Regarding the July 20 article "Teenager held in dad's stabbing": How bizarre we can get? A 15-year-old girl "admitted stabbing her father in the chest several times with a knife." She "didn't like to be told to study" by her parents. The police got a call "from the teen's family" saying "the daughter stabbed her father." Since there was only the mother, son and daughter remaining, which member of "the teen's family" made the call?

Then, instead of the "family" calling 119, the "family" left the father "collapsed in his bedroom and bleeding." But before that, the mother heard "arguing voices." Didn't she know whose voices they were? Didn't she bother to find out what the issue was? Did she think it was the neighbors?

Next, the investigators "suspect" the daughter stabbed the father while he was asleep and "are trying to determine the motive." Since she "admitted" to it and told them she didn't like to be "told to study," the motive seems crystal-clear to me.

Finally, apparently everyone in this family is either deaf or lives with headphones on. When someone is stabbed with a knife, he usually screams. So, the wife "was sleeping in a different room." Where? In a different city? And the son, "who was sleeping in the same room as the father, apparently didn't notice the stabbing." Why? Is he deaf and blind?

This story is a tragic comment on Japanese society. If we've arrived at the point where young girls stab their fathers because they don't like to be "told to study" and, worse, where no "family" member sees or hears anything, despite being in the same room, then it's all over with.

david chester