By Tomomi Abe

What kind of feeling do you have these days while reading the newspapers or watching the news? The news often reports that someone has killed a child for no reason, or that there was yet another group suicide. At the same time, many vicious acts like the "It's me" fraud have been spreading, and almost every Japanese will have heard of this crime. We also learn that a lot of false coins have been found, and that the numbers of cases of juvenile delinquency have been increasing. There is no limit to reports of such lamentable events.

Yet some good news is reported. For instance, a bullet train halted at a station where it ought not to have stopped, because a student taking university entrance examination had the mistaken idea that the train would stop at his destination and the conductor of the train sympathized with him. Nevertheless, when thinking about recent Japan, we see without a doubt that many unhappy incidents such as the above exceed these stories of good news. It is really a pity.

Why are so many of these devilish incidents happening in Japan today? Especially, the fact that the ages of the arrested people become younger and younger is the most important issue that Japan needs to reform quickly. Today's young, whether they commit a sin or not, may misunderstand the meaning of 'freedom.' Some high school girls make up their faces in the train without bothering about other people's feelings. Some junior high school students buy food on their way home and eat it while sitting on the ground. Recently, there are too many young people who take being free to mean being egotistic.

However, adults are responsible for these young people's delinquency. As we know, the government established a more relaxed education policy and this hastened deterioration in students' scholastic abilities. Children came to believe, mistakenly, that studying is just memorizing the contents of their textbooks. Schoolteachers only teach the lesson that if students get good marks, they can go to a good university. So students are only able to memorize, no matter how hard they may try to study by themselves. The cramming system of education has caused a decline in students' ability to think. School is becoming an unnecessary place for many children.

To make matters worse, while the contents of textbooks or teaching materials in elementary school and junior high school have become easier, the entrance examination to university is still difficult. Now, almost all Japanese people think that if students do not graduate from university, they cannot get a good job. So, as a result, high school students have to cram and it is a burden to them. And though parents these days try to enter their children into university, they depend almost too much on schools to educate their children. I would like parents to understand that the school is not the only place to educate the young.

At present, Japan finds itself in abnormal circumstances, and not only parents and children but also politicians who lead the nation, the bureaucracy, or the police have many problems. Some politicians accept bribes in secret or drift away from the Diet. Reports of police scandals have recently increased. Now is the age in which some leaders in Japan are covered on TV or in the newspaper one after another for their misdemeanors. Japan seems to be in the condition of deviating from being an "ordinary peaceful country." Children grow up seeing such badly behaved adults, so however much they are asked to do homework or enter a good school or company, it is no wonder that they are puffed up. In Japan, adults cannot give a good example and though they may try to bring up their children, they are sometimes neglectful. Japan's "power of education" is not excellent, while Japan's particular "power of culture" is also weakening. It is a state of emergency. Do we say that to murder someone easily or to commit a crime without considering the outcome is really peculiar to Japan? It is the most important challenge now facing Japan, that the Japanese nation should use all its might to try to get out of this crisis without regard for appearances.