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Juvenile Delinquency and Laws Regarding Juveniles in Japan: Analytical Essay
Analyse juvenile delinquency and laws regarding juveniles in Japan from a film perspective and various official data
Although in Japan juvenile crime rates or adult crime rates are quite low when compared to other countries. However, there is an interesting phenomenon that only exists in Japan. According to the chart of crime rates for juveniles and adults worldwide on the Dual website, in 2013, the crime rate data comparison of six different countries which are Japan, the United States, Germany, France, Sweden, and Russia, it shows whether Japan’s juvenile crime rate or adult crime rate overall, much lower than the other five countries. (Japanese juvenile crime rate: 279.6) (Adult crime rate: 192.6) The chart also shows that the overall crime rate in Japan is even five times lower than the United States as it is the country that has the highest crime rate in the chart (U.S. juvenile crime rate:1445.1) (Adult crime rate: 4175.2) However, the most interesting thing is that in Japan juvenile crime rate is actually higher than adults, and this phenomenon only exists in Japan. This shows that most of Japan’s own crimes are blamed on juvenile crime. If Japan wants to reduce the crime rate, it must start with young people. On the other hand, according to the same article on page three from the Dual website, Transition of Juvenile and Adult Crime Rate, the data for this chart is based on adolescents between the ages of 14 and 19, so this data may be higher than previous international statistics. As it clearly shows that from the early 1950s after the war to 2010, the juvenile crime rate in Japan has been higher than adults for 56 years. From the initial period of 1950, the juvenile crime rate was not much higher than adults. However, until the mid-to-late 1950s, the adult crime rate started decreasing while another continued to rise. Since then, the gap between them has grown a lot. Around 1980, the juvenile crime rate was the highest in history, at about 19%, and the adult crime rate was about 3.7%. The juvenile crime rate is about five times higher than that of adults. Until 2010, the juvenile crime rate was about 12%, and about 2.5% for adults. After 30 years, the juvenile crime rate is still five times higher than adults. Although the comparative data from 2010 to the recent year 2018 has not been announced, at least it proves that the crime issues, there are mainly young people this may go on for many years in Japan. There are several main causes of juvenile crimes,le 2, in this Act, the term “Juvenile” refers to a person under 20 years of age; the term “Adult” refers to a person of 20 years of age or older. In Chapter II Juvenile Protection Cases, Article 3, it lists 3 different types of “Juvenile”. Type one, “A Juvenile who has committed a crime”. Type two, “A Juvenile under 14 years of age who has violated laws and regulations of criminal nature”. Type three, “Any of the following reasons exists and a Juvenile, in light of personality or environment of the Juvenile, is likely to commit a crime or violate laws and regulation of criminal nature in the future”. If we suppose there are two young murderers, one of them is less than 14 years of age and the other person is14 years old or older who both have committed a criminal case. What kind of punishment will they get respectively? According to the Japanese Law Translation website, Penal Code, Chapter VII Unpunishable Acts and Reduction or Remission of Punishment, Article 41, “An act of a person less than 14 years of age is not punishable”. For another murderer who is 14 years old or over, according to Juvenile Act, Section 3 Dispositions, Article 51, “In case a person who is under 18 of age at the time of the commission of an offense is to be punished with death penalty, life imprisonment shall be imposed.” Thus, some may think, especially the family of the victims or the victims themselves, it is not fair to them if the murders cannot be punished just because they are still a child. In the film, student A records his posthumous papers. In the video, he says “…The juvenile penal code will protect me. I won’t get the death sentence. What a let-down…” This may justify the voice of many juveniles. Moreover, in the film, Morigichi also mentions the 13-year-old girl Runashi who killed the whole family with potassium cyanide. However, when she wrote the statement of repentance, she is acquitted with no crime, and instead, she got more admirers. Isn’t the existence of juvenile law contributing to more juvenile delinquency? For this reason, juvenile law has always been required to be modified for years.
