Decapitation Linked to Video Games

Do video games kill people, or do people kill people?

In Japan, the debate over violence in TV, movies, comic books, and video games has intensified recently. This is partly due to a grisly crime that occurred in Kobe, Japan, last May 24th.

Now, the debate has been fueled by the surprising news that the killer is a fourteen-year-old classmate of the deceased.

In the crime, eleven-year-old student Jun Hase was decapitated. His head was mounted on the fence of the school he attended; his body was found nearby. The crime startled and horrified Japanese citizens who live in a relatively crime-free environment.

The debate that followed the killer's confession has seen numerous fingers being pointed at - among other media - violent video games as contributing to the young assailant's mind-set.

"In 1983, when this boy was born, the Nintendo TV game was also launched, so he belongs to the generation that grew up together with TV games," Masashi Fukaya, a professor of educational sociology at Shobi Gakuen Junior College in Tokyo, told The New York Times. "For kids raised in the age of electronic media, they have been growing up in a sort of virtual reality. They have not been growing up with real feelings, with real living friends, or with real nature."

Reuters has reported that "experts have blamed a breakdown of family values, a repressive education system, and the proliferation of violent movies and video games" as contributing factors that may have led to the crime.

Two cabinet ministers have reportedly asked the government to try to curb media violence. "Obscene films and videos are now restricted, but films without any literary or educational merit made just to show cruel scenes can easily be watched by adolescents," Construction Minister Shizuka Kamei is reported to have said at a news conference shortly after the arrest.

In hopefully unrelated news, a survey released Tuesday by Louis Harris and Associates states that American children are lacking physical activity. It's interesting to note that while kids say that it is because of homework or lack of time, parents attribute the decline in physical activity to increase in TV and, yes, video game use.