Giappone - Inglese

Comment: disaffected youth in crisis

[Times - World]

The violence and indiscriminate nature of the attack had grim echoes of similar sprees this year. In January a 16-year-old boy went berserk in a shopping street and attacked five people with kitchen knives. In March a man in his twenties stabbed people at a railway station, killing one of them. Japan is gradually coming to terms with what many believe may be a crisis among the younger generation. Japanese in their twenties use blogs and internet message boards to describe a growing pessimism. They do not want to follow their parents into the drudgery of the “salaryman” life, but have only limited prospects. It is a generation with troublingly high suicide rates.