Photo/Illutration Shintaro Saito attends a news conference with a photograph of his daughter, Kako, in Nagoya on July 19. (Akari Nakagawa)

NAGOYA--The bereaved family of a deceased first-year junior high school student is suing the city, claiming her school was responsible for her suicide because it ignored that she was being bullied.

They filed the suit with Nagoya District Court on July 19, seeking 15.4 million yen ($111,610) in compensation from the municipal government.

“I want to know the truth about why the city government failed to prevent my daughter’s death,” said Shintaro Saito, 50, the girl's father, after he filed the lawsuit.

Kako Saito, who was 13, had transferred from Osaka Prefecture to a junior high school in Nagoya in September 2017.

She joined the soft tennis club and was bullied in late November when several club members refused to partner up with her for practices and ignored her.

About a month before that, the school conducted a survey of its students regarding their school life.

Kako wrote in her questionnaire that the other students told her to stay away from them. She selected several answers suggesting she was being bullied, such as “I feel like crying,” in the multiple-choice portion of the questionnaire.

The bereaved family argues that the school should have known she was suffering mental distress at school given her survey answers, but it did nothing to deal with the situation.

They claim their daughter ended her life in January 2018 because the city government had neglected its duty to protect the safety of students.

The family also questioned the subsequent responses from the city.

They said they had suspected their daughter was being bullied and repeatedly asked the city to investigate, but it did not respond promptly. They claim they were treated heartlessly.

In April 2019, an investigating panel of Nagoya city’s board of education said there was no bullying at the school connected to Kako’s suicide.

But then in July 2021, another investigating panel admitted she was bullied at school. It concluded that the bullying was one of the factors contributing to her suicide.

“We feel sorry for the loss of her precious life,” said the head of the secretariat for the board of education. “We would like to respond to the lawsuit after confirming the contents of the complaint.”

(This article was written by Haruka Ono and Akari Nakagawa)

Related News