Teen Arrested In Japan Beheading 14-Year-Old Held In Crime That Horrified Placid Nation

A month ago, a severed head was found in front of a junior high school in Kobe with a chilling note stuck in the 11-year-old male victim’s mouth that declared “the beginning of the game … It’s great fun for me to kill people. I desperately want to see people die.”

When police announced Saturday that they had arrested a suspect in the murder, the horror that had gripped this relatively crime-free nation turned to relief - but then to horror again as it was revealed that the suspect is a 14-year-old boy.

During a 10-minute, nationally televised press conference Saturday evening, Seishi Yamashita, chief investigator, said police questioned the boy and arrested him after he confessed to the crime.

According to police, the boy said he beheaded the victim, Jun Hase, with a knife and a saw. Yamashita said police later searched the suspect’s home and found the knife and other weapons. The boy told police he knew Hase.

Police declined to identify the suspect and said they were trying to determine the motive for the crime.

Hase’s head was discovered May 27 by a school custodian in front of Tomogaoka Middle School in Kobe, a city of 1.5 million that is 300 miles west of Tokyo. His body was found later the same day in a forest near his elementary school. The beheading and the taunting note threatening more murders triggered a massive, four-week manhunt.

Newspapers and television shows were filled with people proposing theories, while the streets and playgrounds in neighborhoods near the murder scene became deserted.

But while Saturday evening’s arrest brought relief that Hase’s killer might have been caught, the age of the suspect sparked new anxieties.

The killing was only the latest in a series of cases - including the nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system two years ago - that have deeply shaken Japan’s sense of itself as a safe society.

By international standards, the country still has very low crime rates and a safe feel to its cities, but many Japanese fret that orderliness and security are deteriorating.

In particular, as in other countries, many adults view teenagers as amoral and incomprehensible - sometimes literally so, for they speak among themselves in newly coined slang words.