Back to the film. Regarding to Moriguchi’s revenge, she decides to openly disclose and share the truth of her daughter’s death and point out he murders publicly in the class; using the existing bullying in the class and the unfriendly students to bully them till death. Although she resigns before the next semester, she still keeps reeling the new teacher Terada using him to corner those boys, the murders. She even arranges a secret bullying report to promote further bullying. Regarding the serious school bullying problem in Japan, according to the survey provided in the white paper, about half of the primary school students have experienced typical bullying at school, such as being excluded and ignored by classmates and gossiping. Defense of Japan as known as the White Paper is a policy document approved by the Ministry of Defense. It focuses on juvenile crimes and publicly provides various professional data and survey reports to summarize the annual juvenile criminal records and modus operandi in Japan, and to conduct a more in-depth analysis of juvenile crimes with various data obtained each year. In the 2015 version of the White Paper, the survey was conducted by about 800 students in each grade, from the fourth-grade primary school students in 2007 until they became grade 9. During these six years, the survey was conducted semi-annually. The proportion of students who have not been deceived in the past 6 years is only 13%, those who do not participate in bullying is 12.7%, and nearly 40% of those who both have participated in bullying and became bullied more than 6 times average. The Cabinet Government analyzed that “the victim or the perpetrator is not particularly the same child. Most children have experienced both victimization and harm, appearing in an alternating form.” According to the 2016 version of the White Paper, figure 5, a chart of the rate of bullying, in 2016, Primary school students, junior high school students and high school students in Japan have a total of 323,000 school bullying incidents. The data reflects that school bullying has been mostly seen in lower such as primary school students and junior high school students. Although the numbers of bullying among primary school students and junior high school students have been similar between 1995 and 2005, the number of bullying cases among primary school students has increased by three times between 2006 and 2016, becoming the main target of the current bullying incident. (In 2006, the number of bullying cases for primary school students: was about 150,000, junior high school students: about 80,000) (2016, the number of bullying of primary school students: 237, 256, junior high school students: 71, 309) Besides, the same chart on the right-hand side shows that students in grade 2 and grade 3 have the highest amount of bullying, each accounted for 14%. The following is the students from grade 1, accounting for 13%. It also shows that the higher grade the students from, the less bullying. Figure 5 is a summary of bullying statistics in primary school, junior high school, and senior high school. According to the statistics, between 2002 and 2016, the lowest of reporting school bullying has been always primary school students. According to the above analysis, there were 237,256 cases of bullying among primary school students in 2016, but here it shows only about 50 of them were reported in the same year.
According to the article of “The reason why the juvenile crime rate is higher than adults in Japan” written by Toshihiko Maita on Dual website, he believes that the strange phenomenon and responsibility of the fact that, the juvenile crime rate is higher than the adult’s, it should blame on the society itself. Dr. Maita mentions in the article: 未熟な子どもを大人がとがめるのは常ですが、大人の側も自らを律しないといけません which means adults always take the blame on children, but they should also set an example themselves as a role model. On the other hand, Yoshio Matsumoto expresses his view on the juvenile crime rate is higher than that of adults in his essay of “Peculiarities of criminal circumstances in Japan”, published in 1999. He believes that the main problem is not because of the high rate of juvenile crimes, but because the crime rate of adults is too low. He pointed out that the reason for the difference between the two may be that adults have their own shelves and strict control of their children. Therefore, there may be an unusual structure in the world, such as the emergence of a very small number of juvenile offenders or a very small number of adult offenders. In other words, it is criminalizing to juvenile crimes in Japan, and on the contrary, adult crimes are less criminalizing. This can perfectly explain why this phenomenon only exists in Japan when compared to other countries. Most reasons for the majority of the crime of juveniles, apart from using to protect minors themselves as a shelter, the growing environment also has a certain degree of influence on them. The growth environment of Shinya Watanabe Student A and Naoki Shimomura Student B in the movie are the perfect examples.
In Shimomura’s case, when his mother learns that her son has committed the killing, she is not sympathetic towards the girl who was killed but towards her son. She still believes that Shimomura is still her good boy and thinks he just purely did it for friends only. His mother who gives him excessive love that even thinks he is pitiful when he kills a person. The sarcasm of the film is wonderful. It is difficult for children to recognize their mistakes, besides correcting them. This makes it easier for children to go deeper and deeper and to make more and more mistakes until it is too late. When Shimomura admitted to his mother that he was deliberately murdered, let the mother realizes and let the audience know that B is not innocent at all. Over-love to a child can ruin or damage his or her future. On the other hand, Watanabe’s mother is an outstanding motor scholar/ electrical scientist. She gives up her dreams for the birth of her son, but she soon regretted it. When Watanabe did not meet her requirements, she began to beat and scold him. Because of that madness, she soon divorced with her husband and left his son to return to academic research when Watanabe was small. In order to attract his mother’s attention, he made himself a personal website and uploaded his own inventions, though nobody noticed. On the contrary, whenever more pictures of the dead animals that he killed he uploaded, the more attention and compliments he got. Just as he participated in the science exhibition competition before, all it was for his mother’s attention. Although he eventually won the prize, the headline of the newspaper was robbed by the 13-year-old girl Runashi who killed the whole family, so he decided to kill too. Then, he found Shimomura, a classmate who does not have friends to ask him to point at him to others that he is the murderer. It is seen here that Watanabe’s mother imposes all her wills on him, her violence and abandonment she left him is the most important factor why he becomes distorted.
According to the 2018 White Paper, Chapter 3 Prevention of young victims, Article 3, figure 17, the data of “the number of consultations of child abuse in children consultation centers”, The number of child abuse-related cases in all of the children consultation centers in Japan, from 1999, 11,631 cases reported, until 2016, has increased about 10 times to 122,575 cases. The number of child abuse cases basically increased sharply every year. The same figure on the right shows between 2007 and 2011, the main culprit of domestic violence is biological mothers, which has been accounting for about 60%, but the number of cases of child abuse by biological fathers from 2012 to 2016 has gradually increased. From 2007 to 2010, it accounted for about 25% until recently 2016, accounting for 38.9%, though the main culprit in domestic violence in 2016 is still the biological mothers, accounting for 48.5%. Moreover, before, ‘Parents’ Unknown Whereabouts’ and ‘Parental Divorce’ were the main reasons for staying in childcare facilities, but in recent years, the reason for staying has become ‘Domestic Violence and Parents’ Indulgence and Neglect.’ And in the movie, Watanabe’s mother is almost on the points above. Therefore, it can be inferred that poor family education incredibly affects children’s mental health development and behavior, and domestic violence is likely to be the main cause of child and adolescent crime. Fortunately, the ‘confession’ film does not rationalize the mistakes of Students A and B because of their family and halving their crimes and sins. When Watanabe’s girlfriend pleads with Moriguchi explaining Watanabe is just a lonely child who demands for his mother’s love and attention so decided to plan for killing. However, Moriguchi just laughed after listening to all this. As Moriguchi and some may think that this is not a reason to be deliberately murderous and it is unforgivable. People who should be protected in this matter should be the victims and their families, and surely the murderers should receive the punishment they deserve. However, at the beginning of this article, it has been mentioned that the role of the Juvenile Act has become the most powerful and effective protection for juvenile offenders.
Japanese juvenile law (少年法 Shōnen-hō) was established on July 15, 1948 as Law 168. The law should be revised according to the current situation of society and the tendency of the generation. Since the Second World War, Japan has made five amendments to Juvenile Law. The original law stipulates that the age of ‘juveniles’ should be under 18 years old. The most recent amendment to the Juvenile Act was in 2014. Although the number of juveniles under the age of 18 did not apply to life imprisonment, the upper limit of imprisonment was increased from 15 years to 20 years. In September 2015, the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party passed a proposal to reduce the ’20-year-old’ adult age specified in the Civil Code to ’18 years old.’ According to the proposal, the age of the protection of the Juvenile Act should be changed to ‘under 18 years old’. However, after the proposal was submitted to the Prime Minister’s official residence, the civil law was not amended. Japan’s Minister of Justice, Masahiro Uekawa, said that the penalties imposed by Japanese law on juvenile delinquency are becoming more and more strict, but the arguments for reducing the age of the object of protection in the Juvenile Act have never stopped. On the other hand, it is because of the increase in juvenile delinquency. At meanwhile, it is also because the ‘New Public Election Law’ was passed on June 2016. The bill will reduce the age of voting rights from 20 to 18 years old. Since then, the public has hoped to lower the underage age to under 18 years of age. Eventually, on June 13 of last year, the Japanese Senate passed a civil law amendment that reduced the age of adults from 20 to 18 years old. It has been about 140 years since last time in 1876, Japan defined adults as 20 years old. It will be implemented on April 1, 2022.
