16-Year-Old Japanese Girl Murders and Decapitates 15-Year-Old Classmate

commentary by Patrick H. Moore

The curious phenomenon of teenage girls brutally murdering teenage girls for the flimsiest of reasons is cause for consternation in the eyes (and mind) of any parent. Here in the United States, we were recently reminded of the disturbing death of Skylar Neese (who of course was murdered by her two best friends, Rachel Shoaf and Shelia Eddy) when two suburban Wisconsin girls, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, reportedly inspired by the Slender Man myth, did their level best to murder their schoolmate (and supposed best friend) by stabbing her 19 times in a wooded area and leaving her for dead.

When discussing these horrific assaults recently with a friend, she remarked, “it’s a very difficult age”, which I interpreted as meaning that adolescence for young females is so challenging that in extreme cases, the less balanced among the population of growing girls may act out violently and irrationally in a manner from which there is no turning back.

No matter what age we are, most of us lose our temper from time-to-time, but few of us resort to extreme violence.

Fortunately, murderous assaults by schoolgirls are fairly rare here in the U.S. (most “mean girls” prefer bullying their victims to death), and are perhaps even rarer overseas. However, girl-on-girl adolescent murders probably occur everywhere on a very occasional basis, as a recent shocking (apparently premeditated) killing in Japan suggests.

Euan McKirdy and Yoko Wakatsuki of CNN write:

A 16-year-old Japanese girl has been arrested in Sasebo, Nagasaki prefecture, on suspicion of murdering a fellow student. Police confirmed that the alleged attacker also dismembered her victim’s body.

The girl, who cannot be named as she is a minor, is suspected of hitting Aiwa Matsuo, 15, with an object repeatedly before strangling her.

The victim’s family said that she had gone to meet friends Saturday afternoon and alerted police when she did not return later that evening.

When questioned by the police, the unnamed teen admitted killing Matsuo, and told police she acted alone. In a macabre bit of trivia, the youthful murderess turned “not-so-sweet” 16 on the day of her arrest. In her police interview, she admitted to decapitating and dismembering the body, and severing her left hand.

Although we lack the necessary information to determine why the alleged attacker went berserk, we do know that according to the English-language Japan Times, her “friends and acquaintances” described her as “very smart, with emotional ups and downs.”

It is known that in the last year, the suspect lost her mother to an untimely death and her father remarried and now lives elsewhere in Sasebo. Therefore, it can be argued that the suspect lost both her mother and her father (to a considerable degree) within a very short period of time.

Could it be that the suspect has taken the anger she very likely was feeling over her loss out on a third party? Such a hypothesis certainly seems plausible but can hardly be verified.

At a press conference, the principal of the school that both attacker and victim attended said that the institution was not aware of any trouble between the two.

“I have no words to say now. I am overwhelmed by sadness, regret and various feelings,” he said.

The body of the deceased child was discovered early Sunday morning on a bed at the girl’s apartment, where she lives alone. Thus, the suspect conceivably lured the victim over to her apartment before murdering her. Metal implements used in the attack were found on, and next to, the bed.

Although Japan enjoys a deserved reputation for safety and a relative lack of violent crime, this is not the first time that Sasebo has appeared in headlines as a result of violence perpetrated by minors. In 2004, a Sasebo elementary school girl killed a classmate by slashing her throat.

Seven years earlier, in 1997, a 14-year-old was arrested for the murder of two schoolchildren. To add to the grisly nature of the crime, the perpetrator deposited the head of one of the victims in front of his school gates.

In another incident involving the death of children, in 2001, a knife-wielding janitor killed eight elementary school kids.

Seven years to the day later, a man went on a stabbing rampage in a crowded Tokyo shopping street, killing seven people and wounding a dozen others. It is unclear if any of these victims were children.

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Given the relative scarcity of girl-on-girl murders in Japan, the odds of your daughter being murdered by one of her girlfriends or acquaintances seems nearly infinitesimal. Yet it does happen, as the death of Aiwa Matsuo demonstrates with grim finality.

When something like this happens, I feel compelled to draw the magic circle of protection closer around my own loved ones. All you can do is hope that your luck holds up and that the gnarled fists of grim fate pass merrily by.