Yua Funato was repeatedly beaten and starved, but the pleading messages she left her mother and step-father have shaken a nation that used to pride itself on the importance of family and community. Julian Ryall reports.
A heart-breaking case of child abuse has rocked a nation that has traditionally prided itself on the concept of family and taking care of the most vulnerable members of society. It forced the Japanese government to start drawing up a set of emergency measures designed to stop children being harmed by their own parents.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has instructed his ministers to find ways to increase the number of social welfare centers across the country and improve the ways in which such cases are handled. Such has been the public outcry after the death of 5-year-old Yua Funato that Abe has given his ministers one month to come up with firm proposals to protect the nation’s children.
Read more: Japan – a wealthy nation with poor children
Yua was pronounced dead in a hospital in Tokyo’s Meguro district after being abused and neglected by her mother, Yuri, 25, and her new boyfriend, 33-year-old Yudai, over a period of months.
Her step-father had forced the little girl to get up at 4am each morning to study and been violent towards her if she did not do exactly as she was told. She did not receive enough nutrition — police say she weighed just 12 kilograms when she died in March, while an autopsy revealed that she died of sepsis brought on by pneumonia — and her mother permitted her partner to abuse the child. The report said Yua’s body and head were covered in bruises.
For more read the full of article at The Dw
