Perspectives
Internet can serve as a tool to track people's tendency toward violence, addiction
In Toyokawa, Aichi Prefecture, a tragic incident took place on April 17, in which a 30 year-old man torched his house after killing or injuring five family members, including his one year-old niece. Although the suspect -- the eldest son of the family -- found employment after graduating from junior high school, he had trouble keeping down a job due to his problems with interpersonal relationships. He had been socially withdrawn for over a decade prior to the incident, and also had a reckless spending habit, accumulating a debt of over 2 million yen in Internet auctions and mail-order purchases.
The man had been violent toward his family on numerous occasions, leading to repeated police involvement prior to the incident. Unable to tolerate his son's excessive spending any longer, his father disconnected his Internet access -- without telling him -- which threw the son into a murderous rage.
The media generally pointed to hikikomori (social withdrawal) and the Internet as the culprits behind this tragedy. But I believe the true nature of the incident lies elsewhere.
The incident was a typical case of domestic violence leading to domestic murder, which has been around for ages. Many instances of violence by children toward their parents that develop into murder have been reported since before World War II.
In 1977, for example, there was the so-called Kaisei High School Student Murder, in which a father who could no longer bear the violence he suffered at the hands of his son was arrested for murdering him. This was a case of a parent killing a child, but the nature of the problem is nothing different from that in the recent case in Toyokawa.
What saddens me every time I hear about such incidents is the fact that I cannot deny the feeling that they could have been prevented. As opposed to random acts of violence, the evolution of domestic violence into domestic murder can theoretically be nipped in the bud.
Unfortunately, however, Japan's measures against child abuse and domestic violence (including that between spouses) lag behind those in other countries. In particular, Japan's countermeasures against perpetrators of violence have frequently been pointed out as being insufficient.
If the family had consulted me, I would have first asked that they promptly commit to a policy of zero-tolerance against violence, and to set a maximum limit on their son's allowance. The family had entrusted the son with management of the parents' salaries ostensibly to teach him about autonomy. They also allowed the son free use of credit cards, which led to piling debts.
The most important thing in such a situation is to maintain a certain limit on the son's monthly allowance even if he shows strong resistance. Credit cards are out of the question. Stand firmly by these rules, and if violence erupts, respond by calling the police and escaping to a safe place.
If a professional had taken such intervention, it's highly likely that this incident would have been prevented.
Are the issues of social withdrawal and the Internet completely unrelated to the incident, then? Not necessarily. At the very least, there is a possibility that these two factors accelerated the evolution of violence into murder.
Socially withdrawn populations seem to be aging. In my recent investigations, the average age of hikikomori is 32. As with the recent incident, when social withdrawal has continued so long that the person can no longer be treated as a "youth," there is a tendency for emotional problems and violence to grow even more complicated.
And then, there is the Internet. The Toyokawa incident reminded me of a case that occurred in Florida. According to the Feb. 12 issue of the Herald Tribune, a 27-year-old man obsessed with online games was arrested for choking his 50-year-old mother, who had tried to make him quit playing.
That same month in Romania, a 17-year-old boy was arrested for stabbing and killing his mother, who had refused to pay Internet subscription fees. He, too, was engrossed in online gaming, and his mother had tried to put a stop to it.
The reason these cases were so shocking was because with the exception of Japan and South Korea, violence by children against their parents is generally not widely heard of. While there are exceptions, chronic cases of domestic violence by children against parents are unlikely in most households in the U.S. and Europe. This is attributed to the fact that if such a thing were to take place, police would immediately be called to the scene and the children arrested, or they would be kicked out of their homes.
Even in societies where such violence is rare, online games cannot be ignored as the common link in the cases of violence against parents by their children.
The important point here is the all-consuming and addictive nature of the Internet. Online games are particularly addictive, and can easily interfere with day-to-day life; it has even given rise to the term "netoge haijin" (net game invalid).
It's not, however, that the Internet produces new pathologies. Rather, they condense and reveal the pathologies that already exist or magnify and accelerate their effects. In the case of the family in Toyokawa, the Internet probably served as the manifestation and accelerator of the family's underlying problems.
If this, indeed, is the case, there's no use lamenting the harmful effects of the Internet now. If intervention of the Internet allows for easier discovery of people's tendency towards violence and addiction, it would serve us well to make full use of such functions. It will allow us to confront families' shadows that have long been ignored. (By Tamaki Saito, psychiatrist)
(Mainichi Japan) June 12, 2010