15% of Nagasaki students believe the dead can be resurrected

NAGASAKI — A prefectural board of education survey found Monday that 15.4% of Nagasaki Prefecture primary and junior high school students believe dead people can be resurrected. As to why they believe this, half said it is because they have seen stories about resurrection on television or read them in books.

The survey was conducted in November and December, following the killing of a student by an 11-year-old girl in Sasebo in the prefecture in June and a subsequent note issued by a family court that said the girl had only a vague notion of death.

The Nagasaki prefectural board polled around 3,600 fourth, six and eighth graders in public schools. "Children apparently conceive of death not from their experiences but rather from information given from outside," a board official said, stressing the need to teach the meaning of life and death at school and at home.