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By Doug Struck
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 10, 2000; Page A17

TOKYO –– A 26-year-old motorist in a rural town in eastern Japan flies into road rage after a minor accident, beats another driver with a crowbar and runs over her body as he drives away.

In urban Kyoto, a stranger approaches a group of children on an elementary school playground and slits the throat of a 7-year old with a knife.

In Hakaru city in western Japan, a young mother is raped in her apartment by an 18-year-old, who leaves the strangled bodies of the woman and her 11-month-old baby stuffed in a closet for her husband to find.

These chilling crimes from the past 10 months are part of a surge in murders, assaults, robberies and rapes throughout Japan, a trend that is arousing deep concern and eroding the country's long-standing reputation for extraordinary safety.

Violent crime in Japan is at a 23-year high--and rising. The upward march of violence is the bitter fruit of Japan's failure to fix its decade-long economic stagnation, as well as the unraveling of strong social controls that made Japan a safe and orderly place, according to police, criminologists and victims.

While the murder rate here is still low by American standards--it is six times less than in the United States--it is now higher than in England and Wales, and only slightly lower than most other European countries.

"My daughter died in Tokyo, which is supposed to be the safest city in the world, at the busiest place in the city, in the broad daylight," said the father of Mami Takahashi, 29, who was stabbed to death by a stranger who rampaged through a crowded shopping district in September. "The myth that Japan is safe was destroyed at that moment."

The annual per capita incidence of murder, rape, arson and assault in Japan increased by 11 percent in 1999, and has rocketed by 50 percent in the last decade, according to National Police Agency statistics.

More ominously, the increase came even though Japan's population on average has passed the youthful crime-prone years, a maturation that should be producing a drop in crime. Instead, say analysts, the advent of two working parents, fewer and "spoiled" children, increased mobility, materialism and the loss of family and community authority have led to higher lawlessness.

"Nobody feels we are as safe as we used to. Things that never took place in Japan now are starting to occur," said Ryo Ogiso, a lecturer on criminal procedure at Komazawa University in Tokyo. "There's a sense of being perplexed; we don't know what to do."

For example, Japanese youth gangs in the last few years have embraced what they call "uncle hunting." The gangs single out a lone man trudging home and pounce on him for his wallet, and, seemingly, the thrill of beating him.

"When he came back to our home, he rang the doorbell, and his coat was full of blood," said the wife of one man who was attacked by five youths. She asked that her name not be used. "He was bleeding from his head. He washed his head, but there was a big hole in his skull, and he lost consciousness. He's been in a coma now for almost two years."

The economy plays a leading role in the rise in crime. Police say armed robbery is the fastest-rising violent crime. Japan's stagnation has led to a gradual rise in joblessness, creating more desperate unemployed and leaving new entrants to the job market--young men and women--with no work and few hopes for the future.

"The nature of offenses committed by juveniles becomes more serious. Only a decade ago, we wouldn't find assaults committed by gangs of juveniles," said Toyo Attsumi, a criminologist at Chuo University. "But now it's very common."

Other, more long-lasting changes in the society also are at work. In less than 40 years, Japan has changed from a mostly rural to a mostly urban society. Family sizes have shrunk--today's parents have an average of only 1.3 children--and more mothers are working outside the home. The result is that many of the social controls have crumbled.

"The psychology of the Japanese used to be that honor--'face'--is very important," Ogiso said. "They belonged to a local community where everyone knew each other. To do something that contradicted the group norms would not be acceptable. That helped keep crime down. But now it's changing."

Looking for a reason for the increase, many Japanese point quickly to "foreigners"--by which they usually mean other Asians--who come here for work and, finding jobs scarce, commit crimes. The suspicion has fed Japanese antipathy to outsiders and hardened sentiment against immigration.

Police statistics suggest the threat is exaggerated. Less than 1 percent of all crimes are committed by foreigners, "but this is a fivefold increase since 1990, and that makes us concerned," said Makoto Ota, deputy director of the Criminal Investigation Planning Division at the National Police Agency.

Other trends seem oddly puzzling. Crimes involving cults are bizarrely frequent here--the Aum Supreme Truth doomsday cult that carried out the 1995 sarin gas attack on a Tokyo subway also murdered a lawyer and his family and the uncle of a cult member who tried to rescue his niece. In recent months, two cults have been discovered in possession of mummified bodies.

Cult crimes have resulted in new laws aimed at curbing the activities of such groups. Similarly, the rising crime rate among juveniles--murders by minors jumped from 74 in 1997 to 115 in 1998--has led to more strident calls for lowering the threshold of 20 years old, below which most offenders are tried as juveniles.

And there also is a growing demand for tougher prison sentences, one goal of the fledgling movement for "victim's rights." Following the pattern in the United States, crime victims are now organizing a grass-roots campaign to give victims and their families a larger role in court.

"The philosophy here is to care very deeply about the rights of the criminals. I regret to say the rights of victims have not been considered at all," said Isao Okamura, a prominent corporate lawyer who took up the cause after his wife was murdered in her home in October 1997 by a stalker with a grudge against Okamura.

As a result of such calls, an advisory panel last month urged the Japanese government to give victims the right to make a statement in court, to read the often-secret evidence presented by lawyers, to be questioned over closed-circuit television, and--if they wish--to get a guaranteed seat in the courtroom.

"As a husband and father whose family was slain, I have the right to know what happened to my loved ones. I want to know the truth of what happened," said Hiroshi Motomura, 23, who found his strangled wife and child in the closet on returning home from work one day last April.

Japan's crime, though climbing, is not at its historic high. The number of serious crimes peaked in 1948, when Japan was destitute in the aftermath of World War II, and then fell gradually until 1989.

What concerns some demographers now is that the rise in violent crime comes even as Japan's population bulge has passed the age of adolescence and early twenties, when most crimes are committed. The average age in Japan has risen from 32.5 years in 1970 to 41.3 years now--a demographic shift that would be expected to result in fewer crimes.

"I think there's been a shaking of the Japanese identity," said Ogiso. "Now, the Japanese people are starting to lose their confidence."

Special correspondent Shigehiko Togo contributed to this report.

Japan's Rising Crime Rate

Japan, once known as

one of the world's safest countries, is experiencing the highest rate of serious crimes in 23 years. The murder rate, while still only one-sixth that of

the United States, is

now higher than that

of England.

Number of serious crimes, including murder, rape, robbery and arson in Japan:

1975: 9,226

1999: 9,087

SOURCE: Japan National Police Agency

Homicides per 100,000 population in 1997 in selected countries:

U.S.: 6.70

Hungary: 2.79

Canada: 1.92

France: 1.66

Italy: 1.53

Ireland: 1.50

Germany: 1.44

Switzerland: 1.23

Japan: 1.10

England/Wales: 1.00

Australia: .86

SOURCES: Interpol; Japan data for 1998 from Japan National Police Agency

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