The alleged perpetrator, age 15, appears to have been remarkably precocious for
a boy in his first year of high school. According to Shukan Post, Youth "A"
(his name, unlike the victim's, is not made public as he is still a minor) had
originally moved to Nakatsugawa from the Tokyo suburb of Tachikawa after his
parents lost their restaurant business and fled to avoid debt collectors. He
had allegedly fathered a child by a female classmate two years earlier.
What, Shukan Post wonders, were parents and teachers doing while all these
things were happening, and why didn't anyone make efforts to halt them?
"We'd received reports from citizens that kids had broken into the vacant
building, a former pachinko parlor, and were messing up the place," Fukuo
Kashima, assistant chief of the Nakatsugawa police, tells Shukan Post. "From
March of last year, we sent cars to patrol the area, but no minors had been
charged."
Weekly Playboy writes that while the murder may have been an aberration, the
stampede of sexual promiscuity among youngsters in the provinces is by no means
a rarity.
"Kids may be becoming sexually active earlier in rural areas than in the
cities," observes Dr. Tsuneo Akaeda of the Roppongi Akasaka Clinic, who points
out that Tokyo boasts the nation's sixth lowest rates among Japan's 47
prefectures in terms of teens who have sexually transmitted diseases or who
have terminated pregnancies.
"Unlike urban areas, which have plenty of ways for kids to amuse themselves,
young people in the countryside don't have much to keep them occupied. So they
indulge in drinking and sex."
The student counselor at a middle school in an unnamed city in Tochigi
Prefecture sighs to Weekly Playboy that he frequently observes students
fondling one another during breaks between classes.
"Young people in rural areas may be too pure," says Akaeda. "They're
astonishingly naive to the dangers of temptation. Stores there don't tempt them
with fancy foreign brands, so it's not a case of greed, or of girls selling
their bodies for money. But wild stories get circulated and they'll believe
almost anything, no matter how outrageous. In the countryside, the mundane
reality fails to stimulate. Adults can handle this, but the kids are taken in
by such tales and run wild."
Perhaps this was why Youth A, a newcomer from the big city, was successful in
flaunting his sexuality.
"He always had four or five girlfriends at the same time," the boy's classmate
tells Shukan Jitsuwa . "He was going with seven that I knew about, including
Nao. But he didn't really care about them - he was just interested in the
physical relationship."
A classmate describes Nao as having a reputation for being brassy, with pierced
ears and a cigarette frequently dangling from her hand. She lived with her
divorced mother and an older brother.
"A customer at her mother's snack bar, 10 years her junior, had moved in with
them," a family acquaintance relates. "He and Nao didn't get along, so she
stayed out a lot."
Aside from the accounts of "rampaging" teen sex is an even more disquieting
rumor. Strewn amid the cigarette butts, beer cans and used condoms in the grimy
room where Nao Shimizu's body was found were discarded hypodermic syringes. A
police source tells Shukan Jitsuwa the investigation is proceeding with the
hypothesis that drugs might have figured in her death.
Tokyo Confidential for The Japan Times