Confessions is a work that dramatized juvenile crimes rampant in Japanese society through the form of characters’ confessions in its structure, and aroused a huge issue in Japanese society of 2008. The fact in which the criminals who murdered Manami, the daughter of Moriguchi who is a middle school teacher are Watanabe Shuya and Shimomura Naoki, the students of her own class, and the issue of juvenile law derived from it, are still highlighted as serious social problems. The cause for this family collapse might be originated from the change in the concept of family according to the change of Japanese society from modern times to contemporary era, and the absence of father(absence of father(masculinity)’s role including the case of actually having no father). Shuya’s mother delivers the distorted masculinity that excludes the traditional femininity to Shuya. As a result, Shuya grows into a sociopath due to the lack of affection, and shows the look of a murderer who belittles others’ lives for his own purpose. Also, Naoki’s mother delivers the excessive femininity that excludes the existing masculinity to Naoki. As a result, in order to recover his own denied masculine identity, Naoki murders his mother. Eventually, both Shuya and Naoki commit a crime toward lineal ascendant by murdering their own mothers, which could be also viewed as resistance(side effect) to distorted masculinity or excessive femininity. However, the family collapse caused by this absence of father does not simply end as onetime event. Making headlines through the mass media for the sake of arousing the interest such as their parricide or psychopathic tendency of massacre could have impacts on the students of school where they belong to or even members of society beyond a personal crime. Meanwhile, due to the absence of husband, the teacher Moriguchi had to fulfill vocational activities and her duty of child-rearing for herself and her daughter as a single mom. It would be valid to say that this absence of husband and father eventually provided the cause for the tragedy of Manami’s death. In other words, the increased single moms every year in poor environment with the insufficient social welfare system, could mean not only the economic hardship, but also the high possibility in which children including herself are exposed to the object of crime. Like this, the family collapse cannot be simply limited to a family, and spreads to society where the family is included, which is spreading to various problems. As the large families are externally changed to nuclear families or single-person families in modern society, or the concept of family is changed like changes in the masculinity of father and femininity of mother in family, it would be necessary to quickly and newly establish the concept of family, and the role or paradigm of father and mother or masculinity and femininity. When the society is more developed, complicated, diversified, and molecularized, it is obvious that the tragedy is more expanded and accelerated.
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Sep 10, 2024
Sophie Pohl + 1
Open Access