| The story below is originally published on Mainichi Daily News by Mainichi Shinbun (http://mdn.mainichi.jp). |
| They admitted inventing its kinky features, or rather deliberately mistranslating them from the original gossip magazine. |
| In fact, this is far from the general Japanese' behavior or sense of worth. |
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| ※ この和訳はあくまでもボランティアの方々による一例であり、翻訳の正確さについては各自判断してください。 もし誤訳（の疑い）を発見した場合には、直接ページを編集して訂正するか翻訳者連絡掲示板に報告してください。 |
Children today don't know right from wrong
Shukan Asahi 11/24 イトウタケシ
In an atrocious incident earlier this month,a nine-year-old girl died after receiving a fatal blow to the head from a falling fire extinguisher.
She was hit by the unlikely flying object as she walked out of a high-rise condominium in suburban Osaka,where her family lives.
While no definitive evidence has yet to surface,police investigation up to this point strongly suggests that a pair of grade-school boys in the neighborhood dropped the extinguisher from the top of the 19-story building.
Informed sources note it is next to impossible to hit a target by dropping an object from that height.
But how can children be so unthinking to drop an extinguisher from a building?
Unable to understand,Shukan Asahi asks educational experts how this incident could have happened.
Education critic Toyokichi Endo reminds the magazine that children like mischief.
But in the old days,children knew enough to refrain from dropping a dangerous object from a building.
Endo tells Shukan Asahi that present-day children have little ability to imagine the consequences of their actions.
He attributes their weakened foresight to a lack of opportunities to learn acceptable behavior through experiences with playmates.
Professor Masashi Fukaya of Shizuoka University agrees and warns;
"Children no longer can tell right from wrong.
Incidents like this one(the incident in Osaka) can happen at any condominium in Japan."
Fukaya's assertion is based on his research.
He found that junior highschool students have become much more forgiving of questionable acts in the last decade.
Explains Fukaya;
The knowledge of right and wrong used to act as a brake.
But children no longer have that knowledge."
Isamu Kakimoto,a director of a psychological educational institute,tells Shukan Asahi that children have lost not only their ability to tell right from wrong,but also the capacity to listen to others,obey orders and restrain their actions.
"Children of today are extremely domineering and violent," observes Kakimoto,who worked as a junior high-school teacher for 30 years.
"They act according to what they crave for.
When they cannot have their own way,they either scream or turn to violence.
They have not gone through the process that teaches them human behavior and social norms."
Shukan Asahi closes the report with another horrifying suggestion --children of the 90s can easily kill.
"There is a saying that grownups should not meddle in children's fights.
But this saying doesn't apply any more," asserts Kakimoto.
"Children of today fight to the point of killing the opponent unless adults stop them.
They can't imagine what might happen."(TI)
