JAPAN: A wave of crime by elderly Japanese is alarming the justice ministry, writes David McNeill in Tokyo
At 70, Yasumasa Matsuzaki didn't look especially dangerous; he was just a nuisance because of his habit of reading magazines without ever buying anything. So after one marathon three-hour session, the manager of the 7-Eleven convenience store in Bando, Ibaraki Prefecture, snapped and threw him out.
Five minutes later, Matsuzaki returned with a chainsaw and threatened to dice the staff before calmly returning to the magazine rack. "He was absorbed in reading even after we called the police," said the manager after the man had been charged with forcible disruption of business. "He was very scary."
The "Zimmer-frame rage" incident last week is part of a wave of so-called "grey crime" in this rapidly-ageing country. The percentage of over-65s incarcerated in Japan has tripled in the last decade and now exceeds 10 per cent of the total rate - four times the UK figure.
Japan now has the highest rate of incarceration for pensioners in the industrialised world.
While most of these people are in prison for theft, the statistics include a growing number of convictions for violent crime.
Among the 141 pensioners arrested last year for murder were an 81-year-old man who strangled his spouse after they bickered over her cooking, and an 87-year-old man who strangled his bed-ridden wife in a hospital in Nagano.
Many offenders will end up behind the bars of Onomichi Prison in Hiroshima, a special facility for wrinkly prisoners equipped with handrails, pushcarts and walking aids, where the average age is 74.
The inmates include a pensioner who beat up his care worker after he threatened to quit and a 73-year married couple who held up a convenience store.
Even after release, the bulk of the inmates who are mostly poor, lonely or both, reject the chance to live out their autumn years in peace: more than 80 per cent are repeat offenders who return within a year.
"There are not too many companies in Japan that will hire an 83-year-old ex-con," one ex-inmate recently told a magazine.
"Prison in Japan is becoming a place for the old and the disabled who have slipped through the cracks of the welfare system," said former lawmaker Joji Yamamoto, who was "outraged" by what he saw behind bars following a conviction for fraud.
"Many end up dying on the streets or committing another crime and landing back in jail," said Yamamoto, who now works for welfare causes.
So alarmed is the Japanese justice ministry by what it calls the "drastic" rise in geriatric crime that it has started a two-year research project into its causes. Several police departments around the country have also devised their own questionnaires for silver-haired arrestees in a bid to find out what makes them tick.
Among the factors they're exploring are fear of the future, poverty and loneliness. "We have no idea what is causing the rise in the elderly crime rate at this point," said Yoshihiro Ono, a ministry of justice researcher.
Some commentators say there is no mystery. In addition to boasting the planet's longest life expectancy, at 85 for women and 78 for men, Japan's weak welfare system is struggling with a rising pension burden.
Nearly nine million elderly people live on pensions, of which just under half are less than 40,000 yen (€280) a month. The pressure of poverty, the burden of caring for elderly, infirm spouses and the lack of professional backup appear to be driving some to crime.
As ever, the government has been slow to move on an issue involving welfare. In the meantime, some people are taking the law into their own hands.
When a man described by police as "in his 80s" broke into a Tokyo home and stole 50,000 yen, he was confronted by the woman owner who fended him off with a glass ashtray. "I tried as best I could to strike back," said the woman, who was 79.