Outbreak of Violent Crime Unnerves Japan*

Friday May 18, 2007 7:46 PM

By HANS GREIMEL

Associated Press Writer

TOKYO (AP) - A mother beheaded by her son. A baby who suffocated after
being stuffed by his parents in the baggage compartment of a motorbike
while they went gambling. A murderous shooting spree during a hostage
standoff.

An outbreak of violent crime this week has triggered soul-searching and
outrage in Japan, a country that has long prided itself on its safe
streets and tight communal bonds.

The ``appalling destruction'' of traditional values - as one lawmaker
put it - climaxed Friday, when a former gangster killed a policeman and
wounded his son and daughter during a shooting rampage at his home,
where he had held his ex-wife hostage for 24 hours. It was the first
time an on-duty policeman was shot to death since 2001.

The standoff capped a week of mayhem and mistreatment.

On Tuesday, a teenager strolled into a police station with his mother's
severed head in a bag. On Thursday, a couple was arrested after their
1-year-old son's body was found wrapped in a plastic bag and dumped in a
gutter. The baby died after his parents allegedly left him in the
baggage hold of a motorbike while they gambled at a pachinko pinball parlor.

The same day, a 3-year-old child was abandoned by his father at an
anonymous drop box meant for unwanted infants.

``We are witnessing the deterioration of Japanese society,'' ruling
party politician Tsuneo Suzuki told parliament Thursday. ``We must stem
this appalling destruction of family and community morals.''

While Japan is still a relatively safe country by international
standards, crime is on the rise as the country grapples with a widening
gap between rich and poor and other social ills.

A tide of corporate layoffs amid widespread restructuring, the
fragmentation of extended families and a creeping sense of urban
alienation all contribute to the erosion of mores, experts say.

Japan, a country of 127 million people, had just 1,391 homicides in
2005, compared with 16,692 in the United States. But overall crime
jumped to 2.27 million cases that year, from 1.81 million in 1996, and
violent offenses nearly doubled to 73,772 cases, according to the
National Police Agency.

``Anxiety is mounting in Japan about the increase of high-profile
crimes. Due to rapid globalization, the traditional rules and social
order are changing dramatically,'' said Jun Ayukawa, an expert on
criminal psychology at Japan's Kwansei Gakuin University.

``While families used to act as brakes, there is an increase in crimes
where people feel lost in despair and no longer care what happens to
their families,'' he said.

Indeed, fractured families have figured prominently in this week's
grisly headlines.

Motoki Tamiya and his wife, Mika, both 21, were arrested Thursday after
DNA tests of the dead 1-year-old linked the boy to his mother. The
baby's body was found last month on a remote road in the mountains of
western Japan.

On Tuesday, Japan's only anonymous drop box for unwanted infants
triggered a wave of anger after it was discovered that a 3-year-old
preschooler - and not a newborn - was left by his father on the
service's first day.

The drop-off, known as ``Stork's Cradle,'' was begun by a Roman
Catholic-run hospital in southern Japan to stem a wave of abandonments
of newborns in unsafe public places.

The same day, there were more shocking headlines. A teenage boy carrying
a severed head walked into a Japanese police station saying he killed
his mother - the latest in a series of dismemberments.

News reports said the 17-year-old suspect hacked off his mother's head
as she slept, then went to an Internet cafe to watch music videos - with
the head - before turning himself into police in the morning.

In January, Tokyo was on edge after a woman confessed to cutting up her
husband with a saw and dumping the body parts around the capital.

The recent surge in high-profile violent crime has spurred debate over
tougher gun control rules, calls for strengthening the moral fiber of
younger generations at the nation's schools as well as recriminations
about the state of modern parenting.

Calls for more stringent gun control intensified last month when the
Nagasaki mayor was shot and killed by an organized crime boss. Days
later, police stormed an apartment and seized another gangster who
allegedly gunned down a rival outside a Tokyo convenience store and had
barricaded himself inside.

The use of guns is still relatively alien to the Japanese public.
Handguns are strictly banned, and only police officers and other
professionals, such as shooting instructors, are permitted to own them.

Friday's standoff ended when the gunman, Hisato Obayashi, 50,
surrendered to police 24 hours after taking his ex-wife captive. The
woman, identified as Michiko Mori, escaped from a bathroom window during
the siege.

The violence erupted Thursday outside the central city of Nagoya when
the suspect shot his adult son and daughter and killed a policeman
trying to rescue a wounded comrade. News reports said Obayashi was a
former mobster affiliated with Japan's largest crime syndicate, the
Yamaguchi-gumi.

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Associated Press Writer Kana Inagaki contributed to this report.