Living with the Burden of Guilt: Juvenile Offenders and Atonement (2) — A Modest Awareness of Atonement — June 30, 2026 (Tue) Reiwa8

Today, I finished reading Chapter 2 of Juvenile Offenders and Atonement by Tatsuko Aoshima.

What stayed with me most was the idea that atonement is not something that ends after one period of deep reflection.

According to the author, there was once a common belief that if a young offender sincerely reflected on what they had done, they should then leave the past behind and begin a new life. But people are not able to separate themselves from their past so easily.

Many of these young people admit what they did, yet they cannot immediately grasp the full meaning of their actions or understand the impact on the victims and those around them.

One idea that especially impressed me was that a person's awareness of atonement develops gradually with maturity.

A fifteen-year-old understands differently from a thirty-year-old, and a sixty-year-old looks back on the same event from yet another perspective.

Atonement is not completed all at once. It continues to deepen throughout one's lifetime.

Another unforgettable chapter was The Praying Figure.

A boy made a clay figure without hands and quietly said,

"If it had hands, it might do it again."

To me, those words reflected not only fear of violence itself, but also fear of the violence that still existed within him, and the painful struggle to face himself.

The chapter titled Hands Chapped by the Cold also left a deep impression on me.

One boy looked at his own hands and asked,

"Teacher, doesn't it disgust you to touch my hands?"

For him, those hands could never be separated from the crime he had committed.

Without giving a lecture or offering empty comfort, the teacher simply applied ointment to his cracked hands.

That quiet act reminded me that acknowledging a person's crime does not mean denying that person's humanity.

The final section, Who Is an Apology For?, made me think deeply about the meaning of apology.

There are times when public apologies are necessary.

Yet when someone truly wishes to apologize, perhaps the first person they think of is not society, but the individual they have hurt.

Understanding the broader impact of one's actions on society may come only much later, through maturity and the passage of time.

After finishing this chapter, I felt that atonement is not about erasing the past.

Rather, it is about accepting what one has done as part of one's own life and continuing to ask how one should live from that point forward.

I still do not have an answer.

But as I continue reading this book, I hope to keep reflecting on the question:

Can a person ever truly atone for a crime?

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