Before, whenever there was a juvenile murder, the judgment on juvenile offenders had caused a lot of controversies, even now. Between November 1988 and January 1989, there was a horrific killing in Tokyo. The concrete-encased high school girl murder case (女子高生コンクリート詰め殺人事件 Joshikōsei konkurīto-zume satsujin-jiken), so far it is still unforgettable for a lot of people in Japan. The prisoners involved in this case were called ‘absolute crimes that must not be forgotten by the media and nationals at the time. Four high school students aged from 16 to 18 years were involved in cases of kidnapping, imprisonment, rape, murder and corpse abandonment. The four underage murderers were coded by the court in the name of ‘protecting the privacy of minors’, respectively, with A, B, C, and D as their code names, but their full names and family backgrounds were all disclosed by Shūkan Bunshun. Noriyoshi Hanada, the editor-in-chief of the weekly magazine, gave only one reason. He said: ‘The beast has no human rights to speak of.’ (野獣に人権は無い) It can be seen that the viciousness of this case has caused a great blow to society at that time. Due to the seriousness of the situation and finally, the Juvenile Act was specially modified. This case was later made into a movie, Concrete in 2004. On the other hand,
among the four prisoners in this case, three of them were soon found guilty of murder after being discharged from prison and returning to society again. There have been more voices and arguments about aggravating the punishment of juvenile offenders who have committed serious crimes and worrying about if the government agencies are able to assess and guarantee that they will really be able to integrate into society before setting them free. This will lead to deeper social issues and balancing the parallel law of Libra is never easy and never will. It is a very worthwhile question to give Libra a young offender who is guilty of making mistakes and give them a chance to change their self-improvement so that Libra is inclined to the public’s embarrassment and safety. The film is a very good job to bring social issues to the audience. It is still a very worthwhile topic to rethink if Libra should tend to juvenile offenders who make serious mistakes and give them a chance to return to society, or should Libra lean towards national safety more. Films are always an amazing way of bringing social problems to the audience through the screen. Apart from getting more attention to the issues, it can also arouse the audience’s concern about social problems they might be living with, taking care of the country they live in. The film ‘Confessions’ is one of the most successful examples. It does not only represent Japan winning multiple awards, but the most important thing is that although the film is not based on a true story, there are many plots and contexts carried in the film are almost completely corresponding a to the current situation in Japan when compared it with the data. Also, it brought out the grey zone of Juvenile Law, which further highlights its important role in juvenile crimes.
Reference
- Maida, T. (2019). 少年の犯罪率が成人の犯罪率より高い理由 | 舞田敏彦のデータで読み解くDUALな疑問 | 日経DUAL. “Reasons why the crime rate of juvenile is higher than that of adults in Japan” [online] 日経DUAL. Available at: https://dual.nikkei.co.jp/article/081/93/ [Accessed 22 Apr. 2019].
- Japaneselawtranslation.go.jp. (2019). 日本法令外国語訳データベースシステム – [法令本文表示] – 少年法. “Japanese Law Translation Database System-[Law text] – Juvenile Act>” [online] Available at: http://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/law/detail/?vm=04&re=01&id=1978 [Accessed 22 Apr. 2019].
- Japaneselawtranslation.go.jp. (2019). 日本法令外国語訳データベースシステム – [法令本文表示] – 少年法. Japanese law translation, Juvenile Act, Chapter I General Provisions, (Purpose of this Act) [online] Available at: http://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/law/detail/?vm=04&re=01&id=1978 [Accessed 22 Apr. 2019].
- Japaneselawtranslation.go.jp. (2019). 日本法令外国語訳データベースシステム – [法令本文表示] – 刑法. Penal Code, Chapter VII: Unpunishable Acts and Reduction or Remission of Punishment, Article 41 [online] Available at: http://www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/law/detail/?id=3130&vm=02&re= [Accessed 22 Apr. 2019].
- www8.cao.go.jp. (2019). 第2章 全ての子供・若者の健やかな育成｜平成30年版子供・若者白書（概要版） – 内閣府. Figure 4 and 5, Chapter 2, DEFENSE OF JAPAN (2018 Version White Paper), the rate of bullying (occurrence) 2018 Version, Cabinet Office [online] Available at: https://www8.cao.go.jp/youth/whitepaper/h30gaiyou/s2.html [Accessed 22 Apr. 2019].
- YouTube. (2019). 女子高生コンクリ事件 ４人の犯人のうち３人が再犯. “The recidivism of three out of four criminals in high school girl Concrete case” [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouE22X12uJU&t=5s [Accessed 22 Apr. 2019].
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