Abandoned Japanese Boy: Seven-Year-Old Yamato Tanooka 'forgives Father'

[mikey4444]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-36466399

Glad to see that he looks none the worse for his ordeal here.

What a story he is going to have to tell in the playground !

[Old_Geezer]

A most fortuitous ending to a ill considered event.

[ummmm]

He wasn't abandoned though. It was a very very bad judgement on a punishment.

[wolf63]

I was so convinced that the father had killed the boy and hid him in Bear central.

It is amazing that the search teams could not find him nor find any trace of him. They must have used dogs - you would think that they would trace him.

[mikey4444]

Ummmm....I think that its academic what we call the act of leaving him alone in the forest. His parents are clearly to blame...its hardly his fault.

But he seems to be a very self-reliant little lad.

[andy-hughes]

I think this is another example of sub-editors using emotive adjectives to spin a story into something it is not.

As I understand it, the parents put the child out of the car on a roadside and drove off about a hundred yards, in order to 'teach him a lesson'. When they turned back, he had disappeared.

I do not for one moment condone the parents' action in disciplining their child in this heavy-handed and frightening way - but what they did is a very long way away from 'abandoning him in a bear-infested forest' as the media spun it.

I am glad that it has ended happily for all concerned.

[Old_Geezer]

But he was abandoned, obviously. He was in one place, the parents went elsewhere; no matter how long they were intending to be away. Had the lad not been abandoned he wouldn't have got concerned and tried to find his own way out, and they would not have lost him. That is the whole issue.

[ummmm]

Mikey - where did I blame the child?

Fact is...they didn't abandon him.

[Quoi]

Parenting that child from here on might be a bit more difficult.

Every time they want to tell him off, he will be reminding them.

[mikey4444]

Ummm...this thread has all the hallmarks of turning into one our regular circular arguments.

I posted the BBC Link purely as a new point of information for us on here. And no, you certainly didn't say that the child was to blame....my mistake if I implied that you did....it wasn't my intention to do so !

[andy-hughes]

Old_Geezer - //But he was abandoned, obviously. He was in one place, the parents went elsewhere; no matter how long they were intending to be away. Had the lad not been abandoned he wouldn't have got concerned and tried to find his own way out, and they would not have lost him. That is the whole issue. //

The press report I read advised that the parents drove about a hundred yards up the road - in other words, they remained in sight of their son, although they lost sight of him while the turned the car around and went back for him.

That is not the same as leaving him while they drive away, and then return some time later, as erroneous press reports have implied.

That scenario does not fit an accurate description of 'abandonment'.

[Old_Geezer]

But how is it not the same, albeit with less intent ? They drove away and lost sight of him.

[RandyMarsh]

this will make a good movie.

[Ken4155]

^^
Not unless the film makers have the boy 'going native' and fighting bears with his bare (or should that be bear) hands, eating snakes and insects, tracking down his parents and making them both suffer. I might watch that!

[andy-hughes]

Old_Geezer - //But how is it not the same, albeit with less intent ? They drove away and lost sight of him. //

The word 'abandon' has very emotional connotations when used in a news story like this - which is why the papers used it.

To say - 'lost sight of for a matter of seconds ...' which is the truth, has nothing like the same attention-grabbing potential.

If the parents had driven off to the next town, had dinner, gone to the pictures, and booked into a hotel for the night, and then gone back to look for the child, then that would be abandonment, but, stubbornly, the far less evocative truth has not been allowed to get in the way of a good story.

[Orderlimit]

I'm with Andy H, usual BBc hysteria trying rev up the usual type.