Will Tougher Laws Halt Violent Juvenile Crimes?

Forced to Swim Naked in Freezing River

Horror and disbelief swept the nation as details of the February 2015 murder of 13-year-old Uemura Ryōta by three older teenage boys were revealed. Uemura had habitually been beaten by the 18-year-old ringleader. On the night that he was killed, he had been stripped naked and forced to swim in the icy waters of Tama River in Kawasaki. His body had been slashed with a utility box cutter knife in several places, and he died when a blade ripped into his neck. One of the older boys, a 17-year-old who had accompanied the others to the riverbed, left the group temporarily after being told he could go away. When he returned, he saw Uemura being badly beaten and tried to intervene. This infuriated the 18-year-old leader, who began threatening the 17-year-old and ordered him to stab Uemura. Unable to disobey, he cut Uemura’s cheeks, telling the boy as he did so, “I’m sorry I have to do this.”

The three hid Uemura’s naked body in the grass and left the riverbed, burning his clothes in a public toilet in an attempt to cover up the crime. Uemura is thought to have been forced to get on his knees, with his hands tied with a plastic band that was found near the body. The leader reportedly tried to decapitate Uemura, inspired by images of the execution of Japanese hostages by Daesh (the self-described Islamic State) jihadists.

Leader’s Name and Face Published Online

People reacted to the young boy’s brutal, shocking murder with rage, and the name and photos of the 18-year-old ringleader were posted on the Internet. The weekly Shūkan Shinchō also carried them in its March 12 edition—in violation of Article 61 of the Juvenile Act, which prohibits such acts for juvenile suspects. The magazine’s editors explained that the decision was made after considering a full range of factors, such as the crime’s brutality, its far-reaching social impact, and the youth’s background.

Shūkan Shinchō commented that it published the suspect’s photos that it found on the Internet after “confirming them with his friends.” His name and photos can still be readily found online, and the easy access to such information was no doubt a factor behind its decision. At the same time, though, the magazine has come under criticism for violating the Juvenile Act (even, as in this case, when no penalties are specified for noncompliance). Most other media groups—not only major print and broadcast organizations but also Shūkan Shinchō’s rivals—have refrained from publishing information that could identify the youth.

Age of Legal Adulthood Raised to 20

Needless to say, laws are amended when they no longer meet society’s changing needs. The Juvenile Act, too, has been revised five times in the postwar era, first in 1949, when Japan came under pressure from Occupation authorities to democratize its prewar institutions. The new law redefined “juveniles” as anyone under the age of 20, raising the age limit from 18. Family courts were also established to hear cases involving juvenile suspects and to adopt either given punitive or reformatory measures.

The changes also reflected the social turmoil of the immediate postwar years; many war orphans were driven to theft or robbery out of hunger, so the law was designed to protect and rehabilitate these children.

As the nation experienced rapid growth and emerged as one of the world’s largest economies, the nature of juvenile delinquency also underwent a change. More crimes were committed by younger youths, and the nature of those crimes became more violent. In 1988 a group of four teenagers between 16 and 18 abducted a high school girl, held her captive, raped, beat, and killed her, and hid her body in a steel drum filled with concrete, eventually disposing of the drum in a tract of reclaimed land in Kōtō Ward, Tokyo. The incident has become known as the joshikōsei konkurīto-zume satsujin-jiken, or the “concrete-encased high school girl murder case.”

The Shocking Sakakibara Case

Another case that shocked the nation was a series of attacks on children in Kobe. In February and March 1997 four schoolgirls were attacked—pounded with a hammer or stabbed—leaving one girl dead and two seriously injured. And in May of that year a fifth-grade boy was killed and his decapitated head left in front of a school gate. A note to police, signed by “Sakakibara Seito,” announcing that more murders would follow was found stuffed in the boy’s mouth. The killer turned out to be a 14-year-old youth who lived nearby. These attacks came to be known collectively as the “Sakakibara case.”

Other heinous juvenile crimes include the rape and killing of a young mother and the strangling of her baby daughter in Hikari, Yamaguchi Prefecture, in April 1999; the hijacking of a Nishitetsu bus and stabbing to death of a passenger in Dazaifu, Fukuoka Prefecture, in May 2000; and the multiple stabbing/murder of a family of six in Oita Prefecture in August 2000. These led in 2001 to the first revision of the Juvenile Act in 52 years, lowering the punishable age from 16 to 14.

Tougher Penalties for Heinous Juvenile Crimes

A 2007 amendment lowered the age limit for sentencing to a reformatory from 14 to “around 12.” This may have been in response to the abduction and killing of a young boy by a 12-year-old in Nagasaki in July 2003 and the box cutter stabbing death of a sixth-grade girl by her 11-year-old classmate in Sasebo in June 2006.

A further amendment in 2008 cleared the way for victims or surviving family members to attend court hearings of violent juvenile crimes resulting in death or injury. This came in the wake of the 2004 enactment of legislation designed to protect the rights of crime victims. Then a revision in 2014 raised the number of years that under-18-year-olds can be sentenced short of a life term from 15 to 20. The term of indefinite servitude was also raised from “5 to 10 years” to “10 to 15 years.”

Many argue that harsher measures are unlikely to reduce crimes by minors, but the police white paper notes that the total number of arrests for juvenile crimes declined from 134,847 in 2004 to 56,469 in 2013 and that the number of violent crimes (murder, armed robbery, rape, arson, etc.) fell from 1,584 to just 786 over the same span. Crimes may now be committed by younger offenders, but the number of cases does not appear to be on the rise.

Lowering of the Voting Age

Media coverage of shocking incidents like the February 2015 Kawasaki murder invariably elicits calls for young criminals to be tried as adults. It should be pointed out, though, that recent moves to amend the Juvenile Act are not so much in reaction to the brutality of the crimes committed but to the likely enactment during the current Diet session of a bill lowering the voting age from 20 to 18. If 18-year-olds have the right to vote, the argument goes, they should be treated as adults rather than being protected as minors. There is a possibility, therefore, that the age of legal adulthood in Japan may return to the prewar level of 18.

(Banner photo: News cameras in front of Kawasaki Police Station follow a van carrying a boy arrested for the murder of 13-year-old Uemura Ryōta. ©Jiji Photo.)

Juveniles Arrested for Criminal Offenses, 2004–13

Source: Police white paper, 2014.

Postwar Amendments to the Juvenile Act

Compiled by Nippon.com editorial department.