According to Japan’s largest media outlets, a question about video games has ended in an unsettling murder. Note: This post contains content that some readers may find objectionable.
In Tokyo, 42-year-old mother Shizu Shigeta is on trial for killing her five-year-old son in September of last year. Asahi.com reports that her five-year old son Koushi was asking for his Nintendo DS, which Shigeta had thrown in the trash the previous day after he wouldn’t clean up. “Which is more important: Your game machine or breathing?” the mother asked. “The game machine,” he replied. The mother then proceeded to tie up her son and put him in two garbage bags, causing him to suffocate to death.
“What I did… Make no mistake, it caused Koushi to die,” Shigeta admitted in court. The night before the incident, Shigeta took sleeping pills, mixing them with alcohol. As part of her defence, she is now saying this mixture resulted in her suffocating her child.
目黒5歳児窒息死事件 母親、起訴事実認める [FNN]
おかあが奪った息子の命（きょうも傍聴席にいます）[Asahi]
Photo: FNN
Comments
13 responses to “Breathe Or Play The Nintendo DS? A Mother’s Chilling, Final Question”
Very sad. Often kids cannot appreciate the stress they put their parents under and parents sometimes just cannot control themselves.
I reaaally hope you aren’t allowed near children.
Why? He’s perfectly correct.
For example: Kids aren’t just repeatedly saying ‘why’ to piss off their parents, they actually want to know why.
Some parents understand this and grit their teeth and explain why. Other parents drive the car off a bridge, turn around and scream “THIS IS WHY” just before impact.
Because there is absolutely no justification for this. It is not the kid being annoying. It is not the kid needing a wake up call. It is murder.
“Parents can’t control themselves”. Then you shouldn’t be a parent, or living in any sort of society.
Well they can’t, and this is a rather tragic example of it. For other examples go into the city on a Friday night.
Things like this is what makes me wish you had to pass a test a bit more complex than “insert rod A into slot B” before you have kids.
wat
a child at that age won’t understand that breathing is subconscious and always done even without thinking.
I agree. That was a rather stupid question to ask a five-year-old who is at the stage of exploration and starting to do things with a sense of purpose. And two garbage bags…as if one wasn’t enough… I am just horrified that this happened.
Yes, because the sleeping pills and the alcohol popped out of their bottles, tied up her son and put him in the garbage bags by themselves.
What a stupid defence.
Yeah it was the night before too… So if anything she may have been a bit grouchy, not intoxicated.
Sad
Jesus Christ. I thought around 5 was the age that kids THEMSELVES threatened to stop breathing (and then try to carry it out by holding their breath) if they don’t get what they want, on the understanding that the parent WANTS them to breathe.
Also, what kind of nut-job demands that a 5yr old be responsible for cleaning up the trash, then throws out hundreds of dollars of equipment because a five-year-old won’t do what they’re told. Isn’t ‘not doing what you’re told’ is also the natural state of 5yr olds until they get a light smack on the bum and/or a few growled words of reprimand, then told to stand in a corner or something? Are Japanese children held to a different standard of obedience, or was this woman fucked up before she got to the stage of pills and alcohol… while supervising a child. Yeah, OK, no need to answer that.
Suddenly those parental-abandonment scenarios in anime don’t seem so far-fetched anymore.
messed up.