The youth sent to a reformatory for the 1997 killings of two children in Kobe has recently become more communicative and open, sources close to his relatives said Wednesday.
The youth, now 18, has for the first time started telling staff at the Kanto Medical Reform and Training School in Tokyo that he is interested in life and has recently seen his parents and a psychiatrist to talk with them about his future, the sources said.
Earlier, the youth had refused to meet his parents and had said he wanted to commit suicide.
The youth was arrested June 28, 1997, on suspicion of strangling Jun Hase, 11, in May that year in a residential area in Kobe's Suma Ward, and placing his severed head three days later in front of the gate of the junior high school he attended.