WHILE violent comics and films have a long and notorious link with youth crime in Japan, the world of video games has only recently been seen as a breeding ground for copycat violence.

Much of the problem, say Japanese games experts, arises from the increasing imports of British and American games, whose content is generally more gory and gratuitous than the domestic Japanese output. After all, Japan’s most successful maker of video games, Nintendo, has earned its billions from Mario, a tubby plumber, and Pokemon, a yellow teddy.

Violence in Japanese video games has historically been deliberately unrealistic. When Japan’s Capcom made the blockbuster Street Fighter 2, the fighting was cartoony and the characters absurd, but when the US-based Midway replied with Mortal Kombat, moves included tearing a victim’s spine out and brandishing his severed head.

Japanese games have focused on slaying monsters and zombies, but British and US games have strived to make human-on-human violence ever more realistic. Japan produces House of the Dead and arms characters with plasma guns, but Britain’s programmers give the world The Getaway and arm characters with lead pipes and sawn-off shotguns.

But Japanese academics are increasingly convinced that a link between video games and violence among children does exist. According to a study, the more schoolchildren play video games the more likely they are to get irritated and want to hit others.

The study, by Nobuko Ihori and other members of Ochanomizu University’s Graduate School of Humanities and Sciences, also found that games affected children even if they were not strongly characterised by violence.

In the latest survey, 771 schoolchildren were asked how long they spent playing computer games, including violent ones. Those who played games the longest tended to affirm violence the most when asked: “Do you get irritated?” and “Do you sometimes unexpectedly want to hit people?”

A study on British children found that those who preferred violent games were not as aggressive in real life.

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