FOR decades they have done battle with violent Yakuza gangsters and crafty Sokaiya racketeers, but the police have seen the alarming new face of crime in Japan — and it’s wrinkled.

From theft to arson to murder, figures by the National Police Agency tell a sorry tale of soaring “neo-geriatric” crime during 2005. In a year when youth crime fell, the over-65s accounted for more than one in ten of all Japanese arrests — a dramatic leap from the one-in-50 level recorded in 1990.

Crimes favoured by the elderly are pick-pocketing and shoplifting. In many cases, said one police officer, they have developed a cunning strategy to avoid arrest even if caught red-handed: feigning senile dementia.

But murder is also sharply on the rise, with the over-65s responsible for 141 incidents last year. In most cases, the strangling or stabbing was by a husband or wife who had found that after more than 50 years of marriage they could no longer stand each other.

In many instances, the quarrel that triggered the violence was chillingly mundane, such as a complaint about cooking or an argument over which TV programme to watch.

The police figures do not include the surging number of traffic accidents, for many of which the country’s growing legions of octogenarian drivers are responsible. In a single devastating afternoon last June, an 82-year-old driver ran six people down in different parts of town, on each occasion mistaking the accelerator for the brake.

The superannuated wave of villainy has affected the entire country, and sociologists are predicting far worse to come as the population ages at the fastest rate in the developed world.

Takeshi Kitashiba, a former police psychologist, recently christened 2006 the year of the Neo-Geriatric in a Japanese magazine: “Neo-Geriatrics are those over 65 who are still fit, healthy and want to get more out of their lives,” he said. “Without work, they’ll be filled with anxiety and there’s a likelihood they may turn to crime.”

The silver crime spree, while disturbing in itself for a country of relatively low crime, offers a worrying glimpse of the bigger demographic crisis faced by Japan, where 20 per cent of the population is above retirement age. More crimes are expected to arise from the growing poverty of older Japanese as the national insurance system creaks under the financial strain.

It is no coincidence that the steep rise in neo-geriatric crime dates from 1990 and the collapse of Japan’s economic bubble. Although elderly Japanese have savings worth in total around three trillion pounds, surveys last year found that about two thirds of elderly Japanese could not live on their pensions alone.

In spite of the revelations about elderly crime, the Japanese Government’s commitment suggests that the scourge has not really hit home at the policy level. Just £7,000 of the national budget has been allocated to studying the issue, and will cover the cost of sending researchers to the prison cells of greying convicts to survey their motives.

OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER

Shimonoseki: A 74-year-old man burned a historic railway station to the ground using just a cigarette lighter. He told police: “I used a lighter to torch it because I was hungry and frustrated”

Kumamoto: A 70-year-old man stalked a woman 52 years his junior day and night for months. Police said when they arrested him that they did “not know where he got the energy”

Okinawa: A 65-year-old man attempted to extort about £25,000 from the father of the star golfer Ai Miyazato by sending a letter to his golf club criticising her recent performances

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