Opinion

Murders and other crimes are rampant in Japan and the US from the beginning of the new year.

On New Year’s Day, a 72-year-old man stabbed his wife to death in Okayama, Japan.

On January 2 shootings occurred near an underground railway station in Washington D.C. to kill a 17-year-old boy and injure four persons and the following day a 16-year-old boy was shot dead and a man shot wounded at a shop in Indiana. That day a man bit off the ears and face of an old man passing by in Oregon. As a result, the old man was so seriously injured that his skull was exposed.

On January 4 shootings took place in a family in Utah southwest of the US. A 42-year-old man shot himself after shooting his wife, five children and mother-in-law to death.

According to the data issued by the US Gun Violence Archive, 10 large-scale gun-related crimes were committed across the country at the outset of the new year, causing more than 540 casualties, with 85 of them being children under 17.   

The problem is that such shocking murders and crimes are commonplace in Japan and the US.

In the countries there occur terrible crimes in succession. People murder anybody, even their family members and relatives, when they think the latter act against their interests even a bit. What is worse, crimes increase day by day in the countries as the violent gun-related culture is rampant there and even teenagers become criminals.

According to The New York Times, the arrests related to robbery and theft numbered 10 000 and the suspects arrested for shooting, murder and so on 1 411 in New York in 2022, 22 and 12 percent higher than those in 2021 respectively, and 17 percent of the suspects arrested for robbery are children under 18. 

In Japan, a girl student living in Saitama Prefecture reportedly stabbed a 53-year-old woman and her daughter to death on a road of Tokyo in August last year. The criminal confessed her motive for the murder:

“I stabbed the mother and daughter on the road as I wanted to be punished with death. I had intended to kill my family members. I wanted to do a test beforehand to see if human really dies.”

Japan and the US are just the countries where even juveniles regard killing persons as a way to satisfy their decadent desire.