all the cash she had on her.

the minors were all sent to juvenile hall, and the 21-year old is currently on trial. he's pleading not guilty.

"i couldn't stop myself"

sasebo, nagasaki -- a 15-year old girl is found dead in a friend's apartment after going missing. "dead" is actually putting it lightly -- she was strangled to death before having her head and wrists severed with a saw and her stomach cut open. she was murdered by her classmate, another 15-year old girl.

the murderer was living by herself in sasebo -- she came from an exceedingly rich family, but had a history of what could be considered psychiatric issues from violent ups and downs to poisoning school lunches. her mother died in 2013, and her father remarried months later, which of course, didn't sit well with the girl, and she decided to express that by beating her father with a metal baseball bat while he was asleep, denting his skull (but not killing him). things only got worse at home, and her father took her to see a psychologist who said "the way things are going, she may kill someone" and recommended they hospitalize her.

however, her father instead moved her into an expensive apartment in the city -- and i reiterate, by herself. 

she started to mutilate stray cats (they found several in her freezer) and then she invited her classmate over to hang out and murdered her. her reasoning?

"i wanted to dissect a body. i couldn't stop myself -- it wasn't like she was my enemy or anything, it didn't matter who it was." no remorse, no apologies, nothing. it was like she had just dissected a frog or something.

so uh...what were YOU doing when you were 15?

the worst part of this whole thing is that it could have been prevented if her family had taken the doctor's advice. 

...as you can see, a good deal of the messed up crimes in japan happen to young girls. 

you see stuff like this in the movies, not real life. 

come on japan, really?

fucked up.