On July 22, The Japan Times ran an article with the headline, ¡±Crime set to hit postwar low this year, first-half data shows.¡± In it, the National Police Agency reported that the number of criminal offenses is on track to fall below 1 million for the first time since World War II ended, down from the all-time high of 2,853,739 cases in 2002. Crimes in the January-June period are down by 9.3 percent compared with the same period last year, with only ¡°intellectual¡± crimes such as fraud and card forgery increasing, by 5.1 percent.
The public had less than a week to absorb this felicitous news, and then came the first reports of the shocking slayings of 19 residents by a former worker at a care facility for people with disabilities in Sagamihara, near Tokyo. It is one of Japan¡¯s worst mass murders in modern times. (The 1938 murder of 30 people by a 21-year-old man in Okayama Prefecture remains the worst.)
While no single Japanese magazine dominates crime coverage, one that¡¯s long stood out for its incisive reporting is Shincho 45, a monthly published by Shincho-sha. Shincho 45¡¯s August issue contains an article by award-winning journalist Kiyoshi Shimizu titled, ¡°Listen, you criminal¡± ¡ª words aimed at the man who abducted Yukari Yokohama, then age 4, from a pachinko parlor in Ota, Gunma Prefecture, in July 1996.
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