Today, Japan. Tomorrow, right here? Homeless attacked by youth.

[no_hypocrisy]

KAWASAKI, Japan — The memory of how three youths pounced on him one night with sticks and fists twisted Masahiko Sugai's face with pain. The homeless people living with him here, clustered under a bridge linking this city with Tokyo, avoided the topic.

But the bruises around his eyes, visible for days after the beating, testified to a new kind of crime: attacks by young men and boys on middle-aged men who have become homeless after losing their jobs and who, in the cold logic of Japan's post-bubble-economy years, are useless.

"We're most afraid of boys," Mr. Sugai, 51, said one afternoon in early September as cars and trucks rumbled overhead on the Rokugo Bridge. "They're the most dangerous."

A month later, in an unrelated case, 10 boys were arrested here for randomly assaulting three sleeping homeless men. The boys — the youngest was 10, the oldest 16 — told the police that they were "killing time," "getting rid of stress" and "disposing of society's trash." They came from normal homes and earned normal grades at school.

"They didn't stand out at all," said Kengo Honda, 54, deputy chief at the police station that investigated the case. "They didn't realize they had done something bad until we brought them to the station and questioned them."

more-

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/17/international/asia/17JAPA.html

[La_Serpiente]

1. Dupe

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=116&topic_id=2811