TWO Japanese men emerged from long periods in their bedrooms to murder their families in a growing wave of brutal attacks by recluses.

The incidents, in different parts of the country, brought to seven the number of close relatives killed by recluses since October. Japan has grudgingly accepted the problem of hikikomori — or young Japanese who withdraw to their rooms for months and years — but the sudden explosions of violence are a new phenomena.

With tens of thousands of hikikomori, male and female, in Japan, authorities are increasingly nervous that the pattern of long seclusion followed by violence will be repeated as word of the attacks spreads on the internet.

Masaru Iijima, 28, called police in Ibaraki on Thursday to tell them that he had killed his parents and elder sister by bludgeoning two of them to death with a hammer and stabbing the other. He is said to have killed both women in the morning and waited for his father to return from his job as a museum curator later that evening.

Mr Iijima, who is believed to have lived the life of a bedroom hermit for nearly ten years, offered police only the explanation that “I had not been getting on well with them”. He later said that murdering his mother and sister was necessary “preparation” for the attack on his father.

On the previous day, a 19-year-old recluse clubbed his mother and father to death as they slept, using a 4 kg (9 lb) dumbbell.

He told police that he had also planned to kill his 76-year-old grandfather and teenage sister but “ran out of strength” because the dumbbell was so heavy. His explanation was that he did not like his father, a schoolteacher, “telling me to learn things”.

The incidents come just weeks after Kenichi Ito, who dropped out of high school in 1984 and remained in his room for 20 years, emerged from his seclusion to strangle his mother and father.

Mr Ito said that since he was not even capable of finding part-time work, he worried how he could provide for his parents in their old age. The estimated number of the withdrawn is now put at more than one million.

The recent spate of murders respresent only a tiny minority of hikikomori cases to end in violence, but in many other respects they were classic displays of the phenomenon. Mr Ito’s withdrawal, for example, appeared to be little more than teenage petulance: he was embarrassed by acne and ashamed to be seen in public.

But as the months became years, his seclusion fed itself and his long absence from society became a motive for remaining at home.

Because little time or effort has been diverted to the hikikomori issue, its true psychology is only loosely understood.

The most widely held view is that it represents a reaction to the strictness of many Japanese social norms, and particularly the school system, where the instilling of group culture has been an historic priority. Bullying is another cause regularly cited for withdrawal.

AUTUMN TOLL

• October 19, 2004: Kenichi Ito, an unemployed 36-year-old from Higashi-Osaka, kills both parents
  
• November 23: Unnamed 19-year-old bludgeons parents to death in Mito, 60 miles north of Tokyo
  
• November 24: Masaru Iijima, 28, murders father, mother and sister

Explore World News

• World Agenda

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Afghanistan News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• 'New York has lost its edge'
• Copenhagen will fail – and quite right too
• More than 17,000 new underwater species found