"At the time the media portrayed the murder as a crime of jealousy. Yamada's own two-year-old daughter had allegedly failed an exam for a place in the prestigious Otawa kindergarten into which her neighbour's daughter had been accepted." - A child murder in Japan points to a growing social alienation

Jesus Christ, exams for... Kindergarten?!

Blaming any of this on the school system is, in my opinion, silly.
There are "elite" kindergartens in the US too - I know a woman in NY whose daughter had an exam to get into an elite nursery at 10 months... Apparently they wouldn`t accept a child who wasn`t ahead in their developmental milestones.

This all comes down to the mother being freaking insane. Not every kindergarten has an entrance "exam", and most of the ones that do aren`t even that harsh (my son, who actually carries a disability card for mild mental retardation was able to "pass"...)
There are a few that are a bit insane (writing your name at 2, etc) - but it isn`t as if there are countless other kindergartens you could send your child to. And kindergarten REALLY doesn`t count all that much at all toward the future, so there is hardly any pressure to send your child to a "prestigious" kindergarten unless it`s the closest to your house or has significantly better facilities (indoor pool, etc).

So don`t blame the education system, blame the insane people who happened to have kids and ended up taking it out on them.

Most behavioural patterns and basically how someone will behave for their entire life are picked up prior to the age of 6. The human brain is not fully formed, unlike other animals, at the time of birth. The upbringing of a child greatly effects the nature of that person.

I won't be sending my child to kinder or primary school at all. I'm way smart enough to effectivly home school. And I don't want a bunch of bogans teaching my kid it's okay to eat curry with your bare hands and suck grains of rice up your nose like they do at these Thai schools.

I might have considered a prestigous younger school.

Regardless, I don't think this has anything to do with the murder. Clearly, the woman was nuts.

There're a lot of weird killings in England as well. I don't think it's something particular to Japan. Human nature I think.

It may be universal, but murders are inhumane!!

I feel that the social restraints placed on a Japanese by their own culture make them feel very frustrated. They allow things to build up inside of them until they absolutely can't take it any longer and go crazy. I had seen this a lot with my girlfriend's business. I remember one lady in particular that had several small issues that she was angry about and never mentioned it to anybody until she got to the point that she was screaming and yelling like a crazy person demanding her money back for her classes she paid for. After my girlfriend refund of the money for several of her classes, she acted like everything was back to normal. She even asked to be let back into the classes. She got very angry when my girlfriend refused to let her back in.

I think that these people who commit murder probably hold their feelings in for as long as they can take it and instead of letting it out in a healthy manner they take it out on the first person or people they run into. This isn't a problem if they don't have a knife or gun. But like what happened in Tokyo and think it was last year, were the man jumped out of the truck and stabbed seven people on the street, this anger can be very destructive and deadly. I am glad to see that most of the younger Japanese are learning to be more open with their feelings. This gives me great hope for the future there.

I really don`t think Japanese have any higher tendency to "go crazy" than anywhere else on this planet. I`ve seen far far more people "snap" outside of Japan than in.

The thing is, violent events are a rarity in Japan and therefore are HUGE news when they do happen. The same sort of stuff happens, with a much higher frequency, elsewhere too. But it`s big news when it happens in Japan simply because it`s Japan.

Back in the US, I was a witness for a murder case in which 6 innocent people - including a child - had been killed (I didn`t see anything violent, just the guy fleeing the place)... And the event only had one small write up in the "local" section of the newspaper. If it had happened in Japan, believe me - people would still be talking about it NOW.

Going off the deep end has nothing to do with Japan. Thinking it does is buying into the "Japanese are crazy! Harharhar!" stereotype.

I didn't mean that they were crazy, it's just that they hold their feelings in until it gets to a point where they overreact. This can happen to anyone in any culture but I think that Japanese are more susceptible to this because of their cultural upbringing.

It's true that they don't have as many murders in Japan but when they do is usually a strange situation involving a family member or a complete stranger.

That's true. Because of fact that they're bottling up their feelings for most of their lives, anything can set them off. Nyorin, this is what we meant.