"Is Japan on a domestic killing rampage?"

Another morning’s news brings with it another family related murder. This time, the eldest daughter (37) is alleged to have stabbed her younger brother, younger sister, her mother and herself after a family brawl. Both the brother and the mother died and the eldest daughter and younger sister are in a critical condition in hospital. This comes just a day after a 31-year-old man nearly killed his 1-year-old son because “he was not taking to me so I got irritated and knocked him over.”

According to sources, there were 1155 cases of intent to murder or murders in the past year and, 544 of them were domestic cases. That’s nearly half of all murders in Japan where mothers, fathers, children, siblings are killing one another. Stories like this are in the news constantly and yet, there seems to be no method of helping this problem. Amnesty International (AI) is on a world wide campaign to stop domestic abuse. Christ Pitts from AI Japan told me how there are no systems in place to stop domestic abuse and despite being one of the most developed nations in the world, human rights are not adequately protected here. “If there is a domestic abuse case, the police are unable or unwilling to do anything until someone gets seriously hurt.” Pitts believes that more pressure needs to be put on the government to make sure human rights are protected here as there is far from enough being done about it.

But until then, Japan’s Greek tragedy looks likely to splash its paroxysms of depressing stories across our daily newspapers.