Murder’s in Japan all time low

Murder rate’s in Japan are at an all time low, 200 less then in previous year’s from 1300 murders a year to around 1097. So why has the murder rate gone down so drastically?

Statistics on the relationship between perpetrators and victims gives a hint as to why this has occurred. When comparing 2009 data to data from 1985, the first year such statistics were kept, “work acquaintances” decreased to 61 from 104, and “friends and other acquaintances” was down to 254 from 317.

This indicates that murders involving people with close ties is declining.
Mitsuyuki Maniwa, professor emeritus of Shizuoka University, speculates that the dilution of relationships among younger people is one reason for the downward trend in murder and attempted murder cases.
“Because young people are more indifferent to people around them and have few relationships with others, they might have fewer occasions to develop feelings of strong jealousy or enmity that can lead to murder,” Maniwa said.
By motivation, “grudge” was cited in 194 cases in 2008, compared to 466 in 1985. An NPA official said police sometimes used to feel sympathy for murderers when they listened to the causes of the grudges, but this was rare these days.
The main reason the murder rate is in a decline seems to be because people are more and more antisocial then ever before giving them less of a chance to hate someone, have a grudge or to harbor ill will about a person.
Although the rate of murder has gone down, cases of children murdering their parents have  increasingly gotten  higher then in previous year’s;

The number of cases of children murdering or attempting to murder parents, however, tripled from 40 in 1985 to 121 in 2009.

The main reason for increased parental murder seems to be tied to increased stress children have. With the Japanese population ageing rapidly it is putting a lot of pressure on their children to take care of them financially.

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