(This article first appeared in NEO #33, 2007, and was subsequently reprinted in the book Schoolgirl Milky Crisis)

An attractive English teacher, apparently strangled by a student stalker, Lindsay Hawker was front-page news. As I write, Hawker's murderer is still at large, and her grief-stricken father proclaimed that the death had "shamed" Japan. Hawker's murder is heartbreaking and horrifying, but if Japan should feel ashamed, it is at the fact that a fugitive, barefoot homicide suspect...