"Of course there has been demand for private security services from wealthy people, but it is only recently that ordinary people began to show interest," says Akira Kimoto, who heads the company's bodyguard service.
He understands parents' concerns, seeing a tendency for violent people to vent their anger on children.
"Social strains on adults such as economic doldrums and corporate downsizing are directed on the weak -- children," Kimoto says. "Unfortunately children are not aware they may fall victim."
Japan was shocked in 2001 when former psychiatric patient Mamoru Takuma killed eight students with a butcher's knife at an elementary school in Osaka. Takuma, who had said he had a grudge against the children of elites, was executed in September.
And in December, a newspaper delivery man was arrested in the western city of Nara for allegedly drowning a seven-year-old schoolgirl in a bathtub, snapping photos of the victim and sending them by her mobile telephone to her mother.
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