Crime perpetrated by Japanese elderly spiking

NPR ran a fascinating report on spiking non-violent crime committed by the elderly in Japan.

Statistics have shown a 5-fold increase in crime among older folks.

They interview journalist Michael Zielenziger – the author of Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation – about the phenomena.

Zielenziger talks about the long-term economic collapse, lack of governmental support, and poor social infrastructure.

He also talks about a 79 year old woman who stabbed a young woman in a Tokyo shopping district and was quoted saying, “I had no place to stay and wanted the police to take care of me.”

I found a little bit online the stabbing here.

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Zielenziger was the Tokyo-based bureau chief for Knight Ridder Newspapers for seven years.

Here is a synopsis on the book from his web site:

The world’s second wealthiest country, Japan once seemed poised to overtake America. But its failure to recover from the economic collapse of the early 1990s was unprecedented, and today it confronts an array of disturbing social trends. Japan has the highest suicide rate and lowest birthrate of all industrialized countries and a rising incidence of untreated cases of depression. Even more troubling are the more than one million young men who shut themselves in their rooms “hikikomori”, withdrawing from society, and the growing numbers of “parasite singles,” the name given to single women who refuse to leave home, marry, or bear children.