Shocking News in Japan

This has been in the news the last couple of days, and the details were rather shocking as I listened to it on the news this morning.

Nara couple held after son starves to death
The Yomiuri Shimbun

NARA--A husband and wife were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of starving their 5-year-old son to death.

Hiroshi Yoshida, 35, a company employee of Sakurai, Nara Prefecture, and his wife, Mami, 26, a part-time worker, reportedly admitted the allegations to the Nara prefectural police. They also were quoted by the police as saying they had no affection for the boy.

The mother said she abused the boy because he looked like her husband, whom she did not get along with, the police said. Meanwhile, Yoshida was quoted by police as saying that he knew the boy was not being fed, but did not do anything about it.

According to the police, Tomoki Yoshida weighed only 6.2 kilograms, about one-third of the average weight of a 5-year-old child, and less than the average 1-year-old. He was 85 centimeters tall, which is the average height of a 2-year-old and 25 centimeters shorter than an average 5-year-old.
full story here

I know that this is terrible news and I wonder what could have been done. One of the things that stood out in this news was that this family of 4 were living in a one room apartment. For those of you who are not familiar with what that works out to a room measuring roughly 8'x11'. Now they probably had a small kitchen to go with that, but I'm sure it wasn't even half the size the main room. Not a very big space to do all of your living in. And I started to wonder why in Japan do people live in such conditions. I'm sure that cost was one big reason. Cost of housing is outrageous in Japan. I know that Japan is limited when it comes to space but I think there needs to be some serious reform in housing. I remember when I moved into Tokyo and was shocked when I had to pay the equivalent of 5 months of rent just to get into my apartment. Then add the first months rent and I was staring at about $8,000. Luckily I had the funds to do this, but if by chance you are just starting out or have a family to take care of, it probably is not that easy. There are public housing projects in Japan that are very nice, and you can get escape paying some of the start up fees by getting into one of these developments, but at the same time the new ones that I have seen have not been cheap at all. One of the reasons for this is that there is this thing called "Amakudari" where gov't officials retire and get put in charge of such projets and these projects pay out huge salaries to these officials. They are taken care of for life, but it drives the housing costs out of this world. I think it is about time for some change. Who know maybe if this family of 4 had had a decent living condition this tradegy possibly could have been avoided. I know there are som many more details, but for Japan one of the richest nations in the world this is pretty sad.