In November 1980, a murder in Kanagawa Prefecture just south of Tokyo stunned the nation. It involved a 20-year-old student who beat his parents to death with a metal baseball bat.
Books and televised dramas followed in an attempt to comprehend the crime or capitalize on its horror. But it wasn't until November 1996 that another horror story involving a metal bat again shocked Japanese society into realizing the scale of dysfunctionality in households across the country.
Back then, Japan was still reeling from a double shock: the Great Hanshin Earthquake that claimed more than 6,000 lives in and around Kobe in 1995; and that year's nerve-gas attacks on Tokyo subways by the homegrown religious terror cult, Aum Shinrikyo. As well, by the autumn of 1996, Japan's economy had been stagnating for nearly five years, and people's confidence was at its lowest ebb since 1945's traumatic defeat in World War II.