Enraged by the publication last month of a memoir by an infamous child serial killer from Kobe, the father of one of the victims petitioned the ruling Liberal Democratic Party on Wednesday for a ban on criminals talking about their crimes, including in print and movies, without the permission of those they harmed.
Mamoru Hase, whose 11-year-old son Jun was murdered and decapitated by a teen killer in 1997, said the autobiography had caused bereaved relatives "heartrending pain" and had rubbed salt into their barely healed wounds.
The killer, who was 14 at the time, murdered two children and mutilated three others in the city in 1997. He remains identified only as "Seito Sakakibara," a name he gave himself in written messages at the time of the killings. The memoir is titled "Zekka," a coined term which could translate as "desperate songs."