ABSTRACT
When, in December 1982, a 19-year-old boy murdered his uncle and aunt with a baseball bat, most of the Japanese media which reported the story concentrated on the fact that he had returned to Japan after 11 years in the United States and was a so-called ‘kikokushijo’ (Asahi Shinbun, 12 December 1982). When a 20-year-old high school student leapt to his death from a high-rise flat in December 1983, the press referred to the fact that he had been in a school in Los Angeles until only five years earlier (Daily Yomiuri, 13 December 1983). When, in March 1985, another 19-year-old boy declared that his mother was the devil and threw her from the window of their second-floor apartment, considerable emphasis was again placed on the fact that he had spent four years in a Japanese School in Brazil (Sunday Mainichi, 31 March 1985). Underlying all of these stories was the assumption that after their experiences overseas, each of these individuals had been unable to adapt to life in Japan and this had led them to either hit out at others or else turn their frustrations in on themselves.
