Japanese boy left in woods for days heads home from hospital

TOKYO — The little boy whose parents left him alone in bear-invested woods for misbehavior — and went missing for six days — returned home Tuesday with his contrite mother and father.

Seven-year-old Yamato Tanooka was released from the hospital after going missing for nearly a week in the forests of northern Japan, triggering a search and high drama that riveted the nation. He was found tired and hungry but otherwise safe and sound at an unoccupied army camp three miles from where he was last seen.

His parents initially reported that Yamato wandered off while the family searched for wild vegetables. They soon admitted, however, that they had put him out of the car and driven off as punishment for his misbehavior.

When they returned a few minutes later, they said, little Yamato was nowhere to be found, and every parent’s nightmare began.

"We have raised him with love all along," his father, Takayuki Tanooka, 44, said in a tearful appearance before television cameras last week. "I really didn't think it would come to that. We went too far."

Hundreds of police, firefighters and volunteers on foot and horseback scoured steep hills and ravines in a rugged section of Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost main island.

Nightly news coverage showed searchers peering into abandoned shacks, clambering along creek banks and pushing through heavy undergrowth. The distraught parents were seen walking along roadsides and narrow wooded paths, shouting plaintively: “Yamato! Yamato! Where are you?”

After three days with no sign of the youngster, troops from Japan’s Ground Self Defense Force were brought in and the search area widened.

The high drama dominated Japan’s news cycle. “Japanese love melodramas, and there's nothing more melodramatic than a missing child,” said Mark Schreiber, media critic for the Japan Times.

Yamato was discovered late Friday at an Army camp used for field training.

He told authorities later that he had tried to follow his parents’ car when it pulled away. But he began to cry uncontrollably and ended up going in the opposite direction, apparently walking down a side road for hours without seeing any people or cars.

Just before dark, he stumbled onto the camp. It had no food or electricity, but provided shelter in an unlocked barracks building and water from an outdoor faucet.

The boy walked around the yard during the day, and at night slept between mattresses stacked on the barracks floor. He heard helicopters, but saw no people. Though hungry, he stayed at the camp because, he said, he didn’t know where else to go.

He was discovered when soldiers who were not part of the search made a routine stop at the camp. They fed Yamato onigiri — rice balls — that are ambrosia for even a well-fed Japanese boy and alerted police.

Yamato was taken to a local hospital where he was treated for mild dehydration and hypothermia but declared otherwise healthy. He weighed 44 pounds — four less than when he started. Doctors kept the boy for observation until Tuesday, when he was released.

For many Japanese, Hokkaido is a rough region with a tough, self-reliant population. Yamato’s patience and perseverance — gambaru — fit the nation’s self-image, said John Mock, a visiting professor of anthropology at Temple University’s Tokyo campus.

“The little lost boy acted as almost a perfect Hokkaido child, finding his own way through the forest to safety and preserving his own life,” Mock said. “The Hokkaido kid with the terrific grin almost fulfills a national stereotype.”

Although Yamato’s parents initially were heavily criticized for abandoning the second-grader along a remote stretch of road, public opinion seemed to shift with the happy ending.

“I imagine this case reminded some people of their own child-rearing struggles. It is not unusual for parents to tell their unruly children, ‘I'm leaving you here if you don't behave,’" the Asahi Shimbun, a major national daily, said in a front-page editorial Saturday.

Police said they would not bring charges for child abandonment, although they will refer the case to child-welfare authorities for review.

Throughout the ordeal, both parents seemed to act with genuine contrition, bowing deeply and apologizing for their actions.

Tayuki Tanooka said he apologized to his son, as well. “I said to him, ‘Dad made you go through such a hard time. I am sorry,’” he said in a television interview Monday.

In a choking voice, he added: “And then my son said, ‘You are a good dad. I forgive you.